The Killers by Ernest Hemingway
80k药学(英语强化)二班汤玉云 13102015
《The Killers》is one of the classical short stories of Ernest Hemingway. The story describes a society with Violence and people’s fear of the evil society.
Ernest Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” runs through the whole story. It doesn’t like many traditional novels which usually introduce the time, place and background at the beginning. Hemingway omitted this part and directly presents to the readers a picture of real scenes:” The door of Henry's lunchroom opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter.” The story did not specify the reason why ole Anderson hunted, and we can only know something from George and Nick's dialogue. His “iceberg theory” suggests that the writer include in the text only a small portion of what he knows, leaving about ninety percent of the content a mystery that grows beneath the surface of the writing.Hemingway is very good at writing begins with few words and tell the map of the two killers from their conversation in the restaurant.
From the dialogue of George, Nick and Sam,we can also know the different character of the three persons. Nick is an innocent guy. Sam is timid and overcautious and don’t want to be involved in the matter. George is ambivalent that he want to help Anderson but afraid to be involved in it. The character and the past and future of characters are hidden behind in the dialogue, the reader can onlyspeculate the plot of the story by their own imagination. Nick comesto see Anderson,seeing him lying in bed. Anderson always looking at the wall or facing the wall whentalk to Nike. In this part, the word “wall” appears six times totally. The sixwalls form a closed three-dimensional space, which indicates Anderson completely trapped in it and unable to escape the violence of the modern society. The despairing Anderson is anatypical Hemingway hero.
The title of this short story is “The killer”, but the hero of the novel is not the two killers. It's Nick, who seems to be a secondary character. In fact, he was the central character in the whole story. On the surface the story is about two murderers who want to kill Anderson. Actually Anderson is also a killer. When Nick tells him the news,Anderson’s performance that waiting to be killed kills Nick’s innocence. He realizesthehorrible evil but unable to do anything about it, let him want to escape from the society, force him also yield to evil eventually.
Hemingway through the novel “the killer” with his masterful skills of people’s dialogue and iceberg theory reveals thetragic fate of people under violence. The novel is simple on the surface, but it has profound meaning, giving people unlimited imagination and shock, thus causing deep thinking.