The Snows of Kilimanjaro

The story is about the slow death of an unnamed writer on a safari in Africa. His leg is rotting away due to gangrene caused by a scratch he got on a thorn in the bush. The trivial nature of the...

The leopard in Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is referenced in a short kind of prologue before the story ever begins. Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and...

The title can be read in both a literal and a figurative sense. Literally, it refers to the snow-capped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, a dormant volcano in the East African country of Tanzania. On a...

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is the story of a few days in the life of Harry, a would-be writer on safari in Africa with his wife, Helen. The couple's safari has been cut short because Harry has an...

In English literature courses, the iceberg theory refers to the idea that the meaning of a work of literature is hidden under the surface; in other words, understanding what the story is about will...

The flashbacks in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" show how Harry, dying of an infected leg wound in Africa, mentally processes the fact that he is going to die, and the effect of that realization on his...

At the end of his life, Harry blames his wife's money for his own professional corruption. He believes that he was tempted and seduced by money, thus abandoning his talent and responsibilities as a...

As others have noted, the stream-of-consciousness style Hemingway uses in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is associated with modernism. It's important to note, however, that stream-of-consciousness is...

Harry does not love his wife. He treats her less harshly as he approaches death, but he does not love her. At some point in their marriage, "the woman" became for Harry both the cause and the...

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" centers around Harry, who has contracted gangrene while on an African safari and is dying. He is with his wife, Helen, and they are in the company of several porters, who...

The end of Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is ambiguous to be sure, and it can be difficult to understand whether or not Harry's trip in the airplane was real or imagined. At first,...

There are several examples of stream of consciousness in this story. I will provide a few to help you understand how the technique is used, but note that there are many other examples of it...

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a frustrating story about a frustrated man, who has misspent his life and wasted his talents, and now finds himself dying of slow blood-poisoning on a safari far away...

Over the years, there have been different critical interpretations of Helen in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Edmund Wilson saw her as an emasculating force who had taken away all of Harry's drive and...

There are three generally acknowledged types of literary irony: verbal irony, situational irony, and dramatic irony. Hemingway's story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" contains examples of both verbal...

Throughout the short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Hemingway interrupts his narrative to switch to the internal thoughts of the writer Harry Walden, who is reflecting on his life as he lies on...

Modernist literature reacted against what its proponents believed was the overly descriptive, embellished, and decorative literature of the Victorian era. One attribute of modernism, of which...

The vultures are introduced at the beginning of the story. Harry, who is dying, seems only partly rational, as if he is already succumbing to the slow, gradual onset of death. He is not the least...

Hemingway's protagonist in the story is Harry, a writer facing his death from gangrene, the result of failing to put antiseptic on a scratch on his knee before it became infected. The majority of...

To some extent, the relationship between Helen and Harry reverses traditional gender roles. It's Helen's wealth that supports Harry rather than the other way round, as would have been more normal...

As the other answer to this question states, Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a short story and does not have a "thesis." The thesis would be the main point you would argue for in a...

In "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" gender roles are reversed to a considerable extent. It's Harry who's placed in the submissive role traditionally accorded to women. As he lays dying, he finds himself...

It is then morning again, and the pilot, Compton, has arrived to take him to the city and to the doctor. Harry gets in the plane and the pilot, instead of taking him to the city, flies him right by...

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway that takes place on the African savanna; The protagonist, Harry, and his wife are sitting outside having a discussion about his leg,...

If by thesis you are thinking of themes for the story, there are lots of different ideas that you can explore. Hemingway's stories usually present what is known as the Hemingway Code Hero, and...

It is said that "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is Ernest Hemingway's somewhat autobiographical portrait of his life as an author. The best answer to your question is actually found in your question:...

In Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences, the biographer James R. Mellow claims that Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is "unquestionably the great masterpiece among his short stories."...

Hemingway's Harry is an anti-hero, a man of literary potential who has not used it. Through his own foolishness he is going to die from gangrene because he has a leg that is infected and is in a...

Ernest Hemingway became famous in part for his introduction of a clean, terse writing style, approximate to a journalist's approach of letting the "facts speak for themselves," and "The Snows of...

I see several similarities between Helen and Margot. To begin with, obviously, they both married adventurous men who came to Africa to trophy hunt. Both women come from wealthy families, and both...

Before the story begins, a brief reference is made to the frozen carcass of a snow leopard found near the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. One could interpret this as a symbol for what the story's...

Harry, the protagonist of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," is brutally honest with himself, compassionate and loyal enough to try to protect Helen from his brutal honesty, and a failed writer. Dying in...

Harry is reflecting on his life because he feels he is dying. He is a dedicated writer but feels that being married to a rich woman is not only weakening his character but interfering with his...

Harry comes to understand that "writing equals life and not writing equals death" (Marc Seals). The time to write was over and now all the things he had held back (because he feared he did not...

In Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," a writer, Harry, and his wealthy wife, Helen, are stranded on an African savanna waiting for help to arrive. They have been on safari...

In a kind of preface to Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," we read this: Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain...

In Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” it seems significant – and also a reflection of literary “modernism” – that Harry ultimately dies from a wound caused by something as...

As with many of the so-called “Lost Generation” of artists who lived through the horrors of the First World War, Hemingway is haunted by the theme of death, which he explores in many of his works,...

The protagonist of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a lot like Ernest Hemingway himself, so this story is somewhat like a confession. The protagonist has a love for nature, which was also one of...

This story portrays the theme of isolation through Harry's feelings and memories. He has developed gangrene in his leg, the result of a scratch that he failed to clean properly when it first...

In "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Ernest Hemingway, the story's action alternates between the present and the past. As the story begins, Harry and his partner, Helen, are stranded in Africa and are...

Certainly, in one sense, every piece of literature is a reflection of its author, as you can hardly write about something convincingly that you have not lived, to a certain extent, yourself....

I think that the Stream of Consciousness that Hemingway uses, is not quite the stream of consciousness of Virginia Woolf, Faulkner, or James Joyce. For one, Hemingway doesn't actually accomplish...

Harry is a man of contradictions. He is brave and unsure, dismissive and thoughtful, satisfied and regretful. At the beginning of the story, Harry is brave in the face of death. But his bravery...

A key theme in "The Snows Of Kilimanjaro" is the conflicted and misogynistic ways in which Harry relates to women. It is clear that he has no love for his wife, Helen, and resents her. While Helen...

Harry is a bitter man at the beginning of the story. He is harboring resentment towards his wife and wonders why he married her. He is also dying from an infection in his leg (gangrene). He...

There is a bit of Hemingway in this character (a writer visiting Africa), but that biographical information is not necessary to understand the character. Harry's leg has become infected and he...

One critic said, "Realistic fiction is often opposed to romantic fiction: the romance is said to present life as we would have it be, more picturesque, more adventurous, more heroic than the...

The text of Hemingway's story says that the animal is a leopard, not a "white tiger." There are no tigers in Africa, white or any other color. This is part of the epigraph: Close to the western...

The protagonist of this story, Harry, is a classic example of Hemingway's ability to produce an anti-hero, or a character that appears to be detached from the world and very disconnected. Notice...