Ernest Hemingway

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

The marvellous thing is that it's painless

That's how you know when it starts.
 

His leg has been really hurting and all of a sudden it quits.
 

I'm awfully sorry about the odor though.

That must bother you.
 

Have you ever smelled rotting flesh? Not necessarily human, but road kill. It's not a very pleasant odor. Here is this dead leg that is starting to rot before the rest of him is dead.
 

Don't! Please don't!
 

It was never what he had done, but always what he could do. And he had

chosen to make his living with something else instead of a pen or a pencil.

It was strange to wasn't it, that when he fell in love with another woman,

that woman should always have more money than the last one? But when

he no longer was in love, when he was only lying, as to this woman, now,

Who had the most money of all, who had all the money there was, who had

had a husband and children, who had taken lovers and been dissatisfied

with them, and who loved him dearly as a writer, and a man, as a companion

and a proud possession; it was strange that when he didn't love her at all

and was lying, that he should be able to give her more for her money than

when he had really loved.

You're bloody money. That's not fair. It was your's as much as mine. I left

everything and I went wherever you wanted to go and I've done what you

wanted to do. But I wish we'd never come here.
 

The central question--why did this happen to me? What do they mean by that question? Question the Puritans would have understood. What are you asking? Why is God doing this to me? Not just the Puritans, it goes back to Job; woe is me what is God upset with me over because I have done nothing wrong. And this brief companion says oh yes you have and he says oh no you haven't and they said it for 45 chapters. Fairly long to carry on such conversation, the problem from this perspective is a spiritual and moral, why do the bad things happen to us? What sorta answer does he give? Why does this happen?
 

I suppose what I did was to forget to put iodine on it when I first

scratched it.
 
 
 

She is searching for an answer he can't give. What kind of answer does he give? iodine, constricting blood vessels, why does the leaf fall in the forest? What is the puritan answer? God made, willed and wanted it to. This is some message from God. Who said it was gravity pulling it down? The enlightenment era, very scientific rational answer. Why does he forget to put iodine on it? a much deeper question. that is answered through the story, the writer can't really be aware of and can't admit it to himself but he eventually does.
 

Love is a dunghill. And I'm the cock that get's on it to crow. If you

..... haveto go away, is it absolutely to kill off everything you leave behind.
 
 
 
 
 

He wore it all out.
 

We find out he has wore out sort of everything, that is this whole idea of I've been everywhere, done everything, life has no more to offer me, there was a song back in the 70s "Is that all there is" that is his attitude.
 

I am getting as bored with dying as everything else, he thought.
 

He is starting to go in and out having hallucinations, he believes the plane is coming for him. Finally the plane arrives but is it the right plane, is he being hauled off to a hospital where is he going? He is dead, the plane to the afterlife, he knows but doesn't tell us he is going to the great beyond though and then in the very last thing she cries
 

Harry, Harry! Then her voice rising Harry! Please, Oh Harry!

There was no answer and she could not here him breathing.
 

The guy is dead and his last dream was flying away on the plane.