Archetypal Figures in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"

Hemingway on Flight and Hospitality

David L. Anderson

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781631013850
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

A new and provocative analysis of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"

Hemingway's short story, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro, " has secured a place among the greatest works in that genre—the story is widely considered Hemingway's greatest. To explore the richness of this work, David L. Anderson returns to a somewhat unusual approach, that of archetypal criticism, which allows us to examine the story in more universal, rather than strictly historical, ways.

Anderson emphasizes the story's theme of hospitality, which dramatizes topics of community and human interdependency, and notes that this illuminates a fundamental human impulse to shelter or aid those in need. Borrowing from Jack London, Anderson relates this to the archetype of the "man on trail": one who is being pursued, ultimately by death, and is in need of hospitality, a friend. The motif is older than London, as Anderson notes, guiding us to Jung, Campbell, and a whole body of archetypal criticism—from ancient literature to Bob Dylan.

Anderson explores the man-on-trail archetype extensively in the Italicized Memory sections of the story, in the drama of Harry's last day, and in the unforgettable ending section as Harry takes his flight to Kilimanjaro. Noteworthy is this sustained attention to the Italicized Memory sections, all the stories that Harry might have written but had not. Analysis of Harry's memories—that is, analysis without due attention to the recurrent elements of plot, character, and setting and of how those memories interact with each other and interact with the overall narrative framework—can no longer purport to be complete, definitive, or even useful without considering Anderson's astute analysis.

Chapter 1

THE MAN ON TRAIL

“A health to the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire. God prosper him; good luck go with him.”

—Jack London, “To the Man on Trail”

The Deserter-in-the-Gauertal Incident

Keeping all of the various incidents included in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” straight in one’s mind is not unlike trying to keep track of a mercury spill: Little balls roll in every direction. Reading Hemingway first and then Jack London, nobody would be expected to make this connection. However, after first reading London’s “To the Man on Trail,” a story of substantial length and drama and thus a story easy to remember, and then reading “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” the reader may more easily note a plot shared between the two. The deserter-in-the-Gauertal incident is a mere two sentences; however, with the London story still fresh in mind, the Gauertal incident’s similarities to London’s story stand out in bold relief upon a reading of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

The Gauertal incident:

It was snow too that fell all Christmas week that year up in the Gauertal, that year they lived in the woodcutter’s house with the big square porcelain stove that filled half the room, and they slept on mattresses filled with beech leaves, the time the deserter came with his feet bloody in the snow. He said the police were right behind him and they gave him woolen socks and held the gendarmes talking until the tracks drifted over. (7)

Only five pages into the story—a story rich in incident—this episode is indeed easy to forget. It is, however, the plot of the 1899 Jack London Klondike story “To the Man on Trail.”¹ The London story is Kiplingesque in its combination of sentimentality and rough masculine camaraderie. Malemute Kid, a miner and recurring London character, shares stories with his mining friends while making a vile Christmas punch—this story, like the Gauertal incident, takes place at Christmas and in the snow. Just as the Kid proposes a toast “to the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire,” Jack Westondale, a heavily armed traveler with whom Malemute Kid feels an immediate affinity, arrives: “Though they had never met, each had heard of the other, and the recognition was mutual. A sweeping introduction and a mug of punch were forced upon him before he could explain his errand” (105, 107). And later: “As the young stranger ate of the rude fare, Malemute Kid attentively studied his face. Nor was he long in deciding that it was fair, honest, and open, and that he liked it” (108). After more storytelling, the Kid offers Westondale a bunk, the latter asking to be awakened by four o’clock the next morning. When the Kid wakes Westondale, fifteen minutes early, Westondale finds he has already harnessed his dogs and fully provisioned his sled. The Kid gives him advice on the provisions and on how to locate new dogs when his wear out. The last bit of advice he passes on is this: “Keep a-traveling up to twenty-five, but if it gets below that, build a fire and change your socks” (113). Of course, this statement raises the question of whether Hemingway included the gift of socks in his story to echo a detail he might have remembered from the London story. Multiple elements of hospitality have been offered: spirits (the Christmas punch), food (the rude fare), storytelling, rest, provisions (food for his team), and advice (on changing socks); these constitute rites of incorporation and solidarity.

