Hemingway opens this story with a typical Hemingway narrative device: Two people are talking; moreover, they are talking about pain and a horrible odor. Hemingway zeroes in on the immediate problem: Harry’s certain death—unless help arrives. Hemingway does not immediately identify the people who are talking; and readers don’t yet know the names of the characters, the place, the time, or any other kind of background, expository information about them. Readers know only that something is terribly wrong with the male character, causing a potent stench, and that three big birds squat “obscenely” close by. The woman’s first comment—“Don’t! Please don’t.”—indicates that tension exists between her and the man, a tension that will soon erupt into antagonism.
Also, mainly through conversation only, readers learn that the man has some type of injury but that the pain has disappeared; he is lying on a cot under some trees while “obscene” birds (vultures) are circling overhead. A truck that the man and woman were driving has broken down, and they are now waiting for a rescue plane to take them away.
The man mentions for the first time that the big birds—the vultures (or buzzards, as they are often referred to)—are birds of prey, who have ceased circling over Harry and Helen and now have begun to walk around on the ground. They seemingly know that Harry is close to death. During the day, the ugly vultures gather around the camp; the putrid, foul smell of Harry’s rotting, gangrenous flesh attracts them. Hemingway uses the symbol of the vulture in its natural setting, Africa, to convey the horror of approaching death and the agony of waiting for death. Ironically, the reader also learns that in happier times, Harry spent time observing the vulture’s behavior so that he could use them in his writing.
As spiritual symbols of ascension, these birds represent both what could’ve been and what now can’t be. It is interesting to note that Hemingway chose the vulture to represent Harry’s “cycle” of opportunity and termination, as vultures themselves are inherently tied to global life and death on the plain because of their ecological function. Life, because their scavenging enables the plain to stay clean and free of rotten debris that could be harmful to other animals, and death, because they portend when an animal will expire and become carrion. In essence, these “trash men” of the plains are also the trash men of Harry’s wasted life. They appeared at a time when Harry could have cleaned up his lifestyle and used his ability when he had his health, and now they appear again as Harry is about to die. These vultures represent Harry’s physical death. Vultures have long been a symbol of death and rebirth in American Indian folklore as well.
The woman mentions that she would like to do something for Harry until the rescue plane arrives. The plane, of course, is another symbol. The airplane is airborne—that is, from the heavens—it is a symbol that is filled with hope that Harry and Helen can escape from the plains and from the horrible vultures.
This is the beginning of the jarring realization that Harry has run out of time and that all of the writing he planned to do will never get done. Camping on the hot, sweltering plain at the foot of Kilimanjaro, Harry vents his anger and frustration at himself onto his wife. It is on this low, hot plain with land-bound animals that Harry is at his most frustrated, baser, unrealized self as death, symbolized by the vultures, creeps nearer and his unused talent slips further away from him.
Harry’s impending death causes him to evaluate his life. He knows now that he will never “write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well.” Now it is too late, and he will never know “if he could have written them.” His day-by-day closing in on death makes him realize how often and how much he frittered away his life, avoiding writing the things that he wanted to. Thus, Hemingway combines two themes: man’s confrontation with death and man as a failed artist.
Flashback 1
All of the five flashbacks (some literary critics refer to them as “interior monologues”) deal with brief scenes, or vignettes, about the things that Harry experienced in the past; he had meant to write about them but never did.
In this first flashback, snow is a central element in each of his recollections. He remembers the railway station in Karagatch, Turkey, and leaving on the famous Orient Express and riding through northern Greece, where he recalled fighting between the Greeks and Turks (during the Greco-Turko war that Hemingway, when he was a reporter, covered).
He remembers Bulgaria: the mountains covered with snow; the exchange of populations and people walking in the snow until they died in it. There, he also protected a deserter. While snowed in at the Madlener-haus for a week, the owner of the gasthaus lost everything while gambling. There in the cold, bright mountains someone named Barker bombed Austrian officers’ leave train and strafed those who escaped and then came into the Austrian mess hall and bragged about it.
He remembers Vorarlberg and Arlberg, winter ski resorts with many activities, including skiing on the snow like a bird in the air (Hemingway skied often in these places); Harry never wrote about any of these adventures.
Throughout this section, there is an overwhelming sense of loss. Loss of lives from war, and loss of life due to despair and adverse financial circumstances. Throughout the flashback, the snow sets the stage for spiritual ascension and release. Spiritual ascension in terms of being released during death, although through unpleasant means, from the earthly plane, and release in terms of finding joy and peace in skiing free and unfettered in the wind.
A second level of loss is also the loss of opportunity. All of these experiences in this flashback are ripe opportunities for artistic expression, as they are events that Harry experienced himself and knew. Harry went many places and saw many things, but never wrote about any of them.
