159
edits
The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Angst, Authorship, Critics: “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “The Crack-Up,” Advertisements for Myself: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Angst, Authorship, Critics: “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “The Crack-Up,” Advertisements for Myself (view source)
Revision as of 20:58, 23 February 2021
, 23 February 2021no edit summary
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 73: | Line 73: | ||
his chest” {{sfn|Scribner|2003|pp=25}}. Does the story itself, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” possess a kind of immortality, one that is shared by its implied author, Ernest Hemingway? Perhaps it does. | his chest” {{sfn|Scribner|2003|pp=25}}. Does the story itself, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” possess a kind of immortality, one that is shared by its implied author, Ernest Hemingway? Perhaps it does. | ||
Then,with a jolt,we realize the truth | Then, with a jolt, we realize the truth. The triumphant flight past the pure | ||
white snows of Kilimanjaro is yet another “might have been” for poor Harry. | |||
The first ending, the “happy” ending, is abruptly followed by a second— | |||
where Helen discovers her husband’s lifeless body. After Harry’s fantasy ride | |||
to Kilimanjaro, the story ends in stone-cold naturalism, with the hyena’s uncanny cry and Helen’s beating heart {{sfn|Scribner|2003|28}}). | |||
What is the significance of another animal, the leopard, mentioned at the | |||
beginning of the epigraph? Surely that—even at the point of death—this | |||
skilled hunter was still climbing, still searching for its prey. Ben Stoltzfus | |||
draws a contrast between Harry and the leopard: ”The leopard near the summit is one of the objects in the chain of animal events, death, and sensory impressions that contributes to the particular emotion of the story. The | |||
epigraph states that no one has explained the presence of the leopard at that | |||
altitude, but Hemingway’s story is the answer to the riddle and it explains the | |||
cat’s presence” {{sfn|Stoltzfus|2005|pp=224}}. Harry, by contrast, as a writer was neither climbing nor hunting. “Leopards hunt and they do what leopards do, whereas Harry, the would-be writer, does everything except write” {{sfn|stoltzfus|2005|pp=224}}. Both man and leopard die—as eventually do all living things—but they die for different reasons. | |||
How do we reconcile the | |||
. . . | . . . | ||