摘要

《乞力马扎罗的雪》是海明威最著名的短篇小说之一。它主要讲述了一个作家在临死时回忆一生中未写作的片段和经历这一故事。由于故事结构的复杂性，现有文献中对主角的分析不一，以致产生了对主人公哈里多种不同甚至相反的评价。因此，本文尝试使用一种统一的视角检视主人公的个性特征。通过哈里作为观察者和作者这两种身份时的真实性来分别进行阐述。通过这一分析，本文厘清了现存的各种相反或相对的观点，并且得出结论，即作为观察者的哈里一直保持着他的真实性，而作为作家的哈里在死前完成了向真实性的转变。

关键词：乞力马扎罗的雪；真实性；拖延

Abstract

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is one of Hemingway's most famous short stories. It is a story about a dying writer looking back on a lifetime of unwritten stories. Due to the complexity in the structure of the story, analyses of its main character Harry vary in existing literature, which leads to different, even sharply contrasting ways of evaluation. Therefore, this article ventures to examine the protagonist in a unified point of view. This is achieved through looking at the character in the light of his authenticity both as an observer and as a writer. Through this examination, it clarifies various conflicting points of view that currently exists, and arrives at the conclusion that Harry is an authentic observer who has been transformed to an authentic writer before his death.

Key words: The Snows of Kilimanjaro; authenticity; procrastination

1. Introduction

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is one of Hemingway’s most famous short stories. The frame of the story is about a writer named Harry who was dying of gangrene on a remote plain of Africa.(Logsdon, 29) While on a safari with his girl friend, Harry received a slight wound which resulted gangrene in his leg, and with their truck broken down they were stranded, with little prospect of immediate help. Dying a slow but painless death, Harry called back to memory a lifetime of stories that he had postponed to write(Logsdon, 30) and realized that he would never have a chance to write again.

Through the reminiscence of the protagonist, Hemingway presents a montage of images recollected from his own past(Bonds, 132), including his wartime experience, past love affairs, and life of men and women in the poor quarters of Paris. These accounts also form a concrete part of the story. This type of story-telling, which resembles the ancient style of “frame tale”, allows the author to integrate a vast amount of diversified “sub-stories” and scattered accounts into a fluent whole, following the flow of consciousness of Harry. But due to the set-up of the story, a confusion was created as to where to draw the line between the writer and the protagonist. And it is also not immediately clear to what extent can Harry's characteristics be attributed to his creator.