E(a)rnest attempt at sympathy

“Macomber did not know how the lion had felt before he had started his rush, nor during it when the unbelievable smash of the .505 with a muzzle velocity of two tons had hit him in the mouth, nor what kept him coming after that, when the second ripping crash had smashed his hind quarters and he had come crawling on toward the crashing, blasting thing that had destroyed him.” (557–558)¹

In “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” Hemingway makes it apparent through his manipulation of language that he intends the reader to sympathize with the afflicted animals in his story. His employment of visceral and violent imagery in the above passage specifically, as in his use of “ripping,” “unbelievable,” and twice “smash,” rather than something neutral like “impact.” The lion is here personified as “him,” and even has feelings all his own which Macomber is ignorant of—sections of the story are even told explicitly from the animalʼs point of view.

These choices are no accident, and Hemingway has geared the entire short story to help the reader better sympathize with the pathetic animals. He defines animals as thinking, feeling entities, as actual characters with motives and passions, like the revenge our lion fights for here. Hemingway constructs animals as more similar to humans than many other writers, as characters who share our traditionally-human characteristics and mental abilities like rationality and reasoning. In this way, since the non-humans in the story are almost glorified as admirable and ideal, it wouldnʼt be a stretch to assume that Hemingway would toast along with Wilson when he says, “hereʼs to the lion” (542)¹.