What do you think?
Rate this book
The Killers and Other Short Stories.
Paperback
Published January 1, 1982
About the author
Ernest Hemingway
2,117 books33.1k followersErnest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 19, 2025
The Killers by Ernest Hemingway
Inspired by a real story
Hemingway was a great writer.
Four of his works are listed on various lists of the best works: For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises.
I liked more the last two, for the others I did not really have such fond memories.
Then we have the short stories, some of which are fascinating.
I am however influenced by an excellent book- The Intellectuals by Paul Johnson, from which we can learn about Ibsen, Rousseau, Tolstoy, Hemingway and others.
Most of the intellectuals in that book come across as selfish, arrogant and full of weaknesses.
- Aren’t-t we all like that?
- Yeas, but not on such a scale and besides, I for one have expected great thinkers to show some sense and restraint in their private life
Alas, Hemingway is the opposite of a role model, if we look at the violence, the drinking, even the poor personal hygiene that characterized him, at least in various stages of his life.
Sure, we need not look at the man, and care more, or is it only about his work.
In fact, I had not much liked For Whom the Bell tolls and A Farewell to Arms, even before I read about Hemingway the man.
In The Killers, two hit men are planning a murder. They enter a restaurant looking for former boxer, Ole Anderson.
Reading about the story, we find that the Chicago mob had killed a popular boxer of the time, Andre Anderson, who'd once knocked Jack Dempsey off his feet, likely Hemingway's source for the hero of the story.
Although a rather good boxer throughout his career, Ole Anderson – the name in the story is very close to that of the real champion- has come to realize that he has problems training.
He cannot sleep very well at night and does not look as if he is in top form. Newspaper men say that he is a sure victim for his opponent.
The strange thing is that Ole adopts the mindset of a loser. He says that this is the end and even advices his trainer and friend to bet on the other fighter:
- It is the end of the game for me. I will retire after this game and I am betting on the other guy
- You better do the same.
With everybody expecting ole to lose the game, the reader can wonder where is the thrill, why go on reading, if we know so well what happens next.
But there is a surprise.
Having wagered most of his money on his opponent, Ole provides an unexpected turn of events. He fights according to plan. He had been asked to fall in the tenth round and stay on the floor.
But the other boxer starts playing dirty, with heavy, ugly blows under the belt, with the glove opened. These are against the rules of the game.
But the referee does not sanction this, probably because he is in cahoots with the mob.
Ole is angered by all this ugly behavior and starts fighting back, until he becomes the winner after a glorious Knock Out. The public is uproarious and the winner is taken on the shoulders and acclaimed.
But the end result is not good at all. I will spare you the details to let you enjoy the read.
Hemingway has said that:
“That story probably had more left out of it than anything I ever wrote. I left out all Chicago, which is hard to do in 2951 words”
Inspired by a real story
Hemingway was a great writer.
Four of his works are listed on various lists of the best works: For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises.
I liked more the last two, for the others I did not really have such fond memories.
Then we have the short stories, some of which are fascinating.
I am however influenced by an excellent book- The Intellectuals by Paul Johnson, from which we can learn about Ibsen, Rousseau, Tolstoy, Hemingway and others.
Most of the intellectuals in that book come across as selfish, arrogant and full of weaknesses.
- Aren’t-t we all like that?
- Yeas, but not on such a scale and besides, I for one have expected great thinkers to show some sense and restraint in their private life
Alas, Hemingway is the opposite of a role model, if we look at the violence, the drinking, even the poor personal hygiene that characterized him, at least in various stages of his life.
Sure, we need not look at the man, and care more, or is it only about his work.
In fact, I had not much liked For Whom the Bell tolls and A Farewell to Arms, even before I read about Hemingway the man.
In The Killers, two hit men are planning a murder. They enter a restaurant looking for former boxer, Ole Anderson.
Reading about the story, we find that the Chicago mob had killed a popular boxer of the time, Andre Anderson, who'd once knocked Jack Dempsey off his feet, likely Hemingway's source for the hero of the story.
