Learning To Wear Pants

“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway

            It did not take long to figure out that these characters were on a hunt in Africa. The conversation between Wilson, Macomber, and Margaret seemed strange and tension filled. Macomber’s situation had not yet been revealed, but being a Hemingway story, it might never be shared. Within a couple of pages, it becomes apparent that Wilson is not an ethical man, encouraging illegal practices to go on in his camp because he believes they work better. According to Kenneth Goodpaster, there are three symptoms of unethical behavior: fixation, justification, and detachment. He fixates on having the best personal service so that he can the most luxurious life without having a broader perspective of how it affects other people. He rationalizes the beatings by convincing himself that they would rather have that than lose their pay, not allowing the workers any chance to speak for themselves. Then he moves onto other topics of conversation, turning to jokes to avoid further talk of the subject. As a person without morals, Wilson surely will not be beneficial for the growing relationship problems between the Macombers.

            Hemingway writes about the actual lion hunt, not leaving it to the iceberg-ian technique, which was surprising. The description of the hunt from the lion’s perspective on page 13 was incredibly depressing. Spoiler Alert: the death of Macomber, however, had no effect on me, due to the desensitization of the murder of humans in today’s society. My response to the lion goes to show why I do not like to go hunting, even though I love shooting, just not live creatures. When the lion charges Macomber, I have a hard time finding anything wrong with his natural response for several reasons. First, I by no means can prove that I would do anything different. Second, everyone else in the hunting group is a professional hunter. They had all done this many before, and who is to say that they did not do the exact came thing the first time a lion charged them? Macomber obviously liked to hunt and fish. At points in the story, it describes his knowledge of duck hunting, trout and salmon fishing, and big-sea fishing. He has a manly side that enjoys the outdoors, but I believe this was his first time to be in a potentially dangerous hunting situation, so without that experience, he has no reason to have a reaction to shooting the animal.

            Moving onto old Margaret, she is considered one of “the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory and the most attractive.” I believe the industry she was involved in only pushed her to further harden her personality. It is competitive, one has to be the best and associate with the best, and one cannot take anything personally. She learned how to get what she wanted without being too concerned about the means that got her there. It all become about satisfaction and control. If something, or someone, did not satisfy her, then she moved on to something new. It was never enough for her thought to just move on unless she kept all of the control. In the case of her husband, she enjoys finding other men to bring her pleasure, but even though she finds that in other men, she cannot stand the thought of her husband moving on to someone else. She must remain his only woman because she feels the need to retain control over him. The thought of him moving on, not even necessarily to another woman, just in life, is too much for her to handle. As soon as she realizes that he may have found the courage to leave her egocentric self, she knows that she must take action to preserve control over the relationship. Her self-perceived need of control continued to the extent that she could not even let him be killed by a buffalo. If anyone was going to take him out of this world, then it was going to be her. Because of this, he became unable to leave her with his newfound courage and she got to have the last say about anything in his life.

            Wilson and Margot did not have a huge secret scheme to off Macomber. The two of them are rather intelligent in the ways of bettering their own lives. They would have come up with a better plan that left a lot less up to chance. It was not until Margaret saw her husband being successful in the buffalo hunt that she realized that he had learned out to wear “the pants” of the relationship. With this new skill and knowing how she had treated him in the past, she become fairly certain that not only was she going to be left without pants, but she also would not have someone ordering her to make sandwiches. She was going to be left in dust with no sense of control. After her lifestyle, she was not going to have the pants taken from her, so she did something drastic. Will she regret it? Possibly, but then she will just control her emotions.