User talk:CVinson/sandbox: Difference between revisions

← Older edit Newer edit →

@@ Line 81: / Line 81: @@
 In a similar situation but without the devastating irony, Hemingway equips the title character in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” with a 30-06 rifle and 220 grain solid slugs for lion and Cape buffalo. The professional hunter, Robert Wilson, based on the famous Philip Percival with whom Hemingway had hunted in Africa, carries a “shockingly big-bored".505 Gibbs “with a muzzle velocity of two tons” (138). Here, Hemingway makes an error in nomenclature and physics, since muzzle ''velocity'' is measured in feet per second, and muzzle ''energy'' in foot pounds.Yet the .505 Gibbs, a highly specialized big game hunting rifle of which only eighty were ever manufactured, presents a very impressive picture in the mind’s eye. Finally, in one of the greatest examples of controlled ambiguity in literature, Macomber’s wife Margot, “shot at the buffalo with the 6.5 Mannlicher” (153), killing her husband. This 6.5 mm Mannlicher (a fine sporting arm quite different from the rough, mass produced Mannlicher Carcano of ''Farewell'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'') is the instrument of a death which lives forever in the shadowy ambiguity of Margot Macomber’s true intent, and which brings to a close the short, happy, existential life of the protagonist.
-Part One of Hemingway’s ''To Have and Have Not'' {{sfn|''To Have and Have Not''|1937|}} opens with an action sequence in which two politically opposed groups of Cubans kill each other with, among other guns, a 9 mm. Luger, a 12 gauge shotgun, and a .45 Thompson submachine gun. Later in the same section of the book, the protagonist Harry Morgan, a modern pirate like his namesake Henry Morgan (1635?–1688: a Welsh buccaneer in the Caribbean, later acting governor of Jamaica, 1680-82) carries out the dangerous mission of transporting (and double-crossing) illegal Chinese immigrants with the aid of a fairly standard but versatile battery consisting of a Winchester 30-30 lever action carbine, a
+Part One of Hemingway’s ''To Have and Have Not'' {{sfn|Hemingway|1937|}} opens with an action sequence in which two politically opposed groups of Cubans kill each other with, among other guns, a 9 mm. Luger, a 12 gauge shotgun, and a .45 Thompson submachine gun. Later in the same section of the book, the protagonist Harry Morgan, a modern pirate like his namesake Henry Morgan (1635?–1688: a Welsh buccaneer in the Caribbean, later acting governor of Jamaica, 1680-82) carries out the dangerous mission of transporting (and double-crossing) illegal Chinese immigrants with the aid of a fairly standard but versatile battery consisting of a Winchester 30-30 lever action carbine, a
 {{pg|160|161}}
 gauge pump shotgun, and“the Smith and Wesson thirty-eight special I had when I was on the police force up in Miami“ {{sfn|Hemingway|1937|p=44}}
@@ Line 87: / Line 87: @@
 In Part Two, Harry is badly wounded in his right arm, which he subsequently loses, by the gunfire of law enforcement agents while smuggling liquor from Cuba. But in Part Three, the longest and most intense section of the book, he (literally) single-handedly kills, with his Thompson submachine gun, four Cuban revolutionaries escaping from a bank robbery. And yet, a true existential character trapped in a naturalistic world, he mutters with his dying breath this credo: “No matter how a man alone ain’t got no bloody fucking chance” (225).
-Many guns figure prominently in the 1940 novel ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' {{sfn|''For Whom the Bell Tolls''|1940|}}, perhaps most significantly the Smith and Wesson .32 revolver handed down by Robert Jordan’s grandfather, a veteran of the American Civil War:
+Many guns figure prominently in the 1940 novel ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' {{sfn|Hemingway|1940|}}, perhaps most significantly the Smith and Wesson .32 revolver handed down by Robert Jordan’s grandfather, a veteran of the American Civil War:
 {{center|It was a single action officer’s model .32 caliber and there was no trigger}} {{center|guard. It had the softest, sweetest trigger pull you had ever felt and it}} {{center|was always well oiled and the bore was clean although the finish was all}} {{center|worn off and the brown metal of the barrel and the cylinder was worn smooth}} {{center|from the leather of the holster.(Hemingway, ''For Whom'' ''336'')}}
@@ Line 93: / Line 93: @@
 After Robert’s father commits suicide with this gun (like the author’s own father), although the revolver is lovingly described, Robert Jordan disposes of it in a memorable flashback by dropping it into an eight hundred feet deep lake (337). In the main action of the novel, Jordan is armed with an automatic pistol and a submachine gun, both unspecified as to caliber or manufacture. But other guns are more clearly defined: the Lewis gun of which the guerrilla band is so proud but whose obsolescence disappoints Jordan, and the 9mm Star pistol with which El Sordo carries out his “suicide” ruse on the fascists surrounding him in his last stand. Finally, Robert Jordan, waiting to make ''his'' last stand at the novel’s conclusion, grasps his submachine gun and thinks, “I have fought for what I believed in for a year now. If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it” (467). Here, as with Harry Morgan, the firearm is an extension of the individual’s capacity to resist evil forces and fight with existential heroism for the good.
 {{pg|161|162}}
-Firearms play minor roles in other Hemingway novels and stories: the shotguns Col. Cantwell uses in the opening duck-hunting sequence of ''Across the River and into the Trees'' (1950); the .357 Magnum carried by Thomas Hudson in ''Islands in the Stream'' (1970) and the Thompson gun used to shoot sharks in that novel; the shotgun used by the father in “A Day’s Wait” to dispense death to quail while his beloved son is lying in bed at home mistakenly expecting his own death. Finally, the last gun for Hemingway was the “double-barreled Boss shotgun with a tight choke” with which he took his own life (Baker 563).
+Firearms play minor roles in other Hemingway novels and stories: the shotguns Col. Cantwell uses in the opening duck-hunting sequence of ''Across the River and into the Trees'' {{sfn|Hemingway|1950|}}; the .357 Magnum carried by Thomas Hudson in ''Islands in the Stream'' {{sfn|Hemingway|1970|}} and the Thompson gun used to shoot sharks in that novel; the shotgun used by the father in “A Day’s Wait” to dispense death to quail while his beloved son is lying in bed at home mistakenly expecting his own death. Finally, the last gun for Hemingway was the “double-barreled Boss shotgun with a tight choke” with which he took his own life (Baker 563).
 What, finally, can we say about the role of guns in the works of Hemingway and Mailer? They are virtually ubiquitous, sometimes mere everyday equipment, more often objects of profound symbolic and thematic significance. But always, as in life, they loom as instruments that amplify the individual’s influence on the world around him. Whether used to hunt game, commit murder, or fight for a political ideal, every gun is a tool that extends the power of the existential human will in a world that would attempt to render it impotent.