The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
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"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway set in Africa published in 1936 concurrently with "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." It can be viewed thematically as a depiction of the last phase of initiation of the Hemingway code hero, a notable development also in other Hemingway works including For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," another of Hemingway's famous African stories.
Description
The initially cowardly Francis Macomber and his symbolically castrating wife are being guided on a big-game hunt by a professional hunter and code initiate, Robert Wilson. Macomber repeatedly shows his cowardice and is verbally chastised by his wife, who sarcastically responds to his assertiveness late in the story with the line, "You've gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly." Ironically, Macomber has, in fact, become brave, as he demonstrates by standing his ground and firing at a charging buffalo, "shooting a touch high each time and hitting the heavy horns, splintering and chipping them like hitting a slate roof...." Margot grabs a gun, ostensibly to get the buffalo, and shoots Macomber through the skull, although it is unclear if this is intentional or not.
| Ernest Hemingway Books |
| Novels: The Torrents of Spring | The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) | A Farewell to Arms | To Have and Have Not | For Whom the Bell Tolls | Across the River and Into the Trees | The Old Man and the Sea | Adventures of a Young Man | Islands in the Stream | The Garden of Eden |
| Non Fiction: Death in the Afternoon | Green Hills of Africa | The Dangerous Summer | A Moveable Feast | Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961 | Under Kilimanjaro |
| Short Story Books: Three Stories and Ten Poems | In Our Time | Men Without Women | The Snows of Kilimanjaro | Winner Take Nothing | The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories | The Essential Hemingway | The Hemingway Reader | The Nick Adams Stories | The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway | Collected Stories |
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