The Capital of the World (short story)
"The Capital of the World" is a short story by American writer Ernest Hemingway. The story takes place in Madrid and follows Paco, a young waiter apprentice, and his desire to become a matador.
Summary
The story opens in a hotel called the Pension Luarca in Calle San Jeronimo. The main source of residency in the cheap hotel is a group of second-rate bullfighters, who, for the most part, were all great at some point, but some obstacle or circumstance has ended their careers with no likely hope in sight. Of the bullfighter residents in the hotel there is one banderillero, two picadors, and three matadors. The other main characters in the story are three waiters, all with different things they plan to do the evening the story is set. Also included is the dish washer Enrique, who contributes to the story's tragic end.
The work has a back story for each character telling his or her almost consistently sad tale. Of the three matadors, one has prematurely ended his career because of being badly mauled in the ring, and is now afraid to go back in. The second one has done nothing to himself to hurt his career, but is constantly ill, only making appearances out of his room for meals. Finally, the third matador’s career has ended because his once original routine has grown old and people have lost interest.
The other toreros' stories do not display quite so much detail. One of the picadors drinks himself into a stupor every night, while the other is a large man who rarely gets work with a matador for very long due to his argumentative nature. The banderillero is a middle-aged man who, unlike most of the others at the hotel, still has a sufficient amount of promise. The other characters who come to the attention of the reader later in the evening have stories as well, especially Paco, the waiter apprentice from Extramadura. The three waiters, all with different thoughts on their mind, prepare to serve dinner in the dining room.
The first waiter finds himself anxious to leave early for the anarcho-syndicalist political meeting later that night, so Paco agrees to cover for him so that he may leave early. The second waiter, a middle aged man, has no real plans for the evening other than to serve tables. Finally, there is Paco, a boy who aspires to become a bullfighter like the people he serves at the restaurant.
After the dining hours come to a close and people start leaving, Paco and the middle-aged worker head back to the kitchen and start drinking a bottle of wine with Enrique, the dish washer. After the middle-aged man leaves, Enrique starts talking to Paco about how dangerous bullfighting is, but Paco insists that he wants to be a bullfighter someday. So to prove his point, Enrique gets a chair and puts knives on it, charging at Paco as a bull would. Paco dodges the knives at first, but after he cheats death several times, a knife pierces his leg, severing the femoral artery. He soon dies, his head "full of illusions".
First published in Esquire in June 1936 as "The Horns of the Bull", it was changed to its present title in the short story collection The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, published in 1938.[1]
References
- ^ Jackson J. Benson (1990). New critical approaches to the short stories of Ernest Hemingway. Duke University Press. p. 243. ISBN 978-0-8223-1067-9. Retrieved 17 July 2010.
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- The Torrents of Spring (1926)
- The Sun Also Rises (1926)
- A Farewell to Arms (1929)
- To Have and Have Not (1937)
- For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
- Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
- The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
- Death in the Afternoon (1932)
- Green Hills of Africa (1935)
- A Moveable Feast (1964)
- Islands in the Stream (1970)
- The Dangerous Summer (1985)
- The Garden of Eden (1986)
- True at First Light (1999)
- Under Kilimanjaro (2005)
- "Up In Michigan" (1921)
- "Indian Camp" (1924)
- "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" (1925)
- "The End of Something" (1925)
- "The Three-Day Blow" (1925)
- "The Battler" (1925)
- "A Very Short Story" (1925)
- "Soldier's Home" (1925)
- "The Revolutionist" (1925)
- "Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" (1925)
- "Cat in the Rain" (1925)
- "Out of Season" (1925)
- "Cross Country Snow" (1925)
- "My Old Man" (1925)
- "Big Two-Hearted River" (1925)
- "Banal Story" (1926)
- "Today is Friday" (1926)
- "A Canary for One" (1927)
- "Fifty Grand" (1927)
- "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927)
- "The Killers" (1927)
- "The Undefeated" (1927)
- "Che Ti Dice La Patria?" (1927)
- "In Another Country" (1927)
- "Now I Lay Me" (1927)
- "A Simple Enquiry" (1927)
- "Ten Indians" (1927)
- "An Alpine Idyll" (1927)
- "A Pursuit Race" (1927)
- "On the Quai at Smyrna" (1930)
- "Fathers and Sons" (1932)
- "A Natural History of the Dead" (1932)
- "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1933)
- "A Day's Wait" (1933)
- "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" (1933)
- "A Way You'll Never Be" (1933)
- "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936)
- "The Capital of the World" (1936)
- "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1936)
- "Old Man at the Bridge" (1938)
collections
- Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923)
- In Our Time (1925)
- Men Without Women (1927)
- Winner Take Nothing (1933)
- The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)
- The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1961)
- The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War (1969)
- The Nick Adams Stories (1972)
- The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)
- Ernest Hemingway: The Collected Stories (1995)
- "On Writing"
- 88 Poems (1979)
- Complete Poems
- Today is Friday (1926)
- The Fifth Column (1938)
- The Spanish Earth (1937 film)
journalism
- By-Line: Ernest Hemingway (1967)
- Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (1981)
- Dateline: Toronto (1985)
- The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway (2011)
The Sun Also Rises |
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"The Killers" |
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A Farewell to Arms |
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To Have and Have Not |
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For Whom the Bell Tolls |
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The Old Man and the Sea |
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Other film adaptations |
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- Birthplace and boyhood home
- Michigan cottage
- Hemingway-Pfeiffer House
- Key West home
- Hotel Ambos Mundos, Havana home
- Finca Vigía, Cuba home
- Idaho home
- Bacall to Arms (1946 cartoon)
- Hemingway: On the Edge (1987 play)
- In Love and War (1996 film)
- Midnight in Paris (2011 film)
- Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012 film)
- Cooper & Hemingway: The True Gen (2013 documentary)
- Papa: Hemingway in Cuba (2015 film)
- Genius (2016 film)
- Hemingway (2021 documentary series)
- Nick Adams
- Floridita
- Pilar (boat)
- Iceberg theory
- Ernest Hemingway International Billfishing Tournament
- International Imitation Hemingway Competition
- Maxwell Perkins
- Adriana Ivancich
- Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
- Premio Hemingway
- Hello Hemingway (1990 film)
- Hemingway: A Portrait (1999 documentary)
- Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure (1999 documentary)
- Hemingway crater
- Kennedy Library Hemingway collection
- Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (first wife)
- Jack Hemingway (son)
- Pauline Pfeiffer (second wife)
- Patrick Hemingway (son)
- Gloria Hemingway (daughter)
- Martha Gellhorn (third wife)
- Mary Welsh Hemingway (fourth wife)
- Lorian Hemingway (granddaughter)
- Margaux Hemingway (granddaughter)
- John Hemingway (grandson)
- Mariel Hemingway (granddaughter)
- Grace Hall Hemingway (mother)
- Leicester Hemingway (brother)
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