The Killers | Waiting in “The Killers”
In this essay, Chris Semansky considers the idea of waiting in Hemingway’s story.
Rife with images of waiting, ‘‘The Killers’’ embodies a range of Hemingway’s ideas on the human condition, from his notion of ‘‘nada’’ to his code of manly behavior. By foregrounding waiting, Hemingway creates suspense, develops characters, and suggests themes that lesser writers might take twice as many pages to accomplish.
Inextricably bound up with notions of time and human behavior, the act of waiting creates expectation and suspense, while providing a framework for the story’s events. The first image of waiting occurs when George tells Al and Max...
[The entire page is 1298 words long]
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