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redemptive note. But the redemption proves to be too expensive, at
least for us. Fo r our descendents, it will probabl y merely be boring,
since suicide, like birth control , is in the process o f being legitimati zed
as a simpl e necessity. "At a certain point of despair," writes A. Alva rez,
"a man will kill himself in order to show he is serious." And tha t point
is reached when the excess of pain threatens to turn con scio usness itself
into a ho llow white light behind which the self, or a t least wha t the
prospective sui cide views as the self, di sintegra tes. The struggle is
between the obliga tion to endure pa in and the need to take one's leave
with some di gnity intact. But both the endurance o f pa in and the
possibility of maintaining one's dignity depend upon the convicti on
tha t the choice o f suicide represents the culmina ti on of a strugg le. " He
decided to pack it in " is how I hea rd a sui cide recentl y described . A
model sentence for our time. Simplicity has rarely been better served.
For Hemingway , who possessed a traditional Wes tern vi ew of
suicide, the choi ce came down to a selection o f humiliations. He had
long since placed himself on the side of those fo r whom ui cide
represented a surrender, an action in whi ch a man sheds hi s more
courageous self and g ives in to cowardi ce. Tha t the actio n might be
made authenti c by th e sui cide's despair made it no less cowardl y.
Hemingway saw suicide as a nega tion , even the sui cide of an a rti st who
had long since been parodying his own best work and whose life had
begun to assume the dimensions o f a grotesqueri e through the publi c
parading of virtues whi ch were supposedly priva te. T o commit sui cide
was to give up o n one's own manhood , to admit to the inadequacy of
what he had , in tha t unfortuna tely memo rabl e phrase, spo.ken o f as
"grace under pressure."
Hemingway left readers wondering why, like the grace o f god , it
was no t avail abl e to all. And whil e he nowh ere sta tes it, "grace under
pressure" is a specificall y masculine grace to be fo ught for and
hungered after as men fi ght for and hunger after those endowments
they must possess to be men . The phrase is very close in meaning to
wha t is meant today by " ba ll s," whi ch suggests no t merely courage but
courage eager to tes t its own limits. I suspect th a t thi s is one of the
reasons why Hemingway was so singul arl y unsuccessful in crea ting
women. His women characters a re, with very few exceptions, boring
and unrea l. They are a lways seconda ry, and th ey seem to be little more
than background again st whi ch hi s men crea te th eir des tini es, ra ther
di sconcerting ly simila r to the bull s in
Death in th e A ft ernoon.
Even in
a wo rk of nonfi cti on , such as
G reen H ills of A fr ica,
Hemingway seems
in capabl e o f getting beyond the woman who es ta blishes her presence
onl y through her capacity to servi ce her man .
In
lha l book, hi s wife is
