The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
It is learned from the white, professional hunter and guide, Robert Wilson, that the "gun-bearers" and "personal boys" speak Swahili and sometimes receive illegal lashings.
Wilson refocuses on Macomber and helps him track the wounded buffalo, ominously paralleling the previous day's lion hunt.
He stands his ground and fires, but his shots are too high, impacting the bone shield across the top of the animal's head (the "boss").
Wilson is furious, noting that he would report it as an accident, but heavily indicating that Margot intentionally killed her husband because she knew he would divorce her.
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" was published in the September 1936 issue of Cosmopolitan and later in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938).
[7] She characterises "a predatory (rather than a passive) female who is both betrayer and murderer"; and she emphasizes a connection between "shooting and sex.
Macomber, fleeing from the lion, is unimpressive when compared with Wilson, the seasoned hunter and safari-veteran, cool and collected in the face of danger.
The loss of Macomber's manhood in the encounter with the lion mirrors the blow he takes when Margot blatantly cheats on him.
Macomber progresses from a timid rabbit drinking juice, to a hunter, downing more masculine hard liquor.
Wilson compliments the dead creature as a "hell of a good bull", implying that Macomber is finally worthy of respect by right of the beast he has conquered.
[9] Margot is disturbed by Macomber's sudden confidence and assertion of his manhood, feeling her dominance threatened.
She has just observed her husband become a man, and though she fears the end of their relationship, she is invigorated with energy to start afresh.
[11] "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" has been acclaimed as one of Hemingway's most successful artistic achievements.
"[14] Literary critic and early mentor to Hemingway Edmund Wilson observed bluntly, "The men in …these African stories are married to American bitches of the most soul-destroying sort.
"[15] Other authors who hold similar views regarding Margot include Philip Young, Leslie A. Fiedler and Frank O'Connor.
One question is whether Hemingway intended Robert Wilson as a heroic figure, embodying his ideal of the courageous, hyper-masculine male.
In The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story, author and literary critic Frank O'Connor, though generally an admirer of Hemingway, gives a colorful and uncharitable summation of "The Short Happy Life": Francis runs away from a lion, which is what most sensible men would do if faced by a lion, and his wife promptly cuckolds him with the English manager of their big-game hunting expedition.
As we all know, good wives admire nothing in a husband except his capacity to deal with lions, so we can sympathize with the poor woman in her trouble.
