The story begins with a husband and wife, Harry and Helen, stranded on the plains of Africa. Our main character, Harry, has an infected leg that is slowly killing him. As he waits rescue he begins to look back on his life wondering whether or not he has lived a fulling life and what he might have done differently. Harry’s infection begins to spread with each passing hour making him fade in and out of stories he remembers from the past. His decline in mental status makes reality and fantasy combine making it harder for the reader to understand what is actually happening. Critics believe that Harry’s acceptance of death symbolizes Hemingway’s use of symbolization and defamiliarization of life and death itself. Harry’s infected leg comes from a cut he received earlier in the story. Harry’s belief that if he didn’t care enough about anything than nothing could hurt him. Harry realizes that if he treated his infection the right way from the beginning he would have been able to avoid this. His negativity and anger consume him to the point of no emotion and no love for anything including his wife. ““Why, I loved you. That’s not fair. I love you now. …show more content…
Harry points out that a hyena for the fifth consecutive time that week has passed by their camp. Hemingway’s use of animals that eat the dead and decaying shows the reader the slowly ever circling death and gives a foreshadowing moment to the feeling of death itself. As Harry explained it, “…. a rush; not as a rush of water nor of wind; but of a sudden evil-smelling emptiness….” (Hemingway 52). We can see this a moment of weakness for Harry. At the beginning he accepted it and thought nothing of it, now that death has appeared we can see that he is frightened by death and wishes to