Dear Death, Please Brush Your Teeth.

I thought “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway was an interesting account of the main character’s life in both the past and present. Although the short story presents a few notable ideas; I thought the most interesting part was the way in which Hemmingway personifies death (page 54). This is something that we’ve seen before, for example, in Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death…” death is personified as almost a courter to the speaker. In “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” however, the narrator describes death not as welcoming. It’s almost as if the narrator views death as something that he is trying to resist; as if he puts his guard down he his life will be snatched away. “He had just felt death come by once again. (54)” shows us that death seems to be lingering. This is an interesting thought because we also see this idea in Hemmingway’s “Now I Lay Me”. In this short story, the idea that death will also take the speakers life if he were to fall asleep during the night is an example of death’s willingness to steal the narrator’s life without warning.
A specific example of Hemmingway’s personification of death in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” is evident again on page 54 when the narrator says that he “could smell its breath”. He soon after speaks to death as if it he can communicate with it saying, “You’ve got hell of a breath” and he calls death a “stinking bastard” (54). The connotation that death has bad breath certainly portrays him and unwelcome but still, death continues to linger until the narrator quits and death is able to claim his prize.
I also wonder if the reference to the noises of the hyena throughout the story is connected to death, for the reader again becomes aware of the sounds the hyena makes at the ending. “[…] The hyena stopped whimpering […] started to make a strange, human, almost crying sound.” (56). I’m curious…