Title
"Night Song": Africa and Eden in Hemingway’s Late Work
Document Type
Essay
Annotation
Evolutionary approach to True at First Light, focusing on the essential human needs to reproduce, kill, and eat. Examines Hemingway’s interest in anthropology, Mary’s lion hunt, and the courtship with Debba, reading the novel as Hemingway’s humorous critique of cultural practices. Bender writes that many of Hemingway’s writings, including stories of Native Americans and depictions of African inhabitants in Green Hills of Africa and True at First Light, “reflect his impatience with the idea that there are primitive people who are essentially different from him or that the subconscious in popular Freudianism can be meaningfully associated with the primitive.” Only briefly mentions David’s African story in The Garden of Eden, focusing instead on his bisexuality and androgynous relationship with Catherine.
Published in
Evolution and ‘the Sex Problem’: American Narratives during the Eclipse of Darwinism
Date
2004
Pages
329-357
Citation
Bender, Bert. “‘Night Song’: Africa and Eden in Hemingway’s Late Work.” In Evolution and ‘the Sex Problem’: American Narratives during the Eclipse of Darwinism, 329-57. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2004.