The killers

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The Killer is a short story by Ernest Hemingway that first appeared in Scribner's Magazine in March 1927 under the English title The Killers and was then included in the Men Without Women collection (also published by Scribner's in 1927). The German translation by Annemarie Horschitz-Horst was published in 1958. The story is considered to be one of the best short stories in Hemingway and in North American literature.

action

Nick Adams witnesses a robbery as a regular in a small town pub. Two professional criminals threaten Nick, the landlord and the cook with a shotgun and lie in wait for another regular at the establishment. However, the targeted victim, former boxer Ole Andreson, does not appear and the gangsters withdraw. Nick seeks out Ole Andreson to warn him, although doing so could endanger himself. Andreson is aware of the danger but appears too dejected to do anything; he also refuses to flee. The reason for the planned murder of Andreson is only given a presumption: "He was probably involved in something in Chicago."

Narrative form and meaning

The action of the short story in the first part takes place ritually in a certain period of time on a limited scene according to fixed rules. The narrative is emotionless; Feelings are reserved for the reader. Although there is no killing in the short story, the reader can still be certain that Ole Anderson will eventually be murdered. Although Nick Adams tries to save Ole Andreson, fate cannot be stopped. It is timeless and will come true. It no longer matters at what time this happens.

With the vagueness of the statement “They'll kill him” in the original, reference is made to an indefinable future without specifying an exact point in time. With regard to the acting subjects in the story, this expansion into the indefinite and intangible creates a general atmosphere of threat, which is further intensified by the uncertainty about the background, motives, clients and executing perpetrators. As Kuno Schuhmann explains in his interpretation of the short story, this corresponds “to the fact that the decisive people do not appear at the decisive moment. Ole Anderson only meets the reader when his time has already passed. "

The narrative itself works noticeably with flashbacks . For example, it is pointed out that "Henry's lunch-room" was once a pub. The origin of the whole thing is also in Ole's past as a boxer in Chicago. About the narrated overtime also is narrative time marked by the review: At the time highlight the events are presented by means of a flashback. At this point there are also more references to the discrepancy between the displayed time and the actual time; the reader is forced to look back, since the narrator himself uses this principle of representation.

Like the narrative, the clock also refers to the past. It does not show the true time as the present, but only fakes the present through its action. The viewer is constantly referred back to the past. This breaking of the simple course of time through the difference in the set points in time and the resulting conversion leads to a representation of the event not as a straight course, but as a zigzag movement. The clock never shows the actual climax of the action, but rather indicates that it has already been exceeded, thus triggering mixed reactions from the reader: On the one hand, the time indicated on the clock causes a feeling of relief because the climax has already been passed; on the other hand, the reference to the clock makes it clear that this is going on and that the real catastrophe is still to come. This ambiguity not only shapes the time indications, but also the concept of time itself. The action of the clock is confirmed only by George, ie a person involved, but not by the narrator. Ultimately, the time that results from correcting the displayed time is just as subjective as Ole's timelessness; an objective time does not exist in the context of this short story: it is never actually six o'clock. Since there is no crucial point in time, the planned murder in the snack bar does not take place.

Accordingly, the decisive people do not appear at the decisive moment: "Ole Anderson only meets the reader when his time has already passed." Other characters that are significant for the plot do not appear themselves at all, but send others forward, like the clock only as " Agent of the time figured ”. The gangsters act accordingly for a befriended client from outside; George and Sam work for Henry, Mrs. Bell manages the house for Mrs. Hirsch. From this perspective, the action appears, both in terms of time and of the people involved, as the mechanical execution of a certain process according to externally established rules.

A striking feature of the narrative Hemingway is also in this short story that also applies to the tension buildup as a "masterpiece of his epic-dramatic art", the method of the author, hinting and details of the imagination to leave the reader (see. also Hemingway's “ iceberg model ”).

The subject that Hemingway illustrates using Ole Andreson's example is that of “despair and hopelessness,” but he does not treat it in the traditional narrative form: neither tearful eyes nor Ole's complaints are told when Nick visits him. Instead, at the end the reader gets a “visual impression that contains all the details of hopelessness”. Ole's movement and finally his motionless gaze at the wall when Nick leaves the room indicate his departure from this world (in the original text: "As he shut the door he saw Ole Andreson ... looking at the wall"). In Broder Carstensen's analysis, it says : "Ole is dead, although his body is still alive."

