Hemingway: The Killers. An Interpretation

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University of Freiburg (Englisches Seminar), course: Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft, 4 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Ernest Miller Hemingway - a short story writer, novelist, deep-sea fisher, soldier, hunter and reporter- and one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Well known for his books like e.g. A Farewell To Arms, To Have and Have Not, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Across the River and into the Trees and especially the novelette: The Old Man and The Sea. I would like to present here another, maybe less popular but in no case less interesting short story of Ernest Hemingway: The Killers. 'The Killers' was published in 1927 as a part of the short story collection 'Men without women'. When releasing 'The Killers', Hemingway was already known as one of the most important representatives of the so-called'lost-generation' (one year before Ernest Hemingway made his name with the novel 'The Sun Also Rises' which catches the post-war mood of disillusion). This generation of North-American authors of the 1920s participated as soldiers or, like Hemingway did, as volunteers with the ambulance in World War I and returned home: frustrated, cynical and self-confidently indifferent towards life. In the following essay I would like to give a short summary of Hemingway's biography first. This is followed by an exposition ( i.e. setting, time, main characters)and a brief outline of the story. The next focus will be on the structure of the story: How it starts, how it develops and how it ends. Then I continue with the characterization of the main characters ( the direct or indirect characterization and the relationships between the characters ). After this, I examine the technique ( the point of view, relationship between narrator and reader ) and the style of narration . Symbols, motives and pictures will be dealt with in the last but one part of my essay. Finally, I would like to focus on possible parallels between 'The Killers' and Ernest Hemingway's biographical or personal background respectively.

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