Ernest Hemingway - The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

Ernest Hemingway definitely has a way of capturing a reader’s attention. The beginning of the story was a little hard to follow and a couple of times and I had to go back and reread some, but once it began to flow, I became intrigued. Francis Macomber was a man with a few issue within himself. He was insecure about himself, though he was a man of wealth and seemed to have everything at the tip of his fingers. The whole need for the hunt was his need to somehow prove himself courageous and worthy to himself and his wife. She was a very cold hearted person who was only out for herself and she didn’t really care who knew it. She used her husband’s fear against him and would manipulate him for her own pleasure to toy with him.
As Macomber went on this hunt for a lion with the hired hunter Wilson, he found himself facing something he could not get the courage up to shoot and that was the lion. When face to face with it, he bolted and made a fool of himself. His wife, of course, rubbed it in and even kissed Wilson in front of him. She eventually slept with Wilson and when her husband, Macomber asked her about it, she didn’t even deny it. She just told him that she knew he wouldn’t leave her. She expected him to just put up with whatever she dished out because she knew he’d take it just to have her. However, when the day came when he faced his fears and shot the buffalo, he finally found himself and a great sense of courage. When one of the buffalo that he had injured came charging toward him, he stood up to it shooting at it several times. His wife took a gun that was sitting in the motor car with her and shoots and kills her own husband. After she had seen his courage, I feel she thought that if he had the courage to stand up to a charging buffalo, then he had the courage to stand up to her. The fear had turned from Macomber on to her. As the story ends, after Macomber’s wife has shot and killed him, Wilson starts mocking her because he knew her intent but ridicules her that it was an accident. Just like the title says, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” says it all. His happiness was definitely short thanks to his wife.
This story is true to how life can really be. We all strive to be strong and courageous in some way or another just to find ourselves failing many times with someone there to always give us a hard time. Then just as we have mastered it, our life is over.