Developmental background

At the time The Killers was first published in 1927, the United States was subject to prohibition law , which in the 1920s sparked a previously unknown general desire for alcohol to be obtained. The production and distribution were taken over by organized criminal gangs, especially in Chicago, that is, the place where Ole Andreson comes from. The reference in the text, "Henry's lunch-room" was formerly a bar, is given a more extensive function and meaning in this context: In this way, beyond the text, reference is made to the fact that the story is just "In Our Time" . For contemporary readers, this indication of the location as well as the blasphemous formula “kosher convent” should have been “a linguistic signal for the perverted time relations”; “Kosher” as a “slang expression” in the American colloquial language of the time mainly meant “strong drink” . The familiar formula “Henry's” and the common question “What's yours” in the original text indicate a place that now only promised food instead of alcoholic beverages.

Against this background , the first name Al of one of the gangsters gains in importance: It was Al Capone , one of the most notorious criminals in the USA, who from 1925 as the archetype of an American gang boss controlled the business of the Chicago underworld, but outwardly as an honorable businessman occurred. Of course, the gangster Al in Hemingway's short story must not be misinterpreted as a simple portrait of the real Al Capone; Such a simple identification contradicts the reference character of the names in The Killers , which shows exactly how work is done by others over and over again: “The cooking of the 'nigger', the serving of George, the housekeeping of Mrs. Bell - and the killing from Al and Max ”. The actual clients remain behind the scenes of the questionable events as men of honor. Sam, George and Nick too submit to violence in order not to become victims themselves; their graded responses reflect the gradual decline in morality. In this way, Hemingway demonstrates the conditions and rules of the game, as it were, as a model that determined the historical course of that time on the real social level. Last but not least, the prospect of quick profits prompted numerous business people to respond to the demands of the criminal gangs. In the end, however, it didn't work out for them: the Al Capone gang's net income in 1927 was already more than $ 105 million. The gangsters evidently soon ran their business better than the bourgeois businessmen; they determined "for whom the hour had struck".

One year before the publication of The Killers , the then famous boxer Andre Anderson (Frederick Boeseneilers) was shot dead under mysterious circumstances in a suburb of Chicago in April 1926; Hemingway was possibly inspired by this act to create the character of Ole Andreson in the short story.

Significance in the overall work

The young Nick Adams is the protagonist of several short stories by Hemingway. As in “Indian Camp” and “The Fighter”, Nick is confronted with a harsh reality. In "Die Killer" he does not remain the passive observer, but tries to act responsibly by trying to warn Ole Anderson.

His behavior thus points to a central element of meaning in the story. In The Killers , Hemingway is by no means concerned with creating a naive contrast between order and disorder, but rather with the states that make the macabre interlude of the gangster episode possible in the first place. At the end there is a return to the mock order; In contrast to Nick, George, the owner of the bar, is playing his previous role again: he polishes the bar as always without bothering about what has happened. In the final dialogue, he only responds to Nick's outrage with the distant, polite interest that he owes a guest. What happens outside of his place is no longer of importance to him; For him, people only mean one thing as paying guests. In contrast, Nick Adams cannot be satisfied with such a role behavior. He is the only one who is not integrated into the society shaped by indifference, but rather stands as the opposite pole in the center of the second part.

Nick is the not-yet-adult at this point; In his inexperience, he still believes that the events he experienced had a very special, exceptional character. He is not yet aware that disgust and loathing cannot change any more than changing the scene; He still lacks Hemingway's insight or conviction that it is not emotions that matter, but only action as their objective correlate. Nick's initiation into society leads in The Killers to turn away from society due to his emotional reaction.

In later works and figures, Hemingway pursues this path further and tries to rationalize the emotional conflict shown in The Killers in his worldview. In this attempt at rationalization, the relationships are indeed seen through, but are understood as unchangeable in the author's philosophy of life. The individual can only preserve his dignity by setting another law against the current law of society, which applies exclusively to the individual and, if necessary, to a few like-minded people. The dignity and self-assertion of Hemingway's later Code Hero lies above all in the stoic enduring of the unalterable. In Hemingway's later works, this attitude is no longer supported by morals or ethics, but is postulated and cemented as morality itself.

filming

"Die Killer" was the occasion for two films that begin with the killer confronting the victim. The film plot then develops in flashbacks how the victim got entangled in criminal machinations. Hemingway himself saw the film adaptation from 1946 as the first completely successful film adaptation of one of his works and is said to have seen the film, which he owned as a private copy, more than 200 times.

additional

  • Ubiitsy (1958) , short film by Andrei Tarkowski
  • The Killers (1998) , short film by Todd Huskisson

