"The Capital of the World"

Here we have an exploration of the "coming of age" theme, but a case in which the protagonist never actually comes to age. A hotel in Madrid is filled with various characters associated with bullfighting, the matadors themselves, picadors, and banderilleros. A boy, Paco, works at the hotel and fantasizes about becoming a brave bullfighter himself. Paco is unquestionably a romantic, and is contrasted by his cynical co-worker, Enrique, who had tried bullfighting himself, but run in fear from the bull's charge.

Enrique challenges Paco's claims to bravery in the face of an actual bull, and simulates a charge of the bull's horns with a chair which he has fastened kitchen knives to. Paco predictably gets stabbed and dies. He dies without ever experiences the decline and fall of a bullfighter, an experience that the three past-their-prime matadors staying at the hotel went through. He never comes to age, but dies a romantic. Hemingway gives us this line in the final paragraph: "He died, as the Spanish phrase has it, full of illusions."

Equally interesting is a peripheral issue concerning the matadors. One of them is specifically labeled a coward. He was impaled by a bull's horn but survived and was since a less than impressive matador. Hemingway brings the issue of cowardly men and their treatment by women into this story much as he did in the Francis Macomber tale. The matador makes advances on Paco's sister, a chambermaid at the hotel, and is rejected by her. She even resorts to calling him a coward to his face. At the end of the story again, a second matador takes home a prostitute for whom the coward was buying drinks. This dynamic of masculinity and women seems to be a recurring theme in Hemingway's writing.

Overall, a decent story. It is somewhat predictable, and in parts, especially at the beginning, the perhaps unnecessarily excessive description of characters overpowers the plot. Not as good as "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," but still worth reading.