Why Things Happen and Why They Don't: Causality and Contingency in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "One Reader Writes"

Abstract

Why Things Happen and Why They Don't:Causality and Contingency in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "One Reader Writes" Kevin R. West "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "One Reader Writes," although very different in their reception histories, nevertheless share a crucial verbal and thematic parallel: each story contains similarly worded speculation on how a particular illness (gangrene and syphilis, respectively) came to be contracted. By wondering whether or not the illness in question had to happen, Helen and the unnamed "Reader" invite broader consideration of causality and contingency. In the case of "Snows," this inquiry into contingency pertains also to Harry's concerns as to why he failed to write the stories that he might have written. KEYWORDS Causality, Contingency, Narrative, Speculation Early in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Harry and Helen discuss the sequence of events that has led to the present distress of Harry's gangrenous leg, and in their disputation on causality lies an important verbal and thematic motif which may be found elsewhere in Hemingway's oeuvre. Wishing that they had never come on safari, where Harry scratched his leg on a thorn, Helen complains, "I don't see why that had to happen to your leg. What have we done to have that happen to us?" (CSS 41). What Helen evidently wants is a moral explanation for their present predicament; essentially, she wants God to answer for the situation. Her rhetorical question implies that they have done nothing sufficiently (morally) bad so as to incur the punishment of Harry's infected leg. "Why us? What have we done?" "I suppose what I did," answers Harry, in pointed denial of Helen's moral vision, "was to forget to put iodine on it when I first scratched it. Then I didn't pay any attention to it because I never infect. Then, later, when it got bad, it was probably using that weak carbolic solution" (CSS 41). Whereas Helen cries out for a moral explanation, Harry insists on a chemical one. What we did was forget to do something hygienic (apply iodine); or, ironically, what we did was belatedly do the wrong hygienic thing (apply carbolic acid).1 If we had treated the wound properly, then gangrene would not have ensued. "What else?" asks Harry, meaning "what other explanation could there be?" "I don't mean that," Helen replies, twice (CSS 41). Helen is not looking for a mechanical chain of causes and effects, which she presumably understands well enough, yet Harry insists that the material chain of causality is the only chain that exists or matters. Her leaving her people for him and bringing her money and their going on safari and him getting scratched and not treating the wound has led, if not inexorably then actually, to their present distress. Their respective positions represent two incompatible worldviews: one in which a divine or karmic order exists, and one in which solely material causality obtains. Indeed, John Killinger cited this scene sixty years ago as proof of [End Page 130] Harry's complete "repudiation of a personal God" (60). There is no point in crying out to God, since no intervention could be forthcoming in a world ruled inexorably by natural laws. Moreover, there is no point in speculation as to "why" this happened. Events occur, microbes grow, and people sometimes fall victim. Apropos of microbial growth—a topic on which we have all been forced to dwell in new ways these years past—another, slighter story benefits from being read in conjunction with "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Some three years prior to writing "Snows," Hemingway penned "One Reader Writes," the story of a woman's letter to a syndicated doctor asking for advice with respect to her husband's "sifilus" (CSS 320).2 The woman wants the doctor to tell her if it will be safe again to live with her husband; but she also, like Helen, wants to know why it had to be that her husband caught such a disease in the first place: He had to go wherever they sent him, I know, but I don't know what he had to get it for. Oh, I wish to Christ he wouldn...