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“She shot very well this good, this rich bitch, this kindly caretaker and destroyer of his talent. Nonsense. He had destroyed his talent himself. Why should he blame this woman because she kept him well? He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook. What was this? A catalogue of old books? What was his talent anyway? It was a talent all right but instead of using it, he had traded on it. It was never what he had done, but always what he could do. And he had chosen to make his living with something else instead of a pen or a pencil. It was strange, too, wasn’t it, that when he fell in love with another woman, that woman should always have more money than the last one?” (Hemingway 1853) “Talent’s Deathbed” Mt. Kilimanjaro is one of the tallest mountains in the world and poses many mysteries such as that of a dried and frozen carcass of a leopard near the western summit of the mountain. This leopard’s loss of life, seemingly without any purpose, is an ideal example of the modernist style theme of loss. In Ernest Hemingway’s story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, Hemingway mentions this leopard in the introit to the story as a building point. His main character in this piece is a man named Harry, who is suffering from his own loss in his belief that he has lost his talent for writing. The passage that I am using here goes to show his mental decay in the belief of his talent and the attempt to place the loss of his talent not on himself, but on Helen who really has nothing to do with the loss besides the simple thought that she had the money to take care of both of them so Harry would not have to use his talent to make a living. Only when Harry is on his deathbed in an African desert with Helen, his girlfriend, did he realize that what he considered his talent was gone. Also in this passage the reader can see Harry starting to come to grips with the way he manipulates Helen and the way in which he finally chose to accept some responsibility for his actions.
Approximate Word count = 1636
Approximate Pages = 6.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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