The Killers | Reticence and Mental Avoidance: Keys to Escape for Hemingway’s Heroes
L. Aykroyd provides an insight into the nature of Hemingway’s characters’ desire to escape the world around them.
In Ernest Hemingway’s short stories, the protagonists frequently resort to reticence and mental avoidance when confronted with life’s trials. They say little, which obliges the reader to make inferences about their true feelings. They try not to probe the complexities of their situations, because intellectual analysis does not lead to solutions in Hemingway’s world. This pattern of speech and thought occurs in such stories as “The Three-Day Blow,” “The Killers,” and “Soldier's Home.” It represents the way that Hemingway’s male heroes manage to keep themselves...
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