Summit, Illinois, is the setting for Hemingway’s “The Killers.” Nick Adams is living in Summit, leading what seems to be an uneventful life, when he is suddenly confronted by two hired killers, probably from Chicago, who intend to murder a professional boxer, Ole Andreson. Nick rushes to Andreson’s boarding house and tells him that he is marked as a target by the killers and Andreson says that he’s tired of running, that he’ll wait for the killers; Nick leaves Summit, sickened in disbelief that a man can passively await his own, certain death.