A few moments after Westondale leaves, a tired Mountie, accompanied by two guides, arrives in pursuit of the man, whom he reveals has robbed $40,000 from McFarland’s, a Klondike gambling joint. The Kid gives him a daunting account of how difficult it will be to overtake the rested and provisioned Westondale. He also, threatening violent resistance by making a nod toward his weapons, refuses to give the Mountie aid, despite his attempt to requisition supplies “in the name of the Queen” (116). In this case, the Mounties do not get their man.

So, both “To the Man on Trail” and the Gauertal incident take place at Christmas; both involve a temporary and unofficial sanctuary, aid, and gifts—including a specific reference to socks—all given to a fugitive on the run through the snow; and both involve delaying or impeding the pursuers. In the London story only are other standard archetypal elements of hospitality offered and accepted: food, drink, rest, storytelling, and advice.² Two other contrasts with the London story must be mentioned; though they may be implied in the Hemingway story, they are not openly asserted. First is the immediate and unhesitating affinity between the pursued and the host in the London story. Second is that Westondale is depicted as a righteous man and the Kid trusts him without question. After Westondale leaves, Malemute Kid reveals this to his companions:

A whiter man than Jack Westondale never ate from the same pot nor stretched blanket with you or me. Last fall he gave his whole clean-up, forty thousand, to Joe Castrell, to buy in on Dominion. Today he’d be a millionaire. But while he stayed behind at Circle City, taking care of his partner with the scurvy, what does Castrell do? Goes into McFarland’s, jumps the limit, and drops the whole sack. Found him dead in the snow the next day. And poor Jack laying his plans to go out this winter to his wife and boy he’s never seen. You’ll notice he took exactly what his partner lost—forty thousand. (117–18)

Notice the brotherhood established by the rites of initiation implied by “ate from the same pot” and “stretched blanket.” After Westondale leaves and after some debate, the Kid and the assembled miners chant a veritable Greek chorus of their former toast, adding new elements:

The Kid glanced round the circle of his judges, noted the softening of their faces, then raised his mug aloft. “So a health to the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire. God prosper him; good luck go with him; and—”

“Confusion to the Mounted Police!” cried [fellow miner] Bettles, to the crash of the empty cups. (118)

The Gauertal incident includes several elements that will be established as archetypes of the “man on trail” plot: a fugitive—the man on trail, the gift of clothing, pursuers, and delay of those pursuers by the host. To these, the London story adds rest, food, advice, storytelling, and an affinity and a feeling of brotherhood between guest and host. In addition, other members of the host’s household, in this case a celebrating group of miners, at last confront the host as a “circle of judges,” another Greek chorus of voices representing the values of the community, which it becomes the Kid’s duty to win over.

This plot is not unique to the works of London and Hemingway; the man on trail emerges from far back on the edges of unrecorded history. Although this study attempts to pursue this plot to those far edges, it always comes back to Hemingway and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” which tale makes the most elaborate use of the widest number of variations of this plot. Did Hemingway read the London story? It matters not, since both stories have characteristics—archetypes—that flow from the same source: from thousands of years of literary traditions, which themselves flow from the collective unconscious of mankind as a whole.

Sorting archetype from analogue from influence is often a tangled and uncertain business, especially for purposes of comparison. Two works of literature may include or derive from the same archetype, since the archetypes are primordial images that arise from the collective unconscious, indeed from time immemorial, through the intuitions of separate authors. In explaining the universality of archetypal possibilities, Frieda Fordham writes that “an archetypal image that might have been drawn in the caves of Auvergne will often appear in the dreams of the most modern of men” (25). The conclusive proof of this was Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, which makes the linking of ancient and modern images a simple matter. Analogues are instances in which authors, often without being aware of it, tell stories using similar elements; though they may even be time-honored stories, it may still be possible to determine their genesis. An influence is simply one author having a direct or indirect effect on another. One author may intuitively employ an archetypal plot and influence another to use the same elements. Those plot elements may even become widely accepted cultural icons incorporated into a variety of popular works. To remain honest, the archetypal critic must call an analogue an analogue and an influence an influence. Joseph DeFalco, in his classic study of the quest myth, The Hero in Hemingway’s Short Stories, writes about this problem:

