The Protagonist of Hemingway's "The Killers"

The Protagonist of Hemingway's "The Killers"Author(s): Oliver EvansSource: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 73, No. 8 (Dec., 1958), pp. 589-591Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3043251 .

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among the critics of the first quarter of this century concerning tech- nique in the novel.

It is also interesting to note in connection with this letter Mrs. Wharton's comment in 1933 that "If one has sought the publicity of print, and sold one's wares in the open market, one has sold to the purchasers of one's books the right to think what they choose about them; and the novelist's best safeguard is to try to put out of his mind the quality of the praise or blame likely to be meted out to him. . . ." 5

State University of Iowa ERIC LAGUARDIA

The Protagonist of Hemingway's "The Killers" The theory that Ole Andreson is not the protagonist of Hemingway's

by-now classic story, " The Killers," was first suggested by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren in 1936. In An Approach to Litera- ture they wrote: " The story is apparently about the attempt of two gangsters to kill an ex-prizefighter, but the real center of the story lies in the effect of this attempt on one of the boys in the lunch wagon." And later, in Understanding Fiction: " It is Nick's story. And the story is about the discovery of evil. The theme, in a sense, is the Hamlet theme, or the theme of Sherwood Anderson's 'I Want to Know Why."' This interpretation of the story has now become almost as familiar as the story itself, but it will not be satisfactory to many readers.

If Andreson were the protagonist, Brooks and Warren maintain, there is no reason why the story should not end with Nick's visit to Andreson's room-no reason why Nick should meet the landlady and return to the lunchroom. But there is an obvious reason for both of these incidents: to provide the reader with information without which the Swede's situation would not be nearly so significant. Mrs. Bell's opinion of Andreson's character (which she stresses in three of the four short speeches which Hemingway allows her) serves to increase the reader's sympathy for him, and George's surmise that he " must have got mixed up in something in Chicago " and that he probably

c"Confessions of a Novelist," Atlantic, CLI, 392 (April, 1933).

VOL. LXXIII, December 1958 589



" double crossed somebody " suggests a motive for the gunmen, without which their actions would seem unnecessarily mysterious-particu- larly since we have learned that they are unacquainted with their intended victim.

Brooks and Warren see the real point of the story revealed in the bit of dialogue with which it closes:

"I'm going to get out of this town," Nick said. "Yes," said George. " That's a good thing to do." "I can't stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he's

going to get it. It's too damned awful." " Well," said George, " you better not think about it."

A propos of these speeches, they write: " So, of the two boys, it is obviously Nick upon whom the impression has been made. George has managed to come to terms with the situation. By this line of reasoning it is Nick's story."

It is a line of reasoning which the reader is not obliged to follow quite so far. In their desire to prove that the central idea of the story is Nick's discovery of evil, Brooks and Warren have exaggerated the difference between Nick and George, seeing in the former a symbol of the world of innocence and in the latter a symbol of the world of experience. There is really nothing in the above-quoted dialogue (or elsewhere in the story) to justify this impression. The whole passage can be interpreted much more simply. It is scarcely surprising that it is Nick and not George upon whom "the impression has been made," since it is Nick and not George who has just witnessed the terrible scene in Andreson's room: the sight of the big Swede lying on his bed in passive acceptance of his fate. Nor is Nick's decision to leave town indicative of any real difference between the two men: George's introduction to it, after all, was doubtless less sensational, besides which he may have ties which make it difficult for him to leave.

Another passage to which these critics have attached a special im- portance reads: "Nick stood up. He had never had a towel in his mouth before." They claim this as additional evidence of Nick's innocence. But surely the fact that one has never been gagged does not necessarily argue for excessive innocence! (How many people, after all, have been?) " Being gagged," they write, "was something you read about in a thriller and not something which happened to you." It is for this reason, they say, that Hemingway uses the specific word towel instead of the more general gag: " The towel is sanctified in

590 Modern Language Notes



the thriller as the gag, and here that cliche has come true." But it is scarcely necessary to resort to such recondite reasons to explain the preference of towel to gag: apart from the sensory advantages of the former (which they admit), it must not be forgotten that the gagging takes place in a kitchen.

There is a very simple reason why Nick cannot be the protagonist: we do not know enough about him. Indeed, all that we know of his history is that he has never been gagged. On the other hand, Heming- way has been at some pains to inform us of Andreson's appearance' character, and background. We can visualize the Swede, and his prob- lem interests us because we know something about him. Nick has no particular reality for the reader. There is no reason why he should have, since he is merely an instrument for registering the emotions of pity and terror inspired by the sight of a strong man lying helpless on his bed. This is Nick's proper function in "The Killers," as a device, and the fact that Hemingway chooses to communicate these emotions to the reader via Nick does not make it any the less Andreson's story.

University of Illinois OLIVER EVANS

The Grail in the Parcevals Saga In his treatise " Ueber die franz6sischen Gralromane " (Denkschrif-

ten der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Classe, vol. 40, Nr. 3, Vienna, 1892), Richard Heinzel advanced an ingenious theory about the meaning of the curious passage in the Parcevals saga which presumably describes the Grail,

pvi nTst gek inn ein fogr mTr ok bar i hondum ser 17vi likast sem textus vw,ri enn Jeir i volsku mali kalla braull enn vxr megum kalla ganganda grei?5a.'

lleinzel (p. 6 f.) explained the tripartite description of the strange object which most nearly resembled textus, which was in French called

' Here quoted from a photostatic copy of page 49a of the unique medieval manuscript, Cod. isl. perg. 4to, Nr. 6, preserved in the Royal Library in Stockholm. Contractions have been expanded, but diacritical marks have not been added. A normalized text is printed by Eugen Ko6lbing in Riddarasogur, Strassburg, 1872.

VOL. LXxIII, December 1958 591



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The Protagonist of Hemingway's "The Killers"