The Killers (Hemingway short story)

"The Killers" is a

Historians have some documents showing that the working title of the piece was "The Matadors".[1] How much Hemingway received for the literary piece is unknown, but some sources state it was $200.^[2] Hemingway's depiction of the human experience, his use of satire, and the themes of death, friendship, and the purpose of life have contributed to make "The Killers" one of his most famous and frequently anthologized short stories,^{[citation needed]} and it has been adapted or referenced in various other works since its initial publishing.

Plot summary

In 1920s

"The Killers" was written in the 1920s, when organized crime was at its peak during Prohibition. Chicago was the home of Al Capone, and Hemingway himself spent time in Chicago as a young man. When things became too dangerous for the mob, they retreated to the suburb of Summit, where "The Killers" takes place. Not long before the story was written, the Chicago mob had ordered the killing of a popular boxer of the time, Andre Anderson. His killer, Leo Mongoven, went on the run after the killing in 1926 and was captured following a traffic collision that killed Chicago banker John J. Mitchell and his wife in 1927; Hemingway was probably unaware of the accident as his short story went into print. Anderson once defeated Jack Dempsey, likely Hemingway's source for the character of Ole Andreson.^[4]

Despite Hemingway's knowledge of organized crime, he omitted much of that background from the story. Hemingway himself said, "That story probably had more left out of it than anything I ever wrote. I left out all Chicago, which is hard to do in 2951 words."^[5]

The story includes several instances of the "

In 1984, Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, Illinois published the anthology Hemingway at Oak Park High, which included short works that Hemingway had written for his school newspaper and literary magazine. One of the stories, "A Matter of Colour", involves the plot of a boxing manager having a man named Swede hide behind a curtain and hit an opponent during a bout; the Swede fails, and the reader is left with an impression that in retaliation, the boxing manager puts out a contract on his life.^[4][6][7]

Adaptations

• The Killers (1946), a film starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner
• "The Wait" ("La espera" in Spanish) (1950), a short story by Jorge Luis Borges that reinterprets its meaning
• The Killers (1956), a short film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, Aleksandr Gordon, and Marika Beiku
• The Killers (1959), a television special starring Ingemar Johansson, Dean Stockwell, and Diane Baker on CBS's Buick-Electra Playhouse
• The Killers (1964), a film starring Lee Marvin, Ronald Reagan, and Angie Dickinson
• Carnal Circuit (Original Italian title: Femmine insaziabili) (1969), an unofficial adaptation as a giallo
• "Bullet in the Brain" (1995), a short story by Tobias Wolff
• "The Killers", a manga short story by Mamoru Oshii, featured in the 2003–2004 manga Kerberos Saga Rainy Dogs
• "The Killers in the Diner", the fourth episode of Lupin the 3rd Part 6 (2021), directed by Mamoru Oshii, features a retelling of "The Killers" (with elements of Oshii's manga) as the cast searches for a rare printing of the short story.

See also

• Pulp Fiction

References