It is possible to read the texts of Hemingway's short stories, The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936), The Old Man and the Sea (1952) in the context of the "reintegration from collapse".
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Old Man and the Sea
These works have many things in common, for both works attempt to dramatize the process of self-reunification from mental collapse.
More to the point, these works are like one work, starting from The Snow of Kilimanjaro as a prologue, and The Old Man and the Sea as an epilogue.
The protagonists of each work are vulnerable, Harry in The Snows of Kilimanjaro is injured and Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea is aged. Both works dramatize the heroes who cannot exercise their inherent abilities.
Animals have significant roles in these works. The leopard, hyenas, and birds in The Snows of Kilimanjaro correspond to respectively the marlin, sharks, a cat in The Old Man and the Sea. The leopard and the marlin symbolize the heroes’ victory and defeat. Hyenas and sharks are symbols of substitutes for protagonists’ deprived dreams and hopes. The relationship of leopard-marlin and that of hyenas-sharks are pairs of symbolizing similar roles. By contrast, birds in The Snows of Kilimanjaro and a cat from The Old Man and the Sea are a pair of symbolizing opposite roles. Birds are portrayed as messengers of foretelling the protagonist’s fate, while a cat is portrayed as a creature that exists outside of the old man’s world and completely ignores the protagonist’s fate.
To the old man who is exhausted and returns, the cat simply passes by ignoring the very existence of the old man. The emptiness of the old man is further emphasized by the role of the cat.
The role of the cat is reinforced by the American tourist couple at the end. Two strangers, an American couple who doesn’t understand the situation at all due to the language barrier in the Spanish-speaking region and a cat passing by ignoring the existence of the old man, are providing a third perspective from the outside of the story.
