Is Harry a Failure?

Hemingway’s character in The Snows of Kilimanjaro is complex and puzzling enough to create confusion and possibly even frustration within the reader as we learn of his habits, successes and downfalls. He drinks, cannot be committed to one woman and admits to himself that he has been unable to write many of the stories he has in his head. But do all these things make Harry a failure?

Initially, I wanted to say yes. He does not have ambitious goals for himself and depends on the wealth of women he’s with to live. Most importantly, Harry has created an entire false persona full of deception in hopes of finding success in that way. Yet as he lies at the base of the mountain with gangrene eating away his life, he begins to reflect on himself as an individual, in which his true character is revealed.

We sit with him as he realizes his faults in love, the reality that he felt more comfortable when “he no longer meant what he said, and that lies were more successful than telling the truth.” We get the impression that he dislikes this conclusion about himself, pointing to his current wife as the “caretaker and destroyer of his talent.”

As Harry lapses into thoughts of stories he could have written about, it becomes evident that he regrets not taking more effort to write about what he wanted to. One big question he continues to ask himself as he nears death is ‘why?’ “He knew at least twenty good stories from out there and he had never written one. Why?” “He had been in it and he had watched it and it was his duty to write of it; but now he never would.”

We begin to see Harry not as a failed writer, but as an artist who is struggling with his art form. Hemingway uses Harry to show just how damaging the loss of one’s muse is to a writer, just as he also went through the same struggles in his own life. Hemingway is able to communicate just how deceptive that muse can be, and once infected, he can no longer be in control over his art. It is also important to note that although Harry sees the top of the mountain in his dream right before death, we have no indication that the couple has ambitions to climb to the top of Kilimanjaro; it seems they are only there to hunt.

From first look, it may be concluded that Harry is a failure simply because he never wrote what he most desired to. But when taking a step back and examining the piece from all angles, it is better to conclude that Harry, although not triumphant in any way, is not a failure. He is simply a tragic result of striving for pleasure and success by taking one direction, only to realize that he had taken the wrong path.