German-language editions

  • Ernest Hemingway: Around a quarter of a million. Two stories. Binding drawing by Werner Bürger, from the American by Annemarie Horschitz-Horst . Hyperion Verlag, Freiburg around 1958, OCLC 73445060 .
  • Ernest Hemingway: Men Without Women. From the American by Annemarie Horschitz-Horst. 1st edition. Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1958, DNB 451947606 .
  • The killers. In: Ernest Hemingway: 49 stories. From the American by Annemarie Horschitz-Horst. 1st edition. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1965, DNB 451947002 , pp. 304-314.
  • The killers. In: Ernest Hemingway: 49 stories. Volume 2: Men without Women. From the American by Annemarie Horschitz-Horst. 1st edition. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1977, DNB 780123948 , pp. 51-61.
  • The killers. In: Ernest Hemingway: The Nick Adams Stories . Foreword by Philip Young, translation by Annemarie Horschitz-Horst and Richard K. Flesch, Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1983, 11th edition 2013, ISBN 978-3-499-15091-3 , DNB 958272565, pp. 53-64.

literature

  • Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: The Killers - Interpretation . In: Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: Understanding Fiction , Appleton-Century-Crofts, 2nd Edition New York 1971, pp. 303-312.
  • Broder Carstensen : The moment of time and some characteristic motifs in Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers. In: Franz H. Link (Ed.): America · Vision and Reality, contributions to German research on American literary history . Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. et al. 1968, pp. 294-305.
  • Hans Galinski: Persistent Structural Traits in the Change of a Century of American Short History (presented in EA Poe's “The Masque of the Red Death” and Ernest Hemingway's “The Killers”) . In: Heinz Galinski, Klaus Lubbers (ed.): Two classics of American short stories · Interpretations of Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway . Diesterweg Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, ISBN 3-425-04213-0 , pp. 5-51.
  • Klaus P. Hansen: Ernest Hemingway: “A Very Short Story” and “The Killers” - the myth of immediacy . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 265-278.
  • John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch: Ernest Hemingway - The Killers . In: John V. Hagopian, Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I Analyzes of American Literature , Hirschgraben Verlag Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 99-103.
  • Kuno Schuhmann: Hemingway • The Killers. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 268-277.

Web links

annotation

  1. ↑ Siodmak's film was broadcast on January 23, 2012 by ARTE .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Carlos Baker: Hemingway - The Writer as Artist . Princeton University Press, 4th ed. 1972, ISBN 0-691-01305-5 , p. 418.
  2. ↑ Broder Carstensen : The moment of time and some characteristic motifs in Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers. In: Franz H. Link (Ed.): America · Vision and Reality, contributions to German research on American literary history . Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. et al. 1968, p. 294.
  3. ↑ Broder Carstensen : The moment of time and some characteristic motifs in Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers. In: Franz H. Link (Ed.): America · Vision and Reality, contributions to German research on American literary history . Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. et al. 1968, p. 299.
  4. ^ Kuno Schuhmann: Heminway • The Killers. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 274f.
  5. ↑ See Kuno Schuhmann: Hemingway • The Killers. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story , p. 272 ​​f.
  6. ^ Kuno Schuhmann: Heminway • The Killers , p. 273 f.
  7. ↑ Broder Carstensen : The moment of time and some characteristic motifs in Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers. In: Franz H. Link (Ed.): America · Vision and Reality, contributions to German research on American literary history . Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. et al. 1968, p. 295.
  8. ↑ Broder Carstensen : The moment of time and some characteristic motifs in Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers. In: Franz H. Link (Ed.): America · Vision and Reality, contributions to German research on American literary history. Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. et al. 1968, p. 301.
  9. ↑ Broder Carstensen : The moment of time and some characteristic motifs in Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers. In: Franz H. Link (Ed.): America · Vision and Reality, contributions to German research on American literary history . Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. et al. 1968, pp. 301 and 302.
  10. ↑ See Kuno Schuhmann: Hemingway • The Killers. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story , p. 275.
  11. ↑ See Kuno Schuhmann: Hemingway - The Killers. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story , p. 276.
  12. ↑ Andre Anderson (Frederick Boeseneilers) . On: cyberboxingzone . Retrieved October 9, 2014.
  13. ↑ See Kuno Schuhmann: Hemingway • The Killers. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story , p. 276 f.
  14. ↑ See Kuno Schuhmann: Hemingway • The Killers. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story , p. 276 f.
  15. ^ Greco, Joseph: The File on Robert Siodmak in Hollywood: 1941–1951. Dissertation.com USA 1999, ISBN 1-58112-081-8 ; 86. Greco suspects, the film did Hemingway therefore liked it so much, because he whose penchant for misogyny corresponded