The Killers (short story)

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"The Killers"
Author	Ernest Hemingway
Country	USA
Language	English
Series	The Nick Adams Stories
Genre(s)	short story
Published in	Scribner's Magazine
Media type	magazine
Publication date	1927

"The Killers" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. It first appeared to the public in 1927 in Scribner's Magazine. How much Hemingway received for the literary piece is unknown, but some sources state it was $200.^[1] Historians have some documents showing that the working title of the piece was "The Matadors."^{[citation needed]} After its appearance in Scribner's, the story was published in Men Without Women, Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Nick Adams Stories. The writer's depiction of the human experience, his use of satire, and the everlasting themes of death, friendship, and the purpose of life have contributed to make "The Killers" one of Hemingway's most famous and frequently anthologized short stories.

The story features Nick Adams, a famous Hemingway character from his short stories. In this story, Hemingway shows Adams crossing over from teenager to adult. The basic plot of the story involves a pair of criminals that enter a restaurant seeking to kill a boxer who is hiding out for reasons unknown (probably for not cooperating with the proposed rigging of a fight).

[edit] Adaptations

The short story has been the basis for six movies:

• The Killers (1946), starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner
• The Killers (1956), a short film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
• The Killers (1964), starring Lee Marvin, Ronald Reagan, and Angie Dickinson
• The Killers (1998), a short film directed by Todd Huskisson
• The Killers (2001), a short-film directed by Jae Yu
• "The Killers" (2008), A short film directed by J.P. Russell and Peter Murphy, which is being produced by the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Film Society

The first three films were released on a Criterion Collection DVD.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers" Full Text
• Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers" A close reading of the classic short story and more
• Vaudeville philosophers: "The Killers." by Ron Berman analyzes the roots of the story's dialogue in vaudeville.

v • d • e Works by Ernest Hemingway Novels: The Torrents of Spring (1926)  · The Sun Also Rises (1926)  · A Farewell to Arms (1929)  · To Have and Have Not (1937)  · For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)  · Across the River and into the Trees (1950)  · The Old Man and the Sea (1952)  · Islands in the Stream (1970)  · The Garden of Eden (1986)  · Under Kilimanjaro (2005) Short stories: "Big Two-Hearted River" (1924) • "Soldier's Home" (1925) • "Cat in the Rain" (1925) • "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1926) • "A Canary for One" (1926) • "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927) • "The Killers" (1927) • "The Undefeated" (1927) • "A Day's Wait" (1933) • "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936) • "The Capital of the World" (1936) • "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1936) • "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" (?) • "Adventures of a Young Man" (?) Short story collections: Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923)  · In Our Time (1925)  · Men Without Women (1927)  · Winner Take Nothing (1933)  · The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936)  · The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)  · The Essential Hemingway (1947)  · The Hemingway Reader (1953)  · The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War (1969)  · The Nick Adams Stories (1972)  · The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)  · The Collected Stories (1995) Plays: A Short Happy Life (1961)  · The Hemingway Hero (1967) Poetry: 88 Poems (1979) Non-fiction: Death in the Afternoon (1932)  · Green Hills of Africa (1935)  · Hemingway, The Wild Years (1962)  · A Moveable Feast (1964)  · By-Line: Ernest Hemingway (1967)  · Ernest Hemingway: Cub Reporter (1970)  · Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981)  · The Dangerous Summer (1985)  · Dateline: Toronto (1985)  · True at First Light (1999 memoir)  · On Paris (On) (2008) Film adaptations: A Farewell to Arms (1932)  · For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)  · To Have and Have Not (1944)  · The Killers (1946)  · The Macomber Affair (1947)  · The Breaking Point (1950)  · The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)  · The Killers (1956)  · The Sun Also Rises (1957)  · A Farewell to Arms (1957)  · The Old Man and the Sea (1958)  · Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962)  · The Killers (1964)  · For Whom the Bell Tolls (1965)  · Islands in the Stream (1977)  · The Sun Also Rises (1984)  · In Love and War (1996)  · The Old Man and the Sea (1999) TV adaptations: A Farewell to Arms (1990)