ANALYSIS of the SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER
Hemingway’s themes in this story are masculinity and its foil, cowardice, and the “coming of age” that is possible through exposure to nature and by overcoming the challenges of the great outdoors. Francis Macomber is described as a handsome man who is “good at court games” and “had a number of big-game fishing records,” and whose safari clothes are, significantly, “new.” He is a typical international jet setter who lives in a suburban or perhaps big-city setting and has had no real exposure to a raw, unadulterated natural environment, though he is considered athletic. As such, Hemingway portrays him as weak, subservient to his wife, cowardly and frustrated. Once he conquers his fears and guns down three buffalo, he becomes empowered, emboldened, and elated. By conquering nature, he has become a man. As Robert Wilson puts it, “It had taken a strange chance of hunting, a sudden precipitation into action without worrying beforehand, to bring this about with Macomber…Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.”
Hemingway was a great believer in the power of nature to improve one’s quality of life. He was a lifelong outdoorsman; he went hunting, fishing, camping, and boating in places as diverse as Europe, the Caribbean, the United States, and Africa. In fact, he wrote this short story following a 10-week safari in East Africa. This story summarizes the importance Hemingway placed on outdoor activities, especially for men. The character of Macomber comes into his own masculinity through a few seconds of shooting buffalo; the activity of hunting not only provides entertainment, excitement, and physical fitness, but it completely transforms his character and revolutionizes his relationships with others.
The Term Paper on The Theme of Death in Selected Works of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway wrote about death in many of his short stories. He often suffered from bouts of melancholy and his depression made a strong impact on his literary works. Many of Hemingway’s short stories show a common theme: that of someone waiting for death. “It is man’s attitudes toward life in the presence of death that Hemingway is most concerned. ” (Mangum,1623). Ernest Hemingway ...
Hemingway’s masculine ideal in this story seems to be Wilson, the “white hunter” who lives, works, shoots, and kills in the great outdoors, and whose stock-in-trade is ruggedness and physical courage. Margot and the reader are invited to compare Macomber to Wilson, and certainly, Wilson comes out on top in that comparison. However, at the end of the story Wilson breaks the code he purports to live by as he hunts down buffalo in a car, a certainly unsportsmanlike, possibly cowardly, and indisputably illegal act. Wilson may be a paragon of manly virtues after the Hemingway school of masculinity, but he is by no means perfect.
Macomber emphasizes masculinity not only by contrast to cowardice but also to femininity, specifically through the character of Margot, who is central to the story’s plot. Hemingway’s treatment of women in his fiction has long been, and continues to be, the subject of debate among critics. The accepted wisdom is that Hemingway was a chauvinist and possibly a misogynist; women in his stories are obstacles to their male counterparts rather than positive contributors to the action. Many critics have challenged this view, arguing that Hemingway’s portrayal of women is more nuanced and his general attitude more complex than the traditional view suggests.
There is little debate, however, that Margot Macomber is one of Hemingway’s “bitch goddess” characters; she is grasping, cruel, contemptible, unfaithful, opportunistic, and possibly murderous. In general, Hemingway treats Margot as a necessary evil in this story, as an inconvenient but essential component of the existence of his male characters. Wilson calls women “a nuisance” on safari, and indeed, Margot’s only function in this story is to drive Wilson and Macomber apart in spite of their often-mutual desire to be friendly or at least cordial with each other. In addition, Wilson makes a number of sweeping and unflattering generalizations about American women of the jet set using Margot as a case study. In spite of his attraction to her, he calls her “enameled in that American female cruelty” and refers to her sarcasm at Macomber’s expense after the lion incident “damn terrorism.” Margot is portrayed as a thorough harpy; her only redeeming quality appears to be her beauty, as Wilson recognizes the morning after he sleeps with her. As for Macomber, he considers Margot’s beauty to be the only thing that gives her value; it is the only reason he married her and the only reason he will never leave her. He recognizes that “His wife had been a great beauty and she was still a great beauty in Africa, but she was not a great enough beauty any more at home to be able to leave him and better herself and she knew it and he knew it.” Margot’s beauty is her only stock-in-trade.
