Reading “On the Quai at Smyrna” and “A Natural History of the Dead” in Consideration of Hemingway’s Anti-Humanism

Abstract:This article proposes that readers consider “On the Quai at Smyrna” and “A Natural History of the Dead” as part of the same conceptual project. Both pieces advance a negative critique of humanism that blurs the distinctions between human and animal. Despite religious and pseudo-religious narratives to the contrary, human life is not superior to animal life, Hemingway discovers, for we are all of us violent beasts who eventually end up in the ground. These works reject the idea that we are fundamentally superior to nonhuman entities. Likewise, they reject the idea that human life is sacred.