Author Ernest Hemingway goes to great lengths to set up an ambiguous ending to this story about a rich American couple’s fateful big game hunting safari in Africa. No longer (and perhaps never) in love, the couple barely tolerate each other. She can’t afford to divorce him, and he is unlikely to find a more attractive trophy wife. Readers are left to consider whether Francis’s death was murder or an unfortunate accident. What do you think? The major themes are clearly courage and masculinity. Other themes: fear; shame; violence; marriage breakdown; beauty & aging; adultery; misogyny & female stereotyping.
It is often suggested that Hemingway had an almost pathological hatred for women, which may explain the viciousness with which he (through Wilson) stereotypes American women in the story: 1) They are, he thought, the hardest in the world; the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory and the most attractive and their men have softened or gone to pieces nervously as they have hardened.; 2) She is away for twenty minutes and now she is back, simply enamelled in that American female cruelty.
Original Text / PDF / Audio (11,250 words)