헤밍웨이의 아프리카: 미국적 이념의 재생 공간

Abstract

This essay traces Hemingway’s primitivism and his identity as a great American writer, relating his ‘African stories’. His concerns about Africa were influenced by European imperialism, which view Africa as a space of redemption or recreation in the literary sphere. In “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, we find that the American virtues such as hard work, self-reliance and courage are revived and intensified with the African people and their culture remaining as the marginal or the oppressed. His characters are indulged in the pursuit of redemption and their shortcomings are seen in that they are ignorant of African culture and people, or at least don’t care about them. Africa remains as the playground for white people’s individuation. With the publication of these stories, Hemingway reclaims his status as a great American writer. He reaffirmed the American virtues in the modern world. With his affirmation, puritanism and frontier mind are revived through his characters. Therefore, Hemingway’s Africa can be defined as the space of his revival as a writer, and that of national ideologies’s intensification. Hemingway’s lack of insight for African culture and its people limits his scope of imagination and gives little space for criticizing his own people and culture.