Themes Within "The Killers"
One theme deals with the failure of the parents of the Lost Generation to provide their children with the means to handle the cruelty and meaninglessness of 20th-century America.
Chaos is another theme in "The Killers". The many misrepresentations throughout the story create a plane of chaos for the reader, and dislocation, almost as if it is happening in another world.
Masculinity is the next theme. Although Hemingway is known for the "manly men" in his stories, in "The Killers", the two hit men are comical and clownish men. Hemingway at one point describes them as the "vaudeville twins".
Read more about this topic: The Killers (short Story)
Famous quotes containing the words themes and/or killers:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“we want to remember when you were
money in Massachusetts and yet were wild and rude
and killers. We want our killers dressed in black
like grease for we are sick of writing checks,
putting on our socks and working in the little boxes
we call the office.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)