place of uncertainty and chaos, where appearances are often deceptive. In his essay on ‘‘The Killers’’ forThe Explicator, Quentin E. Martin suggests that these new theories are valuable for understanding Hemingway’s story. He highlights character confusion in the story and argues, ‘‘‘The Killers’ can be seen as a concise and dramatic representation of certain aspects of Einstein’s theory of relativity and Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy (or uncertainty).’’ Other writers also consciously incorporated these theories into their work, contributing to the development of literary modernism. For example, T. S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland (1922) uses allusion, symbol, and fragments to depict a world that had literally fallen apart. In her novel To the Lighthouse (1927), Virginia Woolf employs a stream-of-consciousness narrative to emphasize subjective experience over the portrayal of an objective world, drawing on ideas popularized by philosopher Bergson.

During the interwar period, significant literature was also being produced in America, not just by expatriates in Europe. American writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Sterling Brown, James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Alain Locke explored the African-American experience, offering white America insights into the lives and cultures of historically oppressed people. Harlem, located in uptown New York City, emerged as a hub for African-American poets, artists, writers, musicians, and playwrights. Key literary works of the Harlem Renaissance include Johnson’s 1927 poetry collection God’s Trombone: Seven Negro Folk Sermons, which became one of the era's most popular works by capturing the essence of the black idiom through the speech patterns of an old black preacher. Other notable works include Claude McKay’s novel Home to Harlem (1927), which depicts the lives of working-class blacks, and Jean Toomer’s Cane (1923), which tells the story of poor southern blacks.

"The Killers" takes place in Henry's lunchroom in Summit, Illinois, just outside Chicago, during a winter in the 1920s. The two hit men, Al and Max, arrive wanting to order dinner. However, they are too early and can only get sandwiches or breakfast items, as the dinner meals with an entree, vegetable, and mashed potatoes are not yet available. They mock the establishment and comment that the only thing to do in Summit is to come to the lunchroom for supper at six o'clock.

The clock on the wall runs twenty minutes fast, so whenever the time is mentioned, readers need to subtract twenty minutes. The diner itself is sparsely described, focusing mainly on the counter and the pass-through slit for food, where one of the hit men in the kitchen has positioned his shotgun.

Toward the end, the scene shifts to Hirsch's rooming house, where Nick Adams goes to warn Ole Andreson that the hit men are after him. Following an unsatisfactory encounter with the old prizefighter, Nick returns to the diner and informs George that he plans to leave town to escape the unfolding events.

Dialogue
Dialogue, the interaction between two or more characters, is a key tool for character development. Writers shape their characters by crafting their speech to reflect their desires and motivations. In addition to describing Max and Al as typical gangsters, Hemingway has them speak like gangsters too. Their dialogue is filled with insults, wisecracks, and slang, and they avoid answering questions directly. They talk in short, terse bursts reminiscent of characters from a Dashiell Hammett novel. Hammett was known for his detective stories and his character, Sam Spade, a witty antihero. Dialogue also helps define other characters in the story. For instance, when Sam speaks, it's evident he wants no involvement, while Nick's incredulous responses highlight his youth and innocence.

Plot
Plot is the sequence of events in a story. Hemingway primarily tells the story through dialogue, almost like a play. He uses minimal description to set the atmosphere or indicate scene changes. For example, he describes Max with: ‘‘His face was small and white and he had tight lips.’’ When the scene shifts, Hemingway describes the action to transition: ‘‘The two of them went out the door. George watched them, through the window, pass under the arc light and cross the street.’’

The mundane topics the characters discuss contrast sharply with the sinister act the killers are planning. Hemingway encapsulates his minimalist style in his book on bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon:

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows, and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will feel those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

Many twentieth-century writers, such as Raymond Carver and Pam Houston, adopted Hemingway’s concise, elliptical style.

