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Chapter 5 - Men and Beasts

Fiction and Nonfiction of the 1930s (Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, Winner Take Nothing, and To Have and Have Not)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2025

Michael Thurston
Affiliation:
Smith College
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Summary

Hemingway was drawn to the conflict between individual and nature, whether that conflict took the form of hunting or fishing or the ritualized and scripted form of the bullfight. In the 1930s and 1940s, Hemingway developed these themes not only in the stories and novels but also in the nonfiction works that contributed to his celebrity. This chapter explores Hemingway’s elaboration of the face-off with death first in the two substantial nonfiction works that dominate his work of the 1930s: Death in the Afternoon and Green Hills of Africa. Death in the Afternoon purports to be a general reader’s introduction to the exotic sport/ritual sacrifice/art form of the Spanish bullfight. Green Hills of Africa recounts and interprets the big-game hunting that Hemingway undertook on safari in Africa. The text invites (or requires) an engagement with colonialism and Hemingway’s inescapable implication in a colonizing view of the relationship of the Euro-American hunter to the landscape, animals, and people of Africa. In his fiction of this period, Hemingway also sets the individual’s doomed search for meaning in the contexts of crime, especially in the story collection Winner Take Nothing and in his novel To Have and Have Not.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Men and Beasts
  • Michael Thurston, Smith College
  • Book: The Cambridge Introduction to Ernest Hemingway
  • Online publication: 15 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009422673.006
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  • Men and Beasts
  • Michael Thurston, Smith College
  • Book: The Cambridge Introduction to Ernest Hemingway
  • Online publication: 15 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009422673.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Men and Beasts
  • Michael Thurston, Smith College
  • Book: The Cambridge Introduction to Ernest Hemingway
  • Online publication: 15 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009422673.006
Available formats
×