1914- American

1939: Modernist Period Like their British counterparts, the American Modernists
experimented with subject matter, form, and style and produced
1920s, The "Lost achievements in all literary genres. Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot,
1930s: Generation" Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway writers of The Lost
Generation. The Great Depression marked the end of the
American Modernist Period, and writers such as William
Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Eugene O'Neill dealt with the
social and political issues of the time in their literary works.

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, the son of a doctor and a music teacher. He
began his writing career as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. At age eighteen, he volunteered to serve as a
Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I and was sent to Italy, where he was badly injured by shrapnel.
Hemingway later fictionalized his experience in Italy in what some consider his greatest novel, A Farewell
to Arms. In 1921, Hemingway moved to Paris, where he served as a correspondent for the Toronto Daily
Star. In Paris, he fell in with a group of American and English expatriate writers that included F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Ford Maddox Ford. In the early 1920s, Hemingway began to
achieve fame as a chronicler of the disaffection felt by many American youth after World War Ia
generation of youth whom Stein memorably dubbed the Lost Generation. His novels The Sun Also Rises
(1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929) established him as a dominant literary voice of his time. His spare,
charged style of writing was revolutionary at the time and would be imitated, for better or for worse, by
generations of young writers to come.

After leaving Paris, Hemingway wrote on bullfighting, published short stories and articles, covered the
Spanish Civil War as a journalist, and published his best-selling novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
These pieces helped Hemingway build up the mythic breed of masculinity for which he wished to be
known. His work and his life revolved around big-game hunting, fishing, boxing, and bullfighting,
endeavors that he tried to master as seriously as he did writing. In the 1930s, Hemingway lived in Key West,
Florida, and later in Cuba, and his years of experience fishing the Gulf Stream and the Caribbean
provided an essential background for the vivid descriptions of the fishermans craft in The Old Man and the
Sea. In 1936, he wrote a piece for Esquire about a Cuban fisherman who was dragged out to sea by a great
marlin, a game fish that typically weighs hundreds of pounds. Sharks had destroyed the fishermans catch by
the time he was found half-delirious by other fishermen. This story seems an obvious seed for the tale of
Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea.

A great fan of baseball, Hemingway liked to talk in the sports lingo, and by 1952, he badly needed a win.
His novel Across the River and Into the Trees, published in 1950, was a disaster. It was his first novel in ten
years, and he had claimed to friends that it was his best yet. Critics, however, disagreed and called the work
the worst thing Hemingway had ever written. Many readers claimed it read like a parody of Hemingway.
The control and precision of his earlier prose seemed to be lost beyond recovery.

The huge success of The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952, was a much-needed vindication. The
novella won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it likely cinched the Nobel Prize for Hemingway in
1954, as it was cited for particular recognition by the Nobel Academy. It was the last novel published in his
lifetime.
Although the novella helped to regenerate Hemingways wilting career, it has since been met by divided
critical opinion. While some critics have praised The Old Man and the Sea as a new classic that takes its
place among such established American works as William Faulkners short story The Bear and Herman
Melvilles Moby-Dick, others have attacked the story as imitation Hemingway and find fault with the
authors departure from the uncompromising realism with which he made his name.

Because Hemingway was a writer who always relied heavily on autobiographical sources, some critics, not
surprisingly, eventually decided that the novella served as a thinly veiled attack upon them. According to
this reading, Hemingway was the old master at the end of his career being torn apart bybut
ultimately triumphing overcritics on a feeding frenzy. But this reading ultimately reduces The Old
Man and the Sea to little more than an act of literary revenge. The more compelling interpretation asserts
that the novella is a parable about life itself, in particular mans struggle for triumph in a world that
seems designed to destroy him.

Despite the soberly life-affirming tone of the novella, Hemingway was, at the end of his life, more and more
prone to debilitating bouts of depression. He committed suicide in 1961 in Ketchum, Idaho.

