The Importance of Reading Ernest discussion

Did you like anyone in Francis Macomber? If so, who did you like and why? Or, alternatively, did you actually despise someone?

Without letting the story sink in again, I would have to say that I like everyone in the story. They may be unsavoury, but they are real. Christ, could Hemingway ever tap into the reality of internal lives.

they are all definitely real, which is why i'd say that i didn't like anyone in the story (which isn't to say that i don't like the story.) it's kind of like watching something like the talented mr. ripley. this character is somone you can totally abhor, yet find the story completely fascinating.

...seeing the reality of humanity helps highlight your own flaws...

Gio wrote: "...seeing the reality of humanity helps highlight your own flaws... "

And I've got plenty of those ;). I spend most of my life thinking about them, working on them, struggling with them, and maybe that's why I always like the deeply flawed characters, because then I don't seem so bad.

But no, I think the main reason I love the unsavoury folk is because even they deserve our love and attention. It may sound stupid, but as much as humanity frustrates me I can't help but love it, and for me that means loving those we see as flawed or lost or even evil as much as those we see in a positive light.

Then again it could be the other way around. Maybe I loved the flawed characters because I have no hope at all for humanity and I believe that everyone, even those who think they are perfect, are deeply flawed. That all of us are Francis and Margot and Wilson -- whether we like it or not -- and we are all ultimately lost, therefore if we can't love the flawed we can't love anyone.

I liked the lion. He's the only innocent character in the story! ha! i think this is a great story, but all the characters have unredeeming qualities. francis is whiney, margot is a murderer,and i can see wilson with a perpetual smirk on his face, thinking this is all bullshit,and the lesser of the men is the loser!

i am being a bit tongue in cheek here, but really , what does anyone else think?

Well, I really do like them all (and dislike them too). There is something in each of them that engages me. But I feel that way about all of Hemingway's characters.

i like them all too, i mean they make the story, for sure. i feel that way about all of papa's characters too, otherwise, why would i keep reading, eh?

Exactly

I hated all of them except Francis. He was the only true human among them. Wilson was just another of the Hemingway super macho men (like Hemingway hoped he himself was) and the taker of other men's wives.

The wife was a first class bitch.

The whole machismo aspect of killing animals pisses me off...yet, it was a compelling story and once I stared, I couldn't stop until the last word.

Yes, Hemingway could see the flaws, but he telegraphed his own flaws into this story.

Upon further reflection, I have decided that the most sympathetic treatment given to any character in this story is Francis himself!

Oh, I'm so confused with the conflicting simplicity and complexity of Hemingway. I still think Margot was a bitch, and Wilson a turd, yet I no longer think it was Wilson Hemingway was identifying with. It was Francis!

Wilson was actually based on one of Hemingway's good friends, a white hunter named Philip Percival. Hem disguised him by arming him with that .505 Gibbs (a cannon which Hemingway had seen once at Abercrombie and Fitch in NYC, but he knew Percival had never owned). There was no question of Percival ever bedding his clients; he was a both professional and a devoted husband. But it made for a better story. Francis Macomber is supposedly based at least in part on another good friend, Gerald Murphy, but was likewise imbued with some unsavory characteristics to make for a better story. No one knows for sure who Margot was based on, except that Hemingway thought she was "the most attractive and worst bitch I had ever met"--having her murder her husband like that was a wonderful act of revenge. And I think that means Steven was right: for whatever reason, it was Francis with whom Hemingway identified (although one could always argue that all of his characters were him, and he, them).

Kevin wrote: "...(although one could always argue that all of his characters were him, and he, them)...."

I think that is probably the way it was, and not just here. There is likely to be a little piece of Hemingway in every character he ever wrote, from the most unsavoury to the most noble.

Absolutely, Brad. And he admitted as much: Nick Adams, Jake Barnes, Robert Jordan, and Thomas Hudson were all "him" at various stages of life. And his other characters were "all just like they really were, except invented", as he said--tongue firmly in cheek, of course. But I think every writer writes themselves into their characters (it's almost unavoidable); Hemingway was just more honest about it.

it's sorta like the good and evil, or the dr.jekyll,and mr. hyde side of hemingway, isn't it????

I liked Francis by the end.

Wilson is likeable but I grew to not like him so much. I think Hemingway didn't like anyone in this story, but that Margot. EVIL.

Stephen wrote: "The wife was a first class bitch."

THAT'S the understatement of the year.

It's an amazing, powerful story because of all the primitive, internal conflict it keeps wrapped up under pressure: between man and animal, man and woman, and man and man.

I like Wilson because he is who he is. And he knows who he is.

I like Francis first because I feel sorry for him because he has a perfectly natural reaction to "his first lion" and then redeems himself and is genuinely "reborn." Wilson, who has seen it before, in the bush and in war, testifies to this so we know it is real.

But . . . Margot?

Margot, from the start, and clearly going back years before the action of the story begins, is a cold, literally calculating, soulless, empty, gold-chasing, cruel, malicious BITCH of the first order. Did I leave anything out? Oh, yes. She's a Killer.

It's one thing, Brad, to admit that we are all flawed: we certainly are (but, as a Christian I must strongly disagree with your sweeping pronouncement "that all of us are . . . -- whether we like it or not -- . . . ultimately lost".) It's another thing altogether to throw all standards of human decency out the window, as well as the concept of Personal Responsibility -- which Existentialists demand, probably more than Christians do.

If Margot were a real person would you really love her? Seriously? Would you want to have her in your life and have her waste precious days and weeks and months and years of that life dealing with her murderous shit?

Not me, Brother.

She gets away with Murder. What more does she want?

Gregory....I just love your comment! Bravo! Don't hold back, tell it like it is , bro! Bring it on...give us more.....

I love this story. There are so many points of view. Great white hunter mocking them all and Margo is . . . yes a major bitch. Hemingway could make you feel something in five words and that's why we still read him and he is never irrelevant. I hate hunting but that's beside the point. The story works. it's raw and paints such a picture of this evolving kaleidescope. You thought you had Francis figured out, but NO.