The Essay on Earnest Hemingway Macomber Conflict Wife
I recently read Earnest Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." This is a story about a thirty-five year old man, Francis Macomber who is on an African safari hunt with his wife, Margot. Led by his guide, Robert Wilson, Macomber tries to display his manhood by killing dangerous creatures. This in fact has the exact opposite effect when he humiliates himself by running from a ...
The lingering question of the story, of course, is whether Margot felt threatened enough by Macomber’s emancipation to murder him at the end, or whether she was merely trying to kill the buffalo. Scholars have come down on both sides of the question. The traditional reading of the story teaches that Margot is a thoroughly grasping and cruel character who shoots to kill, but more revisionist interpretations point out that, when she pulls the trigger, it is unnecessary for her to be shooting to kill her husband because the buffalo will run him down in a few seconds anyway. In addition, the accusations of murder that Wilson levels at her may be motivated by a desire to blackmail her into silence about the fact that he hunted the buffalo from a car, an illegal practice. According to many scholars, Hemingway himself used to hint that Macomber’s death was murder.
Another lingering question among Hemingway scholars is whether Macomber and Margot are modeled on F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Fitzgerald was a friend-turned-bitter-rival of Hemingway’s and some critics argue that Hemingway created Macomber as an incarnation of all the qualities Hemingway most disliked in his nemesis. Hemingway certainly mentioned Fitzgerald by name in some of his other stories. Proponents of this theory point to the fact that Hemingway chose to name Macomber “Francis,” which was also Fitzgerald’s first name. However, critics point out that this choice was more likely a reference to Francis Feeble, a character in Shakespeare’s play Henry IV who served as the original speaker of the quotation Wilson offers about death toward the end of the story.
The Term Paper on Ernest Hemingway Scribner Stories One
Ernest (Miller) Hemingway 1899-1961 Entry Updated: 08/01/2001 Birth Place: Oak Park, Illinois, United States Death Place: Ketchum, Idaho, United States Personal InformationCareerWritingsMedia AdaptationsSidelightsFurther Readings About the Author Personal Information: Family: Born July 21, 1899, in Oak Park Illinois, United States; committed suicide, July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho, United States ...
The narration of this story is in the third person with an omniscient narrator; Hemingway tells the story from the points of view of Macomber, Wilson, Margot and the lion from which Macomber flees. As the plot is driven by interpersonal relationships, this technique is effective at revealing each character’s motivations and the reasons for their behavior. The points of view most often adopted by the narrator are Macomber’s and Wilson’s, a trend that is consistent with Hemingway’s marginalization of Margot.
Two literary techniques are in play throughout the story that enliven the action and embellish Hemingway’s otherwise minimal descriptive passages. The first is onomatopoeia, and is best exemplified by “whunk,” the noise Macomber’s bullet makes as it hits the lion (p. 22, 33), and “carawong,” the noise Wilson’s high-velocity “big gun” makes as it fires at game (p. 26, 34).
Hemingway’s usage of these terms helps the reader imagine the noises and brutality of the hunt.
The second technique Hemingway employs is simile and metaphor. The most notable example occurs in Wilson’s thoughts when Macomber suggests they leave the wounded lion: “Robert Wilson, whose entire occupation had been with the lion and the problem he presented, and who had not been thinking about Macomber except to note that he was rather windy, suddenly felt as though he had opened the wrong door in a hotel and seen something shameful” (p. 24).
This simile demonstrates Wilson’s shock at hearing Macomber voice such cowardly sentiments; Macomber would rather leave the lion to suffer or risk someone else running into the lion and possibly being killed than face up to hunting it down and finishing what he started.
One of the most prominent metaphors in the story is soon after this passage and describes the appearance of the gun-bearers who have to accompany Macomber and Wilson into the brush to search for the wounded lion: “[Wilson] spoke in Swahili to the two gun-bearers who looked the picture of gloom” (p. 25).
The Essay on Francis Macomber Wilson Lion Story
For most people it takes a life changing experience to come full circle and realize their full potential. That's what happened to Francis Macomber in the short story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," written by Earnest Hemingway. The story takes place in Africa where Macomber and his wife are on a Safari. At the beginning of the story he shows his timidity by running from the wounded ...
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” is a story about one man’s “coming of age” with the help of the African flatlands, a rifle, and a friendship with another man, and about how his emancipation was possibly forestalled by a selfish wife.
