"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"

Characters:
Francis Macomber - Tall, handsome, rich husband of Margaret Macomber, protagonist, wise in the ways of business and the modern sophistications man must understand to be successful
Margaret Macomber - Wife of Francis, possesses beauty, high degree of feminine prowess
Robert Wilson - shorter, red-faced safari guide, represents the more primal and less sophisticated sense of being a man, good instincts

Summary:
Francis and Margaret Macomber are on a hunting safari in Africa. They are accompanied by their guide, Robert Wilson, who takes Francis out to hunt a certain lion in the area of their camp. Francis shoots and injures the lion, but must confront his fear when the guide insists that they go into the thicket and finish off the crouching brute. He goes in with the guide, but runs in fear from the lion when it charges them. Margaret sees her husband run from her view in the nearby jeep, and also sees the guide subsequently square off with the animal and shoot it head on. The relationship between everyone becomes strained after Francis's embarrassment and Margaret sneaks out of her husband's tent in the middle of the night to go sleep with Wilson. The husband finds out and is even more humiliated, but it isn't openly discussed, just danced around at breakfast. On the next day they hunt buffalo. Again they must go into some bush to flush out a buffalo who was injured, but not killed. Francis asserts himself by assuring everyone he is not afraid this time despite the threat of the buffalo's horns. He goes in, the buffalo charges, his wife tries to shoot the buffalo from the jeep but kills her husband instead.

Criticism:
The story explores the nature of masculinity, and the nature of the female response. While Francis is successful as a man back in an American city, he proves to be inadequate as a man in the realm of raw nature. He lacks the primal masculinity that we see in Wilson. His success is not in his intrinsic identity as an individual man, but in the sophisticated and detached framework of modern existence, where he is defined by contacts, credentials, and cash.

Wilson, however, is the alpha male in this African setting. He is completely at ease with himself, and unaffected, at least externally, by the tensions of Francis and Margaret. We do not know how he would fare in Francis's world, but almost certainly he would maintain his security as a man.

Margaret sleeps with Wilson for several reasons:
First, she doesn't really love Francis anymore than he loves her, or else even his cowardly retreat could have been forgiven if she considered him enough of a man otherwise that such a one-time display was outweighed by other qualities.
Second, Hemingway is using this African setting to explore the basic instincts of human nature. In the animal kingdom the dominant male is pursued by females, and when the absence of the sophistications of modern life are absent, people are left with little more than these basic instincts.
Third, Francis isn't really a man. He has never grown up. He is an identity tied to institutions, opinions, and cocktail parties. He would not survive alone on a desert island.

Margaret is still wicked nonetheless, but she serves as an important foil to the two men to help Hemingway define and explore the idea of masculinity. This is the first story in the book, it is 23 pages long and I was impressed with it. The imagery of the African landscape and the realism used in the depiction of the animals being hunted was excellent.