27 pages • 54 minutes read
Ernest HemingwayThe Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1936A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Francis Macomber
Francis Macomber is the main protagonist of the story. It is his story, as the title suggests, and he undergoes significant development in the story. The hunt shapes his self-perception and others' perceptions of him; it defines him as both cowardly and courageous, bringing him both misery and bliss, and transforms him from a man-child to a man. These transformations make him a dynamic character. Macomber’s character and his transformation are shown through his actions, physical appearance, social status, and relationship to the setting.
At the start, Hemingway places him in the setting of the camp. The opening line indicates a setting of civilization and the privileges that the protagonist experiences: “It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent” (115). Macomber performs no actions here. He simply sits in the shade and waits to be served. Because he is wealthy, he hires a cook, a "personal boy," a skinner, and porters to serve him at camp, as well as Wilson and the gun-bearers to serve him while he hunts. Despite his status and wealth in domestic, industrialized US spheres, from the perspective of the wild and natural world, he still has the appearance of an “adolescent.”
By the end of the story, however, Macomber is no longer at camp but in the wild and away from domestication, civilization, and luxury. In the wild, he becomes a man of action. His actions there near the end of the story mirror those of Wilson, whom he both hates for having slept with his wife and idealizes for his courage and physical prowess. In their triumphant moments, the two men work together: Both men hold onto the car, on either side, chasing after the buffalo together before shooting side by side. Wilson notes that the act of facing down and killing the buffalo “made [Macomber] a man” (140). However, this transformation results in his death, as he faces down a charging buffalo but is killed by a shot fired by his wife.
Margot/Margaret Macomber
Margot Macomber, the story's antagonist, is a relatively static character who must always dominate her husband and be in control. When her husband becomes stronger, which threatens her status and her power over him, the narration implies that she kills him intentionally to prevent this loss of dominion. Margot is cast as the villain and does not refute Wilson's "toneless" accusations: "That was a pretty thing to do. [...] He would have left you too" (143); she simply cries, "Stop it," in response to each of his comments as he plans a way to position the killing as accidental.
There is no indication that she will face consequences for her actions. Because she knows Wilson committed illegal acts earlier in the hunt, there is no implication that he gains power over her by witnessing her action. They each have damaging information on the other party, locking them into an equilibrium that contrasts with the unequal relationship she had with her husband.
In many ways, Margot usurps the norms of femininity. Early in the story, Wilson labels her as “predatory,” thinking “[American women] [...] the hardest in the world” (119). She is unfaithful to her husband with Wilson, taunting Macomber by kissing Wilson in the car and leaving their tent in the night to be with him. Wilson observes throughout the story how “lovely” and “beautiful” Margot is on the outside but also characterizes her as “the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory” (119).
She and Macomber have a difficult marriage that is a frequent topic of newspapers' society pages; Wilson recognizes that she stays with Macomber for her money, rather than for love, and she is too beautiful for him to leave her. However, she is also described as no longer being beautiful enough to find a richer man to leave her husband for. Thus, she illustrates the constraints of her era and social class, in which her value is determined by her looks and the status of her marriage, rather than by any achievements of her own.
Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson acts primarily as a foil to the protagonist, Francis Macomber. Like Margot, Wilson is a static character. He’s characterized by his rough exterior. His missing left breast pocket, “old” slacks, and “very dirty” boots all characterize him as a man of action, Macomber’s opposite.
As a skilled hunter, he is constantly aware of and evaluating his surroundings. He keenly observes the servants, while Macomber barely notices them. Thus, when they are “acting oddly,” Wilson intuits that they have heard about Macomber's cowardice. Likewise, Macomber does not notice that one of the gun-bearers falls from the car during the group's pursuit of buffalo, but Wilson does. Wilson is defined by his expertise with the natural, untamed world of animals and instincts; for him, this includes women, who often view sharing his cot as part of their safari adventure.
Wilson often takes on the role of an unreliable narrator. He filters his observations of the Macombers through his own perspectives, experiences, and biases. He frequently casts judgments about what defines a “man,” finding Macomber weak and delicate in contrast to his own ruggedness, courage, and skill with both women and animals. The Americans who hire him fail to meet his standards for men and women: “[American women] are, he thought, the hardest in the world; the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory and the most attractive and their men have softened or gone to pieces nervously as they have hardened” (119). In many ways, Wilson echoes Hemingway's views in his critique of the Macombers and of would-be hunters who view the safari as a status-conferring adventure, rather than as a serious pursuit.
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By Ernest Hemingway
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