Psychological analysis of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”

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EN 102 Research Paper
Psychological and psychopathic analysis of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Herningway’s The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber is one of the stories that were fitted in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories (1938). It was first printed in 1936 in Cosmopolitan, a well-known newspaper in the 1930s. The short story is about a couple, Francis Macomber and his wife Margot, who travels to Africa for a safari hunt in which they were guided by Wilson, an English hunter. On the first hunt, Macomber is seized with fear when a lion he had shot charges back at him. Wilson kills it but then Margot takes advantage of the event to sleep with Wilson, deeming Macomber to be a coward. On the second day, Macomber gains courage and stands his ground when a buffalo he had wounded charges back at him. With this change in attitude, Margot gets frustrated and aims her gun at her husband, shooting him and instantly killing him. This paper seeks to analyze ways in which Herningway used psychology and psychopathy in the short story.
In his short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, Ernest Hemingway uses psychological tendencies to create his characters in the story as well as drive the entire story. First Margot, Francis Macomber’s wife, exercises a psychological control over her husband because of her beauty which she knows is a reason he can never divorce her (GradesFixer 1). Also, her continual intimidation of him as a coward is a tool that she uses to ensure that he cannot counter her actions; including her behavior of infidelity. She pins her husband down and humiliates him in the public because she knows that as long as she does that, Macomber will never realize his sense of manhood which is the only means through which he can leave her. This tendency makes Margot to exercise infidelity throughout her marriage.
Margo also controls Wilson psychologically to the extent of making him to assert that Macomber’s death was accidental even when he understood that Marcot shot him intentionally (GradesFixer 1). The trick that Marcot uses over Wilson is the fact that she knows he does not usually follow laws and regulations that govern safari hunting (GradesFixer 1). By falsifying the information about Macomber’s death, Wilson ...