Although a rather good boxer throughout his career, Ole Anderson – the name in the story is very close to that of the real champion- has come to realize that he has problems training.
He cannot sleep very well at night and does not look as if he is in top form. Newspaper men say that he is a sure victim for his opponent.
The strange thing is that Ole adopts the mindset of a loser. He says that this is the end and even advices his trainer and friend to bet on the other fighter:
- It is the end of the game for me. I will retire after this game and I am betting on the other guy
- You better do the same.
With everybody expecting ole to lose the game, the reader can wonder where is the thrill, why go on reading, if we know so well what happens next.
But there is a surprise.
Having wagered most of his money on his opponent, Ole provides an unexpected turn of events. He fights according to plan. He had been asked to fall in the tenth round and stay on the floor.
But the other boxer starts playing dirty, with heavy, ugly blows under the belt, with the glove opened. These are against the rules of the game.
But the referee does not sanction this, probably because he is in cahoots with the mob.
Ole is angered by all this ugly behavior and starts fighting back, until he becomes the winner after a glorious Knock Out. The public is uproarious and the winner is taken on the shoulders and acclaimed.
But the end result is not good at all. I will spare you the details to let you enjoy the read.
Hemingway has said that:
“That story probably had more left out of it than anything I ever wrote. I left out all Chicago, which is hard to do in 2951 words”
October 11, 2010
"The Killers," Ernest Hemingway's story about two hit men who come to a small town to kill a former prizefighter, was first published in the March 1927 issue of Scribner's Magazine. Hemingway was paid two hundred dollars for the story, which was the first of his mature stories to appear in an American periodical. His original title for the story was "The Matadors." Hemingway included the story in his 1927 collection Men Without Women, and it also appears in The Nick Adams Stories (1972). "The Killers" remains one of Hemingway's most anthologized stories because it is representative of Hemingway's style and the subjects that would occupy his work throughout his career. These subjects include the meaninglessness of human life, male camaraderie, and the inevitability of death, and Hemingway explores them using his signature short sentences, slang, and understatement.
Hemingway claims to have written the story in a frenzy of inspiration on May 16, 1926, before lunch. Like many of his short stories, "The Killers" features Nick Adams, a typical Hemingway hero, one in a long line of Hemingway's fictional selves. Hemingway introduced Nick Adams in his first collection of stories, In Our Time (1925). Nick is an adolescent in "The Killers," and critics have argued that Nick's experience with the hit men marks his initiation into adulthood and his introduction to evil and violence.
Hemingway's plot is laden with irony and with characters misreading one another, suggesting that the world is not as it seems. For example, although Max and Al come to town to kill Ole Andreson and know that he eats at Henry's at six o'clock, they ask George the name of the town, and then when George tells them, Max says he never heard of it. Henry's, though referred to as a "lunchroom," is actually a made-over saloon. A similar confusion of identity occurs when Nick addresses Mrs. Bell as Mrs. Hirsch because he assumes that she is the owner of the rooming house. The men come to a town called "Summit" to kill on a "nice fall day," compounding the irony. These glaring differences between the world as it is and the world as it seems affect Nick the most, whose own world up until that point more or less conformed to his expectations as an orderly place.
Hemingway, known for his representations of manly men who live by a code of honor, parodies his own image of masculinity by making the hit men, Al and Max, clownish figures. The men look the part of stereotypical gangsters, wearing derby hats and tight overcoats and keeping their gloves on when they eat. They also talk tough, announcing their plans to kill Ole, using slang, answering questions with questions, and mocking the masculinity of George, Sam, and Nick. For example, Max comments about George: "Bright boy can do anything… He can cook and everything. You'd make some girl a nice wife, bright boy." Al describes Sam and Nick, gagged and bound in the kitchen, as "a couple of girl friends in the convent." Al and Max are counterpoints to Nick Adams, an innocent, who believes he can do something to change the situation by telling Ole about the men. This story marks Nick's initiation into the world of men and its attendant violence, chaos, and strategies for survival.
