The use of symbolism in Hemingway's

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro"

Hemingway’ s "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a story of a one man’s struggles, realizations, and relationships. These traits are portrayed through one man, through Harry, a procrastinating, decaying, dying writer that at the end makes an attempt to reach the "Snows of Kilimanjaro." Hemingway is able to do this with the use of symbolism and italicized memories that serve as a starting point to the insight of certain underlying themes in the story. In this paper, I am going to show how these symbols and memories are significant to the depth and purpose of the writing.

The story starts out with the description of a frozen carcass of a leopard. "No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude" (1636). The leopard is vitally important in contrast to what the hyena symbolizes at the end of the story. The leopard, connotatively, represents strength, power, and courage; whereas, the hyena represents death and failure.

The leopard dies trying to reach the summit "the House of God" (1636). It dies trying to fulfill a purpose while the hyena’s only purpose is to scavenge and ultimately fail. It is death and comes after Harry. After Harry hears the hyena he realized death had just come by. "Tell it to go away," was his reply to his wife (1648). Even though the hyena is symbolically antagonistic toward Harry, they have many similar characteristics. It is with Harry’s psychological state that the hyena is associated with. Harry is representative of the hyena with his scavenger-like qualities and procrastination. His qualities can be seen in the hyena while he is at the same time trying to possess the qualities of the leopard. Harry has wasted his life in the last many years and has now made an attempt to put himself back on the right track. The safari is that attempt. Significance can be found in the two animals through Harry’s delirious visions, which show him as a weak man that in the past was too afraid exercise his talent decisively, which was writing. Only now is Harry starting to try and portray the leopard.

A comparison between the leopard and Harry can be seen again at the end of the story. Harry has a feverish dream of being rescued by a plane that takes an unexpected path. Instead of going to "Arusha," the pilot takes a left and flies over the top of Kilimanjaro. He sees the white square summit of the mountain, unbelievably white in the sun, so enormously huge but so dignified. "And then he knew that there was where he was going" (1651). Harry was going to the same place that the leopard was found, Heaven.

There are many interesting differences between the leopard and Harry in relation to the way they made it to Kilimanjaro. Unlike the leopard, which made the arduous climb in search of the mountain’s summit, Harry takes an easier path with a simple plane ride. Again, Harry is seen more closely as the scavenger like the hyena, than the strong and powerful leopard.

Another important facet of the leopard that is worthy to note is that it is found dead. Immortality now becomes a symbol of valiant leopard. The summit was in fact a reward for the leopard, the reward of one that dared the difficult, eschewed the easy. As seen in some of Harry’s stories, he has been a leopard at various times in the past and is striving to become that again.

Also important to recognize in the reverie Harry has at the end, is that his other dreams and vision are italicized. The reason that Hemingway doesn’t italicize this vision is due to Harry’s belated actions. He tells his wife, "I’ve been writing" (1649). Because of his renewed writing, ideas and dreams become reality for Harry, so the trip to Kilimanjaro (Heaven) is not in Italics as are the other remembered episodes. Harry feels that he has now done, intentionally, everything that could be done to redeem himself, to make him worthy of Heaven; he has even sacrificed himself to his wife. To Harry’s wife, the reality is that he is dead; for Harry, the reality is that the plane has come and he has been saved and rewarded.

"Snow" becomes an important symbol in the story from Harry’s very first vision. His first vision was on a train, thinking about the "things he had saved to write, looking out the window and seeing snow on the mountains…" (1637). Harry also remembers an old man saying, "No, that’s not snow. It’s too early for snow." "But it was snow all right and it was snow they tramped along in until they died that winter" (1637). Here, snow represents the impending death of Harry. The snow is a symbol for the failures Harry has undergone in the past and represented through these italicized stories. The stories show that Harry cannot bring himself to write about his past experiences, which have helped mold him into the person he wants to escape from. In those stories the snow is almost a hurdle that blocks Harry from reaching his salvation. "The snow was so bright it hurt your eyes" (1638). This is crucial because the snow is restricting Harry from what he strives to write and he must conquer it in order to reach salvation. If Harry can reach the summit of the momentous "snow covered mountain" he would be forgiven and saved.

Harry’s final italicized recollection is essential because it secures, in his mind, the flight to Kilimanjaro, the trip to Heaven. He remembers back "long ago when Williamson, the bombing officer, had been hit by a stick bomb" someone "in a German patrol had thrown as he was coming in through the wire that night and, screaming, had begged" everyone "to kill him" (1648). As Harry looked at the intense pain his fellow soldier was in, he gave his own morphine "that he had always saved to use himself" to the pain struck man (1649). Now he has remembered and reaffirmed his good act, which makes the dying Harry believe that, indeed, he deserves to go to Kilimanjaro, inspite of his weak, self-indulgent acts recently.

The summit of Kilimanjaro is an obvious symbol for Heaven, but Hemingway does a clever job in creating some skepticism in whether Harry reaches it or not. Although Harry has failed to achieve that for which he was striving in life, he is attempting to gain fulfillment through death. Harry wants to kill himself off on some level and become purified. The dream of Harry at the end shows the direction he is going, but Hemingway never gives any concrete evidence of his actually making it there. Harry, in the eyes of the reader, is left in an indeterminate state, which allows for a profuse imagination to take over.

Hemingway’s use of symbolism and italicized memories help portray Harry’s prior morally fragile state. He is broken and is in the course of becoming fixed. Now that he has the slightest scratch, Harry has no choice but to sit back and think about the past. He realizes that his machine, body, soul has been obsolete and is intent on changing. By using certain distinct symbols in Harry’s memories, Hemingway is able to display the motives and thoughts inside of him. When looked at closely, it can be seen that Harry does not blame society for his actions, he realizes that he is the one that needs to change. The safari is Harry’s chance to change. Hemingway doesn’t make it certain that Harry actually reaches the summit, but there is solid evidence that he makes an intentional dire attempt at doing so. Either way, Hemingway does a noble job in his use of symbolism and memories. It is those features that take this story to another level and make it one of Hemingway’s great short stories.