User talk:CVinson/sandbox

                          F I R E A R M S I N T H E W O R K S O F
                          H E M I N G W A Y A N D M A I L E R
                               B A R R Y H . L E E D S

BY NOW IT IS MOUTHING A TRUISM TO POINT OUT THAT FIREARMS have played an iconic role in American history. Starting with this axiomatic assumption, one finds that guns are virtually ubiquitous in the works of those two peculiarly American authors, Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer. Sometimes mere accoutrements or plot devices, they are more often significant thematically and symbolically.

Occasionally, serendipitous connections between the two authors present themselves. The best example of these may be the case of the 6.5 mm. Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. At the outset of A Farewell to Arms (1929), Hemingway describes how

              the troops were muddy and wet in their capes; their rifles were
              wet and under their capes the two leather cartridge-boxes on the
              front of the belts, gray leather boxes heavy with the packs of clips
              of thin, long 6.5 mm. cartridges, bulged forward under the capes
              so that the men, passing on the road, marched as though they
              were six months gone with child. (4)