Course Name：英美短篇小说
Instructor: 王星 教授
Student Name: 袁毅敏
No. 01041083
Dimensions and Theme in The Killers
On the eve of the grand economic crisis of the capitalistic world, the late 1920’s is a turbulent period in the U.S.A. with violence and horror permeating the whole society underneath the surface of the temporary steadiness and prosperity. Among all the novels depicting the dark life then, The Killers is unanimously considered as the best for its superb technic and profound theme.
The Killers offers a perfect example of a narrative that challenges and rewards the readers’ perception of its structure. The structure of a Hemingway’s story can usually be described, conventionally enough, with a set of scenes marked by a change in setting or by a change of characters. What is unconventional and so inscribes his fame as a modernist is that the scenes often are juxtaposed with little transition and less logic to effect or explain their sequence or rationale as a result of his prose style with its syntax linking sentences and simple causes without conjunction and subordination. This is not to say that the structures of the stories lack form or significant pattern, but they are coherent and connected in a sort of dimension which Hemingway said he learnt from cézanne’s paintings. In The Killers, there are totally three main scenes: Henry’s lunchroom, Hirsch’s rooming house, and again Henry’s lunchroom. The first scene opens with two strangers entering Henry’s lunchroom, where George is waiting on Nick Adams at the counter. The strangers, Al and Max, try unsuccessfully to order from the diner menu, then settle for sandwiches, after which their small talk turns ugly. Al takes Sam the cook and Nick into the kitchen, gags and ties them up, and then he and Max reveal that they are waiting to kill the heavyweight prize fighter Ole Andreson when he comes to have dinner at six o’ clock. At last, Ole Andreson does not arrive; the killers leave. In the second scene, Nick goes to Hirsch’s rooming house to tell Ole about two men waiting to kill him and offers to tell the police; but Ole, lying on his bed and looking at the wall, says that he got in wrong; there is nothing to do and he is through running. In the third scene, Nick comes back to Henry’s lunchroom and tells Sam and George his experience at Hirsch’s rooming house. Sam won’t listen to it and goes to the kitchen. The story ends as Nick wonders what Ole did, and George says;
