The snows of kilimanjaro Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The snows of kilimanjaro - Research Paper Example . Harry is the protagonist of the story. Hemingway’s depiction of the character Harry is amazing. The way in which he ruminates about his past life experience and the sudden retrieval to the present to quarrel with his wife is skillfully drawn. His conscious effort to correlate himself with the character Harry is obvious. He made his character realistic with his own ‘professional resume to give him a journalistic background’. The wife of Harry, Helen, resembles Hemingway’s second wife. Harry never calls his wife by name. Helen is more advanced character made by the writer. Harry sees Helen as wealth itself. It exposes the outlook of Harry which causes his decay. The protagonist of the story is a writer, who is on a safari in Africa with his wife Helen. Harry is scratched on the leg by a thorn and the infection slowly becomes gangrene. Helen is trying to make him comfortable and gives him hope to live. But he seems to be a person waiting for death and that d istresses his wife. Helen’s concern and anxiety never vibrates the mind of the protagonist. He is addicted to disappointment and self pity which leads him to languor and laziness and also exhibits distasteful attitude to his wife. The rest of the story is his rumination on his wide ranging and scattered life experience. He feels the disappointment of reaching nowhere as a writer because he spent most of the time with wealthy women by marrying them. The whole story is a stream of consciousness of the protagonist that he jumps to the past and present. Hemingway uses flash backs to tell the story. In the first flash back he remembers about World War 1 and the diverse scenes. His first memories are of journeying through Europe during the war, hiding, hunting and his skiing excursions. He also listens to the bombing. When the flashback finishes he comes back and engage in verbal battle with Helen. Harry then falls asleep and wakes up at evening to see Helen returning after shootin g an animal for them. Then he slips to think about her as a wife. He recognizes with pain the time he spend with a series of women neglecting his true talent as a writer. Helen is a rich widow who had already married and had two children among them one had died in an air crash. Because of her admiration in his writings and they share some common interests, she got married to Harry. After drinking together, he again slips into sleep. In between he reflects on the process by which he has got gangrene. He was trying to take the photograph of some water buck and had a scratch on his knee. He did not apply iodine and it became gangrenous. In the second memory he remembers his life in New York with prostitutes and his journey to Paris after a quarrel with an American soldier for a prostitute to have the new wife Helen. Then we see they both take dinner and again Harry ruminating on his grandfather’s house, his fishing in the Black forest, his relations with the poor neighbors and t hus he continues in his ponderings. Along with the reflections in his mind Harry slowly feels the approach of death when he hears the hyena crying. Helen takes his cot to the tent and he feels death close to his heart. Harry dreams of a rescue in the form of a man called Compton. He was taken by that man to the top of Kilimanjaro where he saw the white snow, a new experience where there is only