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Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a story about a man and his dying, his relationship to his wife, and his recollections of a troubling existence. It is also, more importantly, a story about writing. Through the story of Harry, a deceptive, dying, decaying writer, Hemingway expresses his own feelings about writing, as an art, as a means of financial support, and as an inescapable urge. Much criticism has been written about the failures of …

…cannot be understood. The only reason to view Harry as a failure is because he never writes what he wants to write. The stories, the text he most desires to write, he fears, will die with him. But what Harry is never allowed to write, the pieces of "Snows" in italics, is in fact written. How can Harry be viewed as a failure when what he most desires to write is, in the end, readable?