The Snows of Kilimanjaro

by

Ernest Hemingway

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Harry Character Analysis

Harry is an American writer who has spent his recent years married to various rich women in order to live a life of luxury. Stranded while on safari in Africa with his current wife Helen, a thorn scratch leads to his leg becoming infected with gangrene. The infection ultimately takes his life, with story’s narrative focusing on his quarrels with his wife and his death-bed musings until that point. While bedridden, Harry spends his waking hours bickering with the dutiful Helen about whether a plane will come to rescue him and whether he should have an alcoholic drink, while also antagonizing her about her wealth. At times he looks at her with admiration, while at other times he treats her with contempt. His inconsistent manner with Helen reflects his own inner turmoil, as he looks back on his life unsatisfied and seeks someone to blame. In a series of flashbacks, the reader sees that Harry has lived an eventful life but has not written all the stories he had saved up to put down on paper. He experienced the trenches of World War I, spent time living in Paris in poverty and later as a well-financed socialite, and has hunted in woodlands and mountains across continents. At first, he blames his wife and her money for distracting him from his calling. But in the end, Harry decides if it was not her it would have been someone else, and he had destroyed his own talent by living in unproductive comfort and wasting his opportunities. Harry’s life and career bear similarities to Hemingway’s own, and so he is often seen as a reflection of the real-life writer’s own concerns with his unfulfilled potential. Indeed, Hemingway once told a friend that “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” is a study of what could have happened to him had he given in to a life of comfort, like Harry had.

Harry Quotes in The Snows of Kilimanjaro

The The Snows of Kilimanjaro quotes below are all either spoken by Harry or refer to Harry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Ever-present Death Theme Icon
).
“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” Quotes

So now it was all over, he thought. So now he would never have a chance to finish it. So this was the way it ended, in a bickering over a drink.

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Related Symbols: Gangrene
Page Number: 40-41
Explanation and Analysis:

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

Related Characters: Harry
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:

“I love you, really. You know I love you. I’ve never loved any one else the way I love you.” He slipped into the familiar lie he made his bread and butter by.

Related Characters: Harry (speaker), Helen
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

… you said that you would write about these people; about the very rich; that you were really not of them but a spy in their country; that you would leave it and write it and for once it would be written by someone who knew what he was writing of. But he would never do it, because each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:

And he had chosen to make his living with something else instead of a pen or a pencil. It was strange, too, wasn’t it, that when he fell in love with another woman, that woman should always have more money than the last one?

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

And just then it occurred to him that he was going to die. It came with a rush; not as a rush of water nor of wind; but of a sudden evil-smelling emptiness and the odd thing was that the hyena slipped lightly along the edge of it.

Related Characters: Harry
Related Symbols: Gangrene, The Hyena and Birds
Page Number: 47
Explanation and Analysis:

There was so much to write. He had seen the world change … He had been in it and he had watched it and it was his duty to write of it; but now he never would.

Related Characters: Harry
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:

“You can’t take dictation, can you?”

“I never learned,” she told him.

“That’s all right.”

There wasn’t time, of course, although it seemed as though it telescoped so that you might put it all into one paragraph if you could get it right.

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Page Number: 50
Explanation and Analysis:

But if he lived he would never write about her, he knew that now. Nor about any of them. The rich were dull and … they were repetitious.

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:

No, he thought, when everything you do, you do too long, and do too late, you can’t expect to find the people still there. The people all are gone. The party’s over and you are with your hostess now.

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:

Compie turned his head and grinned and pointed and there, ahead, all he could see, as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro. And then he knew that there was where he was going.

Related Characters: Harry, Compton
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis:
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Harry Quotes in The Snows of Kilimanjaro

The The Snows of Kilimanjaro quotes below are all either spoken by Harry or refer to Harry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Ever-present Death Theme Icon
).
“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” Quotes

So now it was all over, he thought. So now he would never have a chance to finish it. So this was the way it ended, in a bickering over a drink.

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Related Symbols: Gangrene
Page Number: 40-41
Explanation and Analysis:

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

Related Characters: Harry
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:

“I love you, really. You know I love you. I’ve never loved any one else the way I love you.” He slipped into the familiar lie he made his bread and butter by.

Related Characters: Harry (speaker), Helen
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

… you said that you would write about these people; about the very rich; that you were really not of them but a spy in their country; that you would leave it and write it and for once it would be written by someone who knew what he was writing of. But he would never do it, because each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:

And he had chosen to make his living with something else instead of a pen or a pencil. It was strange, too, wasn’t it, that when he fell in love with another woman, that woman should always have more money than the last one?

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

And just then it occurred to him that he was going to die. It came with a rush; not as a rush of water nor of wind; but of a sudden evil-smelling emptiness and the odd thing was that the hyena slipped lightly along the edge of it.

Related Characters: Harry
Related Symbols: Gangrene, The Hyena and Birds
Page Number: 47
Explanation and Analysis:

There was so much to write. He had seen the world change … He had been in it and he had watched it and it was his duty to write of it; but now he never would.

Related Characters: Harry
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:

“You can’t take dictation, can you?”

“I never learned,” she told him.

“That’s all right.”

There wasn’t time, of course, although it seemed as though it telescoped so that you might put it all into one paragraph if you could get it right.

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Page Number: 50
Explanation and Analysis:

But if he lived he would never write about her, he knew that now. Nor about any of them. The rich were dull and … they were repetitious.

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:

No, he thought, when everything you do, you do too long, and do too late, you can’t expect to find the people still there. The people all are gone. The party’s over and you are with your hostess now.

Related Characters: Harry, Helen
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:

Compie turned his head and grinned and pointed and there, ahead, all he could see, as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro. And then he knew that there was where he was going.

Related Characters: Harry, Compton
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis: