This story revolves around a writer who, about to die from
gangrene which he got from a thorn prick, regrets how
little he has achieved in his writings.
The story starts off with the writer lying on a cot rambling on with his
wife sitting next to him. She is trying to do what she can to help but he is only satisfied with saying
really hurtful things towards her.
He described death as a curiosity that often intrigued him, but now annoyed him because his life was ending and he was not satisfied with what he had
accomplished. The gangrene in his right leg made
dying painless, also he was too tired to worry about dying; that combination, I believe, is what cleared his mind so that he was more prone to dwell on the negativity of his past.
He then starts to argue with his wife, blaming her for his lavish way of living. He believed because of the decadent way he
lived he was too distracted to write about the things that mattered most to him and took things for granted.
Towards the end of the story he comes to realize that he shouldn’t blame his wife for his failures, and that it would have been the same had it been any other lady. He started to even appreciate the kind of woman he had because of how little she quarreled with him, even though he knew he never really loved her but just became comfortable with her. Even though he experienced so much in his life, he died full of feeling he had accomplished nothing because he lived only for moments without considering the future.
Some feel that Hemingway’s own fears motivated such a story. Some of the concerns mentioned in another book of his “Green Hills” were “politics, women, drink, money and ambition.” He also felt that if he hung out with rich people too much that he would be less true to himself and that would reflect in his writings.
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