THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER

'"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"' is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Set in Africa, it was published in 1936 concurrently with "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."
It was filmed in 1947 as ''The Macomber Affair'', starring Gregory Peck and Joan Bennett.^[1]

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The initially cowardly Francis Macomber and his symbolically castrating wife are being guided on a big-game hunt by a professional hunter Robert Wilson. Macomber repeatedly shows his cowardice and is chastised by his wife Margot, who sarcastically responds to his assertiveness late in the story with the line, "You've gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly." Ironically, Macomber does, in fact, finally become truly fearless, as he demonstrates by standing his ground and firing at a charging buffalo, "shooting a touch high each time and hitting the heavy horns, splintering and chipping them like hitting a slate roof..." Margot grabs a gun, ostensibly to stop the still-charging buffalo, and shoots Macomber, killing him. Robert Wilson, having witnessed the profound change of character and self-confidence that had occurred within Macomber, tells Margot, "he would have left you too." Though Wilson says he will report Macomber's death as accidental, it is unclear whether his wife had shot him on purpose or by accident.
In ''The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story,'' author and literary critic Frank O'Connor, though generally an admirer of Hemingway, gives a bemused and somewhat uncharitable analysis of "The Short Happy Life":

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