Movies - The Snows of Kilimanjaro

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The Snows of Kilimanjaro is the name of both a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway and the premier story within the collection.

Considered by Hemingway to be his finest story, The Snows of Kilimanjaro was first published in Esquire magazine in 1936 and then republished in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories (1938).

For details on the book, see The Snows of Kilimanjaro (book).

Story

The story centers on the memories of a writer who is taking a safari in Africa. He develops a gangrenous wound from a thorn prick, and lies prostrate awaiting his slow death. This loss of physical capability causes him to look inside himself - at his memories of the past years, and how little he has actually accomplished in his writing. He realizes that although he has seen and experienced many wonderful and astonishing things during his life, he had never made a record of the events; his status as a writer is contradicted by his reluctance to actually write. He also quarrels with the woman with him, blaming her for his living decadently and forgetting his failure to write of what really matters to him, namely his experiences among poor and "interesting" people, not the predictable upper class crowd he has fell in with lately. Thus he dies, having lived through so much and yet having lived only for the moment, with no regard to the future.

The stench of painlessly rotting flesh slowly leading up to death, the physical rot, and the anaesthesia offered by drink is a metaphor for the corruption of the conscious spirit, encroaching on the soul of the man.

Film version

In 1952 a film version of the short story was directed by Henry King, starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Susan Hayward, and Leo G. Carroll.

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