TOW #24

My TOW this week is an Ernest Hemingway’s essay called Camping Out and it starts with Hemingway describing with how going camping can be either a relaxing vacation or a terrible experience based on your knowledge on the subject.  He outlines points that can make a camping trip horrible, leading the reader to believe that he has done this many times himself and he truly is an expert.Hemingway’s protagonist in this story is Wilson, the hunter who lives and breathes the great outdoors. The story to juxtaposes another character Macomber to Wilson while Wilson is the favored in that comparison due to his outdoorsiness. However, at the end of the story Wilson breaks the code to which he lives by as he hunts down buffalo in a car, an illegal act. .Two literary techniques are in play throughout the story that enliven the action and embellish Hemingway’s otherwise minimal descriptive passages. The first is onomatopoeia, and is best exemplified by “whunk,” the noise Macomber’s bullet makes as it hits the lion and “carawong,” the noise Wilson’s high-velocity “big gun” makes as it fires at game (p. 26, 34). Hemingway’s usage of these terms helps the reader imagine the noises of the hunt. The second technique Hemingway employs is simile and metaphor. The most notable example occurs in Wilson’s thoughts when Macomber asks if they should leave the wounded lion, “Robert Wilson, whose entire occupation had been with the lion and the problem he presented, and who had not been thinking about Macomber except to note that he was rather windy, suddenly felt as though he had opened the wrong door in a hotel and seen something shameful” (p. 24). This simile demonstrates Wilson’s shock at hearing Macomber voice such cowardly ideas. Macomber would rather leave the lion to suffer or risk someone else running into the lion and possibly being killed than face up to hunting it down and finishing what he started.