The Snows of Kilimanjaro

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The Snows of Kilimanjaro is the name of both a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway and the premier story within the collection.

Considered by Hemingway to be one of his finest stories, The Snows of Kilimanjaro was first published in Esquire in 1936 and then republished in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories (1938).

For details on the book, see The Snows of Kilimanjaro (book).

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story centers on the memories of a writer who is taking a safari in Africa. He develops a gangrenous wound from a thorn prick, and lies prostrate awaiting his slow death. This loss of physical capability causes him to look inside himself - at his memories of the past years, and how little he has actually accomplished in his writing. He realizes that although he has seen and experienced many wonderful and astonishing things during his life, he had never made a record of the events; his status as a writer is contradicted by his reluctance to actually write. He also quarrels with the woman with him, blaming her for his living decadently and forgetting his failure to write of what really matters to him, namely his experiences among poor and "interesting" people, not the predictable upper class crowd he has fallen in with lately. Thus he dies, having lived through so much and yet having lived only for the moment, with no regard to the future. In a dream he sees a plane coming to get him and take him to the top of Kilimanjaro. Also in the beginning he sees a leopard halfway up the mountain who is frozen. This shows his world-view, that if you look up for better things, you will just get shot down.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Directed by Henry King
Starring Gregory Peck
Ava Gardner
Susan Hayward
Release date(s) 1952
Running time 117 min.
Country U.S.A.
Language English / French / Spanish
IMDb profile
Spoilers end here.

[edit] Film version

In 1952 a film version of the short story was directed by Henry King, starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Susan Hayward, Hildegard Knef and Leo G. Carroll.


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 | Winner Take Nothing | The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories | The Snows of Kilimanjaro | The Essential Hemingway | The Hemingway Reader | The Nick Adams Stories | The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway | The Collected Stories
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