Why was Hemingway so fascinated with death?
In his book on bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway observed that, “All stories, if continued far enough, end in death.” Death looms large in Hemingway’s novels, most of which end with the explicit or implied demise of a major character. In his personal life, Hemingway deliberately courted danger and exhibited a fatalistic disregard for his own life. Some of Hemingway’s biographers have speculated that his apparent fascination with death arose from the nearly fatal injuries that he received in World War I. Hemingway saw very little action on the Italian front and may have felt a compulsion to repeatedly test his own courage. Plainly, in his books and in his own life, Hemingway considered confrontations with death to offer an “opportunity to define oneself.
