Hemingway/Wolfe

The snows of Kilimanjaro was a classic read for me.  I have never read Hemingway before and I found this particular story to be wonderfully entertaining.  I was quite fond of the 'flashbacks' that Harry has.  I found myself thinking that they were really just his life passing before his eyes as he lay dying.  All of the italicized portions of the story appear to be thoughts remembered by Harry of his life in the past.  I believe he was 'writing' these thoughts down in his mind since he could not physically write them down.
The hyena was a great symbol of death.  "It came with a rush; not as a rush of water nor of wind; but of a sudden evil-smelling emptiness and the odd thing was that the hyena slipped lightly along the edge of it."  Hyenas are scavengers, always looking for the carcasses of dead animals (stalking and whining as they circle).  Harry is basically a carcass lying there, rotting away so the hyena is drawn to the smell of decay.
The ending was great too!  I love the 'point of view' approach.  Hemingway moves the story along as if Harry has just fallen asleep:  "Bwana is asleep now.  Take the cot up very gently and carry it into the tent."
Then we read about the plane coming in and the pilot entering the camp.  There is dialogue between Harry and Compton.  This little 'trick of the trade' allows the reader to feel some hope that maybe Harry is alive.  Then the plane takes off and we see the things Harry sees.  I also love that when Harry sees Kilimanjaro, that is when the "hyena stopped whimpering in the night and started to make a strange, human, almost crying sound." 
Hemingway's ability to develop his characters through 'flashbacks' (in this story) was very precise and in depth.  I enjoyed this story.
I would love to do in depth blog about Wolfe, but I will save it for another day.  Let me just say that this story truly touched me and created, in me, a sense of melancholy (sp?).  It was very touching.