Interview with Hemingway
Iceberg Principle
Class Discussion Questions:
1. Where in the narrative do we know for sure what is wrong with the man’s leg? Look for the moment. Then ask yourself, "Why don’t we know right away?"
2. How does this medical problem develop? Explain the cause.
3. What activity has the man always put off for a later time and now realizes he no longer can find the will to do? Find all the references to this activity.
4. What is the relationship between the man and the woman based on?
5. Although the narrator of this short story does seem tied to the point of view of a single character, how is that point of view unstable?
6. What do you think is going on in present time during the first italicized passage? Why does the author split the narrative in this way? Answer these two questions separately.
7. How does the mixture of past and present events demonstrate the distinction between plot and story, and how does this mixture help us see how the man deals with his impending death?
8. The man at one point says, "'I want to write,'" (836) and later says, "'I've been writing. But I got tired'" (840). What can he mean by these admissions?
9. Does it become clearer, as the story progresses, what the man in doing in his mind during the italicized passages? The narrator: "There wasn't time, of course, although it seemed as though it telescoped so that you might put it all into one paragraph if you could get it right" (836). Does Harry ever "get it right" and "put it all into one paragraph"?
10. What is the iceberg principle? What is the justification for following it?
Narrative map for "The Snows of Kilimanjaro":
- 826: Story begins with Harry lying on a cot in Africa--in the middle of a conversation
- 827: Conversation escalates into argument and Harry starts to drink
- 827: First breakaway to thought: "So now it was all over, he thought."
- 828: Comes out of it, probably drunk now, and insults/abuses Helen, continues to drink
- 828: Second breakaway to thought, first time in italics: "Now in his mind . . ." various images and memories associated with snow and Christmas
- 830: Comes out of it, asking about Paris, "now, in Africa"--the quarrel continues, and then sleep
- 830: Third breakaway to thought, not in italics:Alone after a long nap, but now more alert--thinks through his own downfall and hers, what brought them together.
- 833: Comes out of it, and once Helen returns from hunting, and they both slip back into the lie. And finally, "it occurred to him that he was going to die"--happy the quarreling is over at least: "he wore it all out."
- 834: Fourth breakaway to thought, second italics: Helen goes to bath, thinks more about what he could have written, his duty to do so.
- 836: Comes out of it, and says, "I want to write," suggesting that during the italicized passages, he has been doing something else. "I'm going to die tonight"--knows he's running out of time.
- 836: Fifth breakaway to thought, third italics: longest section, multiple attempts to write out stories, but still in his mind.
- 838: Comes out of it, just to ask for a drink.
- 838: Sixth breakaway to thought, fourth italics: shorter this time, two different ideas for stories he could have written.
- 839: Comes out of the italics but not back to the surface: "You tell them why" is a direct response to the question "Why?" in the italics. . . as if Harry on the cot and Harry in his mind are not the same person. Sort of stays in thought before . . .
- 840: Fifth italics: Williamson, pain, and death. The perfect paragraph . . . "There wasn't time, of course, although it seemed as though it telescoped so that you might put it all into one paragraph if you could get it right." It is a self-contained story, no commentary.
- 840: Comes out, still thinking about pain and death coming. And then back to the present again: "I've been writing. . . . But I got tired."
- 841: Second to last section: The rescue, the morning after, or at least that is one way to put it.
- 842: Final section: Still night, actually.
Hemingway on Endings and Rewriting
From The Paris Review, no. 18 (1958), interviewed by George Plimpton
INTERVIEWER
Do you do any rewriting as you read up to the place you left off the day before? Or does that come later, when the whole is finished?
HEMINGWAY
I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You’re grateful for these different chances.
INTERVIEWER
How much rewriting do you do?
HEMINGWAY
It depends. I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.
INTERVIEWER
Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?
HEMINGWAY
Getting the words right.