Synopsis

Francis Macomber and his wife Margaret (usually referred to as "Margot"), are on a big-game safari in
Africa, guided by professional hunter Robert Wilson. Earlier, Francis had panicked when a wounded lion
charged him. Margot mocks Macomber for this act of cowardice, and it is implied that she sleeps with
Wilson.

The next day the party hunt buffalo. Macomber and Wilson hunt together and shoot three buffalo. Two of
the buffalo are killed, but the first is only wounded and retreats into the bush. Macomber now feels
confident, and he and Wilson proceed to track the wounded animal, paralleling the circumstances of the
previous day's lion hunt.

When they find the buffalo, it charges Macomber. Although he stands his ground and fires at it, his shots are
too high. Wilson fires at the beast as well, but it keeps charging. Macomber kills the buffalo at the last
second. At the same time, Margot fires a shot from the car, which instead hits Macomber in the skull and
kills him. Margot falls to the ground and weeps.

Publication history

"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" was first published in the September 1936 issue of
Cosmopolitan and later published in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938).[1]

Major themes

The essence of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is courage. Wilson has courage but
Macomber, who is afraid of lions, has none. When the cowardly husband, whose wife made her way
from Wilson's tent hours before, finds the courage to face the charging buffalo, [2] he forges the identity
he wants: the courage to face both wild animals and his wife. [3] Tragically, Macomber's happiness is
measured in hours, and indeed even in minutes.[2][3] Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker claims that
Macomber loses his fear as the buffalo charges, and the loss of fear ushers Macomber into manhood,
which Margot instantly kills.[2]

Baker believes Wilson symbolizes the man free of woman (because he refuses to allow Margot to
dominate him) or of fear; the man Macomber wishes to be.[2] Wilson understands, as he blasts the lion
dead, that Margot is a woman who needs to be dominated.[2] Jeffrey Meyers considers Margot
Macomber to be the villain of the story.[4] She characterises "a predatory (rather than a passive)
female who is both betrayer and murderer"; and she emphasizes the connection between "shooting
and sex."[4]

Francis Macomber has lived most of his adult life under the manipulative and domineering influence
of Margot. He cannot bring himself to face her and assert his leadership in their marriage, allowing
her to step all over him. The text implies that the affair with Wilson is not the first time Margot has
cheated on her husband. Macomber, fleeing from the lion, is unimpressive when compared with
Wilson, the seasoned hunter and safari-veteran, cool and collected in the face of danger.

The loss of Macombers manhood in the encounter with the lion mirrors the blow he takes when
Margot blatantly cheats on him. This appears to be the last straw, pushing him over the edge.
Macomber translates his fury into the intensity of the hunt. He experiences rising confidence and
bravery during the hunt, as he seeks to take back the manhood he has lost, or perhaps never had.

This transformation is highlighted by various symbols. The story opens with Macomber's offering the
group lime juice or lemon squash". But at the end of the buffalo hunt, he and Wilson toast their
success in whiskey. Macomber has progressed from a timid rabbit drinking juice, to a hunter,
downing more masculine hard liquor.[5]

Hemingway also employs animals to carry the symbolism of "The Short Happy Life". Macomber is
referenced as a rabbit several times, and one of his kills is described as one of the big cowy things
that jump like hares". His conquests are gentle animals, easily frightened. In contrast, Margot is
described as predatory", like a lion. The comparison to Macombers cowardice during the hunt is
clear: Macomber the rabbit runs from his wife, a lion. The gaining of courage involves Macomber's
feeling hot rage, an experience associated with the lion. Finally, Macomber lies dead, mirroring the
posture of the buffalo he has shot. Wilson compliments the dead creature as a hell of a good bull",
implying that Macomber is finally worthy of respect by right of the beast he has conquered.[6]

