Current Reading: Hemingway's Francis McComber

 

Last night I caught a few minutes of the first episode of the new Hemingway documentary on my local PBS station. I will watch the whole series in the near future. But, in the meantime, I thought I would go and read some of Hemingway's fiction. I started yesterday with one of his best known stories, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber".

The basic plot of the story is that Macomber and his wife, Margot, are on a Kenyan safari hunting big game led by a British guide named Wilson. We also learn in the story that Margot has been having an affair with Wilson. In a flashback, we learn that Macomber had a brush with death when hunting lions -- Macomber was afraid of the lions -- and now faces similar peril hunting buffalo. When a wounded buffalo starts to charge at Macomber, his wife, Margot, shoots, but hits, not the buffalo but her husband in the skull. In his brief moment of courage before his death, Macomber is said to be happy.

There are several reasons why people read the story and much ink has been spilled in praise and criticism. For me, the main point of intrigue is that it is ambiguous whether Margot shot her husband on purpose or by accident.

I will say that I like this story because it is well-written and has a lot of ambiguity, but it is also quite easy to understand the narrative.