Narrator
The narrator is the voice through which the author tells the story. It can be a character within the story or an external observer. The type of narrator chosen is closely tied to the story’s point of view. In ‘‘The Killers,’’ Hemingway uses an ‘‘effaced’’ narrator, meaning the narrator is almost invisible. This type of narrator does not have access to the characters' thoughts, which are revealed only through their dialogue. However, in his essay ‘‘Point of View in the Nick Adams Stories,’’ Carl Ficken notes:

Hemingway is . . . able to place Nick sufficiently forward in the account so that the meaning of the story has to do with Nick’s discovery of what life is like through those killers and Ole Andreson’s reaction to them.

Hemingway popularized this narrative technique among short story writers and novelists in the twentieth century.

Hemingway extensively uses dialogue in this story. The tough-guy language of the hired assassins helps develop their characters, but it is up to the reader to determine why these two men are willing to kill someone they do not know.

The author provides a detailed physical description of these assassins but does a more effective job when he mentions that Ole Andreson was a prizefighter. He is too tall for his bed, and aside from "the way his face is," no one would guess he had once been in the ring. Hemingway allows the reader to envision the appearance of the resigned ex-fighter.

An insightful reader might see symbolism in the clock that is twenty minutes fast, representing time passing without consequence. The wall that the prizefighter faces could symbolize the obstacles many people encounter in life, which they feel they cannot overcome.

Hemingway's depiction of the lunch-room scene requires the reader to imagine a complete narrative. The anticipated murder, which seems to be the plot's direction, never occurs. The police are never called, and the weary prizefighter accepts his fate, leaving Nick to flee because he cannot bear to contemplate what will happen next.

While the story carries an undercurrent of violence, the only actual incident is the binding of Nick Adams and the cook. The anticipated murder never transpires, but Ole Andreson is haunted by its possibility, and the reader feels the quiet resignation with which the aging prizefighter awaits his fate.

Written in 1926, before the civil rights movement began, it's not surprising that the hit men use a racial slur when addressing the black cook. Other characters in the story exhibit an attitude toward the cook that, if not equal, at least accepts the societal role assigned to him.

• 1920s: Al Capone leads a violent gang in Chicago, dealing in alcohol and running illegal gambling operations.

  Today: Organized crime remains prevalent, but it is more dispersed and not as concentrated in specific cities. Authorities believe they significantly weakened the “Mafia” after sentencing New York City crime boss John Gotti to life imprisonment in 1992.

• 1920s: The life expectancy for American males is 53.6 years, while for females it is 54.6 years.

  Today: The life expectancy for American males has risen to 73.1 years, and for females, it has increased to 79.1 years.

• 1920s: A crime wave hits the United States, as Prohibition fuels the bootlegging industry and leads to rises in prostitution and gambling.

  Today: Alcohol is legally available across the United States, and legal gambling, including state lotteries and casinos, is widespread.

"The Killers" was initially published in the March 1927 issue of Scribner's Magazine. By October of that same year, it was included in the anthology Men without Women (1927). Later, this story was featured in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and Other Stories (1961) and The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987).

"The Killers" is part of the Nick Adams series. In Hemingway's debut collection of short stories, In Our Time, seven of the tales revolve around this character, who many critics believe is modeled after Hemingway himself.

This short story has been adapted into films twice. The 1946 version, with a screenplay by Anthony Veiller, starred Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster. A song from the film, "The More I Know of Love," performed by Gardner, was nominated for an Academy Award. The 1964 adaptation, with a screenplay by Gene L. Coon, featured Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, and Ronald Reagan.

The films introduced different characters and each screenwriter offered a unique interpretation of the story.

• Director Robert Siodmak’s 1946 film The Killers marks the first screen adaptation of Hemingway’s story. Featuring Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, and Edmond O’Brien, this film can be found at most video stores and many libraries.
• Director Donald Siegel’s 1964 film The Killers is another adaptation of Hemingway’s story. This version stars Lee Marvin, Clu Gulager, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson, and Ronald Reagan. It is also available at most video stores and many libraries.

Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Scribner, 1969. Baker, who corresponded with Hemingway, clarified numerous controversial aspects with the author during his research for this seminal work.

Baker. Hemingway: The Writer as Artist. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952. This remains one of the premier critical analyses of Hemingway's literary works.

Brian, Denis. The True Gen: An Intimate Portrait of Ernest Hemingway by Those Who Knew Him. New York: Grove, 1988. Interviews with Hemingway's friends and former wives provide a balanced portrayal of the author.

Donaldson, Scott. By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Viking, 1977. This biography also examines the critical reception of Hemingway's writing.

Jones, Veda Boyd. Ernest Hemingway. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2001. Aimed at high school readers, this biography includes analyses of Hemingway's works by Harold Bloom and other scholars.

Mellow, James R. Hemingway: A Life without Consequences. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. This comprehensive biography is rich with well-documented quotations.

Reynolds, Michael. Hemingway: The Final Years. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. This book examines the impact of Hemingway's depression on his writing during his final years.

Reynolds. Hemingway: The Paris Years. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1989. This is the inaugural volume in Reynolds's multivolume exploration of Hemingway's life.

Sources
Brooks, Cleanth, Jr., and Robert Penn Warren. "‘The Killers,’ Ernest Hemingway: Interpretation." In Understanding Fiction, edited by Cleanth Brooks, Jr. and Robert Penn Warren. Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1943, pp. 306-25.

Crane, R. S. "The Killers." In Idea of the Humanities and Other Essays Critical and Historical. University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 303-14.

Ficken, Carl. "Point of View in the Nick Adams Stories." In Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays, edited by Jackson J. Benson. Duke University Press, 1975, pp. 93-113.

Flora, Joseph. Hemingway’s Nick Adams. Louisiana State University Press, 1982, pp. 92-104.

Hemingway, Ernest. "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." In Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938, pp. 379-83.

———. Death in the Afternoon. Scribner’s, 1932, p. 192.

———. "The Killers." In Men without Women. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927, pp. 45-56.

Martin, Quentin E. "Hemingway’s ‘The Killers.’" In the Explicator, Vol. 52, Issue 1, Fall 1993, pp. 53-58.

Owen, Charles. "Time and the Contagion of Flight in ‘The Killers.’" In Forum, No. 3, 1960, pp. 45-46.

Reardon, John. "Hemingway’s Esthetic and Ethical Sportsmen." In University Review, No. 34, 1967, pp. 12-23.

Stone, Edward. "Some Questions about Hemingway’s ‘The Killers.’" In Studies in Short Fiction, No. 5, 1967, pp. 12-17.

Stuckey, W. J. "‘The Killers’ as Experience." In Journal of Narrative Technique, No. 5, 1975, pp. 128-35.

Waldhorn, Arthur. A Reader’s Guide to Ernest Hemingway. Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1972, p. 284.

Further Reading
Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969. Baker's authorized biography is extensively detailed and meticulously documented, remaining one of the finest biographies of Hemingway ever written.

De Falco, Joseph. The Hero in Hemingway’s Short Stories. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963. De Falco provides analyses examining the psychological intricacies of Hemingway’s short stories.

Griffin, Peter. Along with Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years. Oxford University Press, 1985. Griffin’s study, which includes a foreword by Hemingway’s son, Jack Hemingway, incorporates previously unreleased materials, such as letters and stories, to chronicle Hemingway’s life through the 1920s.

Hemingway, Mary Welsh. How It Was. Ballantine, 1977. Mary Welsh, Hemingway’s fourth and final wife, offers a diary-based account of her time with him.

Wagner, Linda Welshimer. Ernest Hemingway: Five Decades of Criticism. Michigan State University Press, 1974. This collection compiles essays on Hemingway’s novels and stories and features George Plimpton’s 1958 Paris Review interview with Hemingway, where he discusses his craft.

Young, Philip. Ernest Hemingway. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966. Young posits that Hemingway’s writing is a means of working through a physical wound he sustained in World War I. This is a profound and contentious work of criticism.