Margot is disturbed by Macombers suddenly gained confidence and assertion of his manhood, feeling
her position of dominance threatened.[2] His exhilaration after the buffalo hunt unnerves her. But with
Macombers transition from boy to man comes death. Hemingway offers his perspective on happiness
here: however brief, even a moment of confident happiness is enough to make ones life worthwhile.[7]

It is no coincidence that Margot is the one who kills him. There is an unresolved debate as to whether
she murdered Macomber or accidentally killed him. If she purposefully shoots him, she has preserved
her dominance in the relationship and ensures that she will keep his wealth (presumably the only
reason they married in the first place).
If the shot is accidental, the moment actually becomes quite tender, as well as tragic. She has just
observed her husband become a man, and even though she fears how their relationship will change,
she is suddenly invigorated with energy to start afresh. Margaret picks up the gun to defend her
husband, trying to save him in the face of danger. For once in their lives, husband and wife are both
on the same side, shooting at the same bull. It is tragically ironic, of course, as she kills the man she is
trying to save, but such is Hemingways commentary on life. The good things we gain are the sweetest,
and the most short-lived.

A third interpretation of Margots shot is that she is trying to regain dominance over her husband by
killing the bull herself. If this is the case, she wins back her power, but ironically, she destroys the
thing she is trying to control. The bullet accomplishes exactly what she was trying to avoid.[8]

Reception

"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" has been acclaimed as one of Hemingway's most successful
artistic achievements.[9] This is largely due to the ambiguous complexity of its characters and their
motivations, and the debate this ambiguity has generated. In the estimation of critic Kenneth G.
Johnston, "the prevailing critical view is that she deliberatelyor at best, 'accidentally on purpose'
murdered him",[10] but there are many, including Johnston himself, who hold the opposite view.

Hemingway scholar Carlos Baker calls Margot Macomber "easily the most unscrupulous of Hemingway's
fictional females"; a woman "who is really and literally deadly" and who "covets her husband's money but
values even more her power over him."[11] Literary critic and early mentor to Hemingway Edmund Wilson
observed bluntly, The men in these African stories are married to American bitches of the most soul-
destroying sort.[12] Other authors who hold similar views regarding Margot include Philip Young, Leslie A.
Fiedler and Frank O'Connor (see below).

A related point that has been widely debated is whether Hemingway intended the reader to view Robert
Wilson as a heroic figure, embodying Hemingway's ideal of the courageous, hyper-masculine male. Critics
who argue for Margot's innocence are especially likely to question this positive view of Wilson. It is through
Wilson's words that Margot's intentions are questioned, notably when he asks after the shooting "Why didn't
you poison him? That's what they do in England." If Wilson is intended to be the story's voice of morality,
then this implied accusation is damning. But if Wilson is a less-perfect character himself, then his judgment
of Margot is suspect. Some critics have noted that Wilson chases down the buffalo in a car, violating the law
and perhaps also Hemingway's code of fairness in hunting. Kenneth G. Johnston argues that Wilson "has
much to gain by making Mrs. Macomber believe that the death of her husband could be construed as
murder,"[10] since he could lose his license if Margot accurately described Wilson's use of the car in the
buffalo hunt.

In The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story, author and literary critic Frank O'Connor, though generally
an admirer of Hemingway, gives one of the most colorful and uncharitable summations of "The Short
Happy Life":

Francis runs away from a lion, which is what most sensible men would do if faced by a lion, and his
wife promptly cuckolds him with the English manager of their big-game hunting expedition. As we all
know, good wives admire nothing in a husband except his capacity to deal with lions, so we can
sympathize with the poor woman in her trouble. But next day Macomber, faced with a buffalo,
suddenly becomes a man of superb courage, and his wife, recognizing that[...] for the future she must
be a virtuous wife, blows his head off. [...] To say that the psychology of this story is childish would be
to waste good words. As farce it ranks with Ten Nights in a Bar Room or any other Victorian morality
you can think of. Clearly, it is the working out of a personal problem that for the vast majority of men
and women has no validity whatever.[13]