Analysis Of The Snows Of Kilimanjaro

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The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway is a well-known short story that is riddled with literary devices. The story contains allusion, symbolism, and flashbacks to thicken the plot of the story. One over looked aspect of the story is the parallelism between the main character and the author himself. The experiences and tragedies that the two share are almost the same as if Hemingway used his past as inspiration for this story. Through “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, Harry’s life is a reflection of Hemingway’s life.

“ Characterization requires self-knowledge, insight into human nature . . . it is more than impersonation.” -Leon Surmelian, Hemingway, as an author, wrote about topics that he was familiar with and topics that would evoke …show more content…

Harry is a writer who is struggling internally, as well as physically, to survive. The struggle the character is fighting is the gangrene caused by a cut on his foot and the internal struggle is about his life. Hemingway had a near death experience in Africa after surviving a plane crash. Harry didn’t make it, but thankfully Hemingway did. Hemingway drew from that experience and turned it into a platform for a potential character. The character that came from the crash appears to be Harry. The struggle between man and nature is a familiar conflict to Hemingway. He can portray the hopelessness of the character through his own experience. Hemingway relates with Harry again in the story through spending time in the war. The war is a reference to world war one, which Hemingway and Harry both served in for a period of time. During a flashback, Harry remembers the details of a …show more content…

Harry is married to a woman who he barely loves. Harry has a history of using women for their money then ditching them for the next. Hemingway had a similar motif, but not for money. Hemingway seems to crave adventure and each wife presents something new to the writer. They also share the loss of their first love. Harry looses the first woman he loved in Paris and never hears from her again. He becomes heart broken and jumps from woman to woman unfulfilled in his quest for love. Hemingway fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, the nurse who cared for him, in a hospital in Milan. He proposed to her and she accepted, but later left him for another man. This heartbreak provided Hemingway for future writing material. Both men have encountered loss of first love and seem to continue to search for something that resembles love. Harry, while on his deathbed, pushes Helen away from him and curses her for her blind love for him. He contemplates telling Helen how he truly feels, but resists the urge to crush her. This toxic attitude toward a woman that gave him everything is almost disturbing, but he has no love because there was never love in the first place. After the war, Hemingway married Hadley Richardson in 1921. Hemingway realized this marriage was the only one that contained true love. The couple separated in 1927 and communication between the two

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