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"He Had Never Written a Word of That": Regret and Counterfactuals in Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"
- The Hemingway Review
- University of Idaho Department of English
- Volume 30, Number 2, Spring 2011
- pp. 21-35
- 10.1353/hem.2011.0024
- Article
- Additional Information
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Analyzes narrative counterfactuals in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," examining these unrealized scenarios in three distinct storytelling modes: the dialogue and focalization representing the narrative present set in Africa, the italicized vignettes representing the main character's thoughts, and the two endings representing a false rescue and the protagonist's death. Argues that counterfactuality unites the disparate elements of the story and that Hemingway employs this theme to dramatize the productive tension between possibility and foreclosure in the creation of narrative. Focuses on readers' interpretation and judgment of counterfactuals and regret in the story.