Snows of Kilimanjaro

10-11 on 27 Aug – BHAVANI

• stream of consciousness
• serial husband dying of gangrene
• recollects memories of people, death, life in poverty,  of lovely places he’s seen
• current wife trying to amuse him
• doesn’t love her finds that his pretences of love are nicer than the real thing; smothering, quarrelsome in love
• much heat
• random hyena
• Hemmingway an ambulance driver, seen aach* lot of pain
• Modern Period- 1900-1945
• Fascinated by upper class society
• American Dream- term coined by-James truslow-Life liberty, pursuit of happiness gradually dissolved into materialism
• American self-importance to individual identity
• Streetcar named desire
• Death of a salesman
• American Dream redefined-money, car, house
• Sense, sensibility- shattered by wars
• Survival, loss, disillusionment
• Youth suffered a sense of ennui- a ‘lost’ generation
• Difficult to label American lifestyle, writing, sensibilities coherently.
• No inhibitions in expressing anything
• Some believe in precision, accuracy, brevity-saying a lot in as little as possible
• Meaninglessness, aimlessness, purposelessness
• Injuries of the war, consequence of great depression
• Class division
• Define American self
• Voice of America
• Harry wasted his talent, had great ambitions but did not follow through
• Safari taken to remind himself that he has things yet to do - seeking vitality, ction
• Detached from present - nothing matters to him anymore
• Alienation (unaware of what he wants in love), disillusionment - also approaching death
• Ennui - lying down rotting on the bed thinking of all he could be doing but is not doing
• Autobiographical elements in of Hemingway's works - seen death and people wasting away - rotten image of gangrene - because of what he's seen in the war
• Feeling of I could have done better (laziness, procrastination, haven't put my talents to use, casual, lethargy, ennui) reflects the author's character
• Hemingway describes his writing in terms of iceberg theory - deep meaning in the writing, but only seen if searched for 
• Geometrical patterns in Hemingway's writings: 

1. mountain vs plain - elevation
2. river, journey - movement, progression, linearity, fruits of labor, effort actually leading somewhere

3. angles used to provide perspective
4. urban sphere and natural sphere - both landscapes seen in EH's writing - snow, hyena, mountain, plains, leopard, grass, trees, heat, peaks and hollows, wind, animal and bird images, hot and cold, vultures

*intended to reach the summit but stuck in the plains - failure to ascend, to amount to something, to acquire greatness

• myth of leopard: significance that any result in a quest that great is great enough
• imagist writing - dimension, position, picture and representation, clear
• ecological and historical concepts in the text:

Historical: war, Constantinople, poverty because of Great Depression
Ecological: scavenging (in war and nature) (clean-up) (necessary, must not condescend or retreat), hyena and vulture represent death

• seen so much sadness and loss and suffering and pain that his thoughts are colored that way - he is rooted in his time - belief that drink, wealth, politics and women will ruin him 
• Helen not wife just companion - in his life she is a symbol of failure in love and character
• One little flaw, weakness of character can destroy (gangrene symbolizes this)
• snow covers, surrounds (no escape) and conceals - disillusionment
• snow freezes - motionless, no life, loss of time (lack of purpose, like in Harry's life)
• escapism - doesn't attempt to find a way to write; just waiting to be airlifted; rationalizing why he didn't write
• QUEST - there is a purpose in life and he must find it
• HEALING - self-healing throgh narration, closure as opposed to incompletion, best he can do in his situation is to narrate his stories and die in peace; snow compresses, stops, sedates - pain is healed?
• SUCCEEDING Helen more overwhelmed by gangrene, sense of fulfilment in spite of ambiguous ending (airlifted or liberated in death), has mentally undergone the journey

10-11 on 8 Sept
FLASHBACKS:

• grave images in setting and in themes - painful disease, physical torture, death
• snow - freezing (parallel to death) - girls died - frozen in time, has not moved on, loss of control
• Constantinople - loneliness, death
• deliberately uses elements that cause discomfort - colors in jarring combinations
• why (use flashbacks)? 

1. painful memories recalled while in pain
2. with stream of consciousness
3. things he's wanted to write but hasn't BUT, justifying why he hasn't
4. writing makes it real so didn't want to
everything comes out in the end

12-1 on Sept 9
⦁ Animals used to foreshadow author's death
- leopard carcass (like the author; could not make it to the top) was frozen hence preserved just as Hemingway is immortalized by his works;
- vultures and hyenas (scavengers) (feed off of the dead) (author soon to be dead)
⦁ masculinity established through how these images manifest in the psyche of reader
⦁ given up on writing so given up on life
⦁ lost generation - exploring identity
⦁ Black forest - image of war
⦁ colors used:
- rich purple and green vs bland - regality vs poverty;
- also flashbacks (vivid colors) stand out vs current setting (surrounded by snow)
⦁ has had a stagnant life - colorless in his soul - so embarks on a spiritual journey to Africa
⦁ ending is completely inconsequential
⦁ not bothered with afterlife
⦁ Hemingway believed that politics, wine, women and wealth will ruin you - Harry's life has been full of it, so he wonders if there really is any chance that he can redeem himself

RECAP:
⦁ The Lost Generation - PTSD, war, loss, death
⦁ Pursuit of evolution and growth of character
⦁ journey is a masculine symbol and endeavor of glory, regardless of whether you reach the end
⦁ stream of consciousness
⦁ European existentialism
⦁ theme of death
⦁ grave images
⦁ memories - re-actualize, recollect, relive, reassess the truth in the past
⦁ imagination - hallucination, "sensing" death at the foot of his bed, recollection or fabrication of airlifting scenes - helps him wade through the present
⦁ tools - urban vs nature sphere; geographical elements; colors-patterns-sounds; imagery
⦁ Nature is predominant; allows quick access to episodes in life therefore an indirect measure for reminiscing; brings out subjectivity of pine tree
⦁ Kilimanjaro irony - was once a dormant volcano; is now covered in snow
⦁ hedonism perhaps + journey is the fulfillment of escapism

QUICK RECAP WITH BHAVANI MA'AM:

• nature
• two spheres: urban vs nature landscape
• colors and symbolism
• imagist
• geometrical pattern
• use of nature to navigate objective correlation vs individual subjective consciousness
• iceberg theory
• sensory narrative
• PTSD
• historical perspective
• animal images
• Kilimanjaro
• Lost generation, ennui