‘The Killers,’ Ernest Hemingway’s story about two hit men who come to a small town to kill a former prizefighter, was first published in the March 1927 issue of Scribner’s Magazine. Hemingway was paid two hundred dollars for the story, which was the first of his mature stories to appear in an American periodical. His original title for the story was‘The Matadors.’Hemingway included the story in his 1927 collection Men Without Women, and it also appears in The Nick Adams Stories (1972). ‘The Killers’ remains one of Hemingway’s most anthologized stories because it is representative of Hemingway’s style and the subjects that would occupy his work throughout his career. These subjects include the meaninglessness of human life, male camaraderie, and the inevitability of death, and Hemingway explores them using his signature short sentences, slang, and understatement.
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Hemingway claims to have written the story in a frenzy of inspiration on May 16, 1926, before lunch. Like many of his short stories, ‘‘The Killers’’ features Nick Adams, a typical Hemingway hero, one in a long line of Hemingway’s fictional selves. Hemingway introduced Nick Adams in his first collection of stories, In Our Time (1925). Nick is an adolescent in ‘‘The Killers,’’ and critics have argued that Nick’s experience with the hit men marks his initiation into adulthood and his introduction to evil and violence.
Ernest Hemingway’s gripping short story “The Killers” has fascinated readers and filmmakers for generations. Its first screen incarnation came in 1946, when director Robert Siodmak unleashed The Killers, helping to define the film noir style and launching the careers of Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner in this archetypal masterpiece. In 1956, then-film student Andrei Tarkovsky tackled the story with a faithful 19-minute short. In 1964, Don Siegel—initially slated to direct the 1946 version—took it on, creating the first-ever made-for-TV feature, which would prove too violent for American audiences in the wake of JFK’s assassination. The Criterion Collection presents all three versions of this classic tale of amorality that asks why a man would silently welcome his fate with the passivity of a man already dead.
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The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway Summary
Before he gained wide fame as a novelist, Ernest Hemingway established his literary reputation with his short stories. This collection, The Short Stories, originally published in 1938, is definitive. Among these forty-nine short stories are Hemingway's earliest efforts, written when he was a young foreign correspondent in Paris, and such masterpieces as "Hills Like White Elephants," "The Killers," "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber," and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."
Set in the varied landscapes of Spain, Africa, and the American Midwest, this collection traces the development and maturation of Hemingway's distinct and revolutionary storytelling style -- from the plain, bald language of his first story, "Up in Michigan," to the seamless prose and spare, eloquent pathos of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" to the expansive solitude of the "Big Two-Hearted River" stories. These stories showcase the singular talent of a master, the most important American writer of the twentieth century.
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Before he gained wide fame as a novelist, Ernest Hemingway established his literary reputation with his short stories. This collection, The Short Stories, originally published in 1938, is definitive. Among these forty-nine short stories are Hemingway's earliest efforts, written when he was a young foreign correspondent in Paris, and such masterpieces as "Hills Like White Elephants," "The Killers," "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber," and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Set in the varied landscapes of Spain, Africa, and the American Midwest, this collection traces the development and maturation of Hemingway's distinct and revolutionary storytelling style -- from the plain, bald language of his first story, "Up in Michigan," to the seamless prose and spare, eloquent pathos of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" to the expansive solitude of the Big Two-Hearted River stories. These stories showcase the singular talent of a master, the most important American writer of the twentieth century.
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