“The Snows of Kilimanjaro”: A Revaluation

Abstract

When “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” first appeared in Esquire (August 1936), it attracted immediate attention. It was promptly reprinted (in Best American Short Stories of 1937) by Edward J. O'Brien, who, praising it in his preface, remarked: “Nothing is irrelevant. The artist's energy is rigidly controlled for his purpose.” Since then it has been anthologized many times, and now it is probably safe to say that, with the possible exception of “The Killers,” none of Hemingway's stories has enjoyed greater popularity than this one. Hemingway's own opinion was that it was “about as good as any” of his shorter works.In the last ten or fifteen years, however, “The Snows” has come in for considerable disparagement, mainly from the so-called New Critics and their followers. In 1945 Ray B. West, Jr., wrote in The Sewanee Review: “While I consider this story one of Hemingway's best … it is spoiled for me by the conventionality of its leading symbol: the White-capped mountain as the ‘House of God’.” In 1950 Allen Tate and Caroline Gordon, referring to it in The House of Fiction as a “magnificent failure,” complained that it lacked “dramatic force” and objected that the symbolism was not properly integrated with the action. And in 1956 William Van O'Connor characterized it as a “rather puzzling story” and expressed dissatisfaction with the ending.