Only a shift in focalization allows an intrusion into the main character's conciosuness. This effaced narrator resembles a camera in his/her reporting actividi. The narrator's role is reduced to a voice that reports in an unobtrusive, detached way. Otherwise, he refers only to her as "she." Harry never calls Helen by her name, and it is only near the end of the story, during the plane trip episode in his mind, when she is named. In the story, Harry feels that he has been bought by his wife's money, and it is a feeling he can barely tolerate. The main character's wife was loosely based on Hemingway's second wife, Pauline. Since Hemingway based this character on himself, he made Harry very realistic, drawing on his own professional resume to establish a journalistic background for Harry. Hemingway skillfully develops Harry's character by use of his cutting words to his wife, his memories of other women and other times, his attitude towards death, and his ceaseless drinking even when he knows it is harmful. He is dying of a septic leg on safari in Africa and ruminates on both his experiences and his failure to write about them. The protagonist of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," a writer who has accomplished comparatively little in writing, instead choosing to live off a series of rich wives.
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