“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” as an Allegory of the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT:This essay reads Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” as an allegory of the Anthropocene. The story presents an effort to rethink how to live, a concern that animated much of Hemingway’s writing and thinking. This rethinking involves dramatically exposing the faults of the narrator, who, read allegorically—in a general, not strict, way—evokes many of the values and systems of production that led to the Anthropocene. Thus, the narrator’s self-critique can also be read as a cultural critique, one sharpened and fitted to Anthropocene temporalities by the story’s “telescoping” technique.