How much of Hemingway’s use of the journey artifice and other manifestations of psychological and mythological symbolism is conscious or unconscious is, of course, difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain. Certain assumptions may be made as to the sources of his material, however, no matter what its level of conscious utilization. Principally, as a modern man living in the twentieth century, Hemingway would have available all of the materials from the traditional sources of the culture. The cultural inheritance alone can account for his knowledge of the journey pattern. Whether he adapted it consciously or intuitively, he almost certainly observed it in his reading. (18)

Observing it in his reading might well have awakened an intuitive spark. The journey plot is arguably the most common one in literature. The man-on-trail subset of this plot occupies somewhat more obscure corners of the world’s literature. Based on the two instances of the man-on-trail plot discussed so far, some questions regarding the authors’ conceptions might arise: Did London and Hemingway both intuit the archetypal elements? Did one intuit the plot and the other find it in traditional cultural sources? Did both find it in traditional sources? Did London influence Hemingway—the reference to socks being the key piece of evidence? Were both of them influenced by a previous author or authors? As DeFalco astutely observes, the answers to such questions may be “difficult if not impossible to ascertain.” This study, however, will have the advantage of looking at sources that nobody in DeFalco’s day could possibly have known were available to Hemingway and will thus have the opportunity to present new evidence to address DeFalco’s thoughtful questions.

Lewis Hyde addresses this question in his study of the gift of creativity, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World:

We also rightly speak of intuition or inspiration as a gift. An idea pops into his head.… Usually, in fact, the artist does not find himself engaged or exhilarated by the work … until this gratuitous element has appeared, so that along with any true creation comes the uncanny sense that “I,” the artist, did not make the work. “Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me,” says D. H. Lawrence. Not all artists emphasize the “gift” phase of their creations to the degree that Lawrence does, but all artists feel it. (xvi)

In his Studies in Classic American Literature, Lawrence somewhat more famously wrote, “Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it” (2). I certainly do not wish to blow wind into the sails of the death-of-the-author theorists, and Lawrence was susceptible to polemic statements; nevertheless, both Hyde and Lawrence are onto something here regarding the creative spark, and it is certainly applicable to works in which archetypal elements emerge. Archetypes, as they were for London at both the outset and end of his career, are often the “gratuitous element” that gives the artist that “uncanny sense” that the work has created itself.

Other archetypal images, analogues, and sources will emerge from many other diverse authors. It will eventually take them all in order for this volume to come to grips with the two essential conundrums of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”: the leopard in the epigram at the beginning of the story and the majestic death flight Harry makes at the end of the story.

In addition, Hemingway seems to have admitted the possibility of primal connections, whether they be termed genetic, intuitive (as DeFalco describes them), or racial. On 15 December 1929, complaining of the difficulty of writing and taking care of the business end of writing, Hemingway wrote to his editor Max Perkins, “It’s hard enough to write—and writing prose is a full time job and all the best of it is done in your subconscious and when that is full of business, reviews, opinions etc. you don’t get a damned thing—” (Letters 4:20). In his 1958 interview with George Plimpton, in passing and addressing another topic, Hemingway obliquely introduces the topic to the conversation: “Financial security then is a great help as it keeps you from worrying. Worry destroys the ability to write. Ill health is bad in the ratio that it produces worry which attacks your subconscious and destroys your reserves” (114). Plimpton shortly pursues the topic, referencing a previous conversation in Madrid, in which, he recalls, Hemingway “thought the artist’s equipment was not an acquired characteristic, but inherited, in the Mendelian sense.”³ Downplaying his response both before and after—ducking behind “two concussions and a skull fracture that year [which] had made me irresponsible in my statements”—Hemingway offers one sentence: “I do remember telling you that I believed imagination could be the result of inherited racial experience” (115). Thus, he may have actually disavowed his previous statement. Or, more likely, he may well have decided that such an admission might prove troublesome if used by the wrong critic. Indeed, Philip Young, whose wound theory Hemingway found highly objectionable, is mentioned in the very questions and responses quoted above. But it is important to note that by his reference to the unconscious it is he, not Plimpton, who has brought the topic into the conversation. DeFalco, whose The Hero in Hemingway’s Short Stories was published in 1963, does not mention the Plimpton interview.

Finally, Hemingway does not seem to have had much of a hobo period, despite the famous photo of him wearing a backpack and hanging on to the rear ladder of a boxcar (Federspiel 167). H...