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How do we reconcile the two endings, the first of which, although printed in normal font not italics, is in reality counterfactual in nature? Here again Harding is helpful. | How do we reconcile the two endings, the first of which, although printed in normal font not italics, is in reality counterfactual in nature? Here again Harding is helpful. | ||
::By the end of the story, readers have not only learned what Helen and Harry regret, but have also been supplied with an opportunity to judge Harry’s talent through the memories and thoughts conveyed in the italicized vignettes. The story ultimately privileges the counterfactual past, endorsing the notion that Harry should have written his stories. Harry, the narrator, and the implied author all seem to agree on this point, and readers are led to share this evaluation as well. The false rescue ending encourages readers not only to understand Harry and Helen’s regrets, but to experience a sense of disappointment for themselves. () | ::By the end of the story, readers have not only learned what Helen and Harry regret, but have also been supplied with an opportunity to judge Harry’s talent through the memories and thoughts conveyed in the italicized vignettes. The story ultimately privileges the counterfactual past, endorsing the notion that Harry should have written his stories. Harry, the narrator, and the implied author all seem to agree on this point, and readers are led to share this evaluation as well. The false rescue ending encourages readers not only to understand Harry and Helen’s regrets, but to experience a sense of disappointment for themselves. () | ||
At this point, in —and for while afterwards—Hemingway’s life was different from Harry’s. As both narrator and implied author, Hemingway recognizes the temptation that Harry represented, one that he would wrestle with until the end of his life. But in this story, at least—on any reading, a true masterpiece—Hemingway has learned his lesson from Harry’s fatal mistake. | |||
Rich in regret and counterfactuals, this story “flaunts the creative presence of an implied author who has made no such mistake—an author who has flirted with multiple narrative possibilities while maintaining a tight grip on the story’s ultimate trajectory” (Harding ), right up to the alternative endings. Hemingway feared Harry’s fate, yet in this story he brilliantly demonstrated his “own final control of the text” (Harding ). Like Fitzgerald, Hemingway had bared his soul, revealing his angst. Unlike Fitzgerald, he employed a complex fictive form to do so. | |||
Sadly, however, his “final control of the text” (Harding ), as illustrated in “Snows,” would not be the final act. Towards the end of his life, as serious physical illness, depression, and alcohol abuse took over, Hemingway would begin to breakdown, finally in taking his own life. Burwell has poignantly described this disintegration, linking Hemingway’s complex narrative style with the metaphor he himself used to describe his task as an author—that of the iceberg. Burwell concludes with this description of the later postwar Hemingway, | |||