Societies have laws to ensure a safe environment for their citizens, to maintain order, and to instill a sense of justice in the populace. The blatant flouting of laws, as in Hemingway's story, suggests not only that society has deteriorated but also that there is nothing to be done about it. Al and Max do not fear being caught and, indeed, claim to have no stake in killing Andreson, saying they are doing it "to oblige a friend." Sam's response to the events, to have nothing to do with any of it, underscores the sense of resignation informing the story. George's response is that addressing crime is someone else's responsibility and tells Nick to visit Ole. Nick's response is one of disillusionment and shock and a desire to run away from the town rather than accept its random dangers. These reactions represent a range of responses that Chicagoans had towards criminal activities in the 1920s. The sense of resignation, in large part, stems not only from Hemingway's own dark view of human nature but from the knowledge that many of the Chicago crime bosses had bought off the police, ensuring that law and order became a privilege for the few rather than a right of the many.
Dialogue, the conversation between two or more characters, is a primary tool of characterization. Writers create characters through shaping their speech in ways that reflect their desires and motivations. In addition to physically describing Max and Al as stereotypical gangsters, Hemingway has them talk like gangsters as well. Their speech is peppered with insults, wisecracks, and slang, and they never answer a question directly. They speak like characters out of a Dashiell Hammett novel, in terse bursts. Hammett was popular for his detective stories and his character, Sam Spade, a wisecracking antihero. Dialogue also characterizes the other players in the story as well. For example, when Sam speaks, he makes it clear that he does not want to be involved in any way, and when Nick speaks, he expresses his youth and innocence through his incredulity.
"The Killers" begins with two men walking into Henry's lunchroom and discussing what they want to eat. Max and Al bicker over what menu items are available with George, the counterman who had been talking with Nick Adams, the only other customer. Some confusion occurs over the correct time. The clock says 5:20, but George tells the men it is twenty minutes fast. The men finally order eggs with ham and bacon and then taunt Nick and George, sarcastically calling them "bright boys" and making fun of their small town, Summit. Al and Max order George to tell the cook, Sam, to come out of the kitchen, and then Al takes Nick and Sam back into the kitchen. They call Sam "nigger," a much-used epithet for African Americans in 1920s' America.
Hemingway claims to have written the story in a frenzy of inspiration on May 16, 1926, before lunch. Like many of his short stories, "The Killers" features Nick Adams, a typical Hemingway hero, one in a long line of Hemingway's fictional selves. Hemingway introduced Nick Adams in his first collection of stories, In Our Time (1925). Nick is an adolescent in "The Killers," and critics have argued that Nick's experience with the hit men marks his initiation into adulthood and his introduction to evil and violence.
Hemingway's plot is laden with irony and with characters misreading one another, suggesting that the world is not as it seems. For example, although Max and Al come to town to kill Ole Andreson and know that he eats at Henry's at six o'clock, they ask George the name of the town, and then when George tells them, Max says he never heard of it. Henry's, though referred to as a "lunchroom," is actually a made-over saloon. A similar confusion of identity occurs when Nick addresses Mrs. Bell as Mrs. Hirsch because he assumes that she is the owner of the rooming house. The men come to a town called "Summit" to kill on a "nice fall day," compounding the irony. These glaring differences between the world as it is and the world as it seems affect Nick the most, whose own world up until that point more or less conformed to his expectations as an orderly place.
Hemingway, known for his representations of manly men who live by a code of honor, parodies his own image of masculinity by making the hit men, Al and Max, clownish figures. The men look the part of stereotypical gangsters, wearing derby hats and tight overcoats and keeping their gloves on when they eat. They also talk tough, announcing their plans to kill Ole, using slang, answering questions with questions, and mocking the masculinity of George, Sam, and Nick. For example, Max comments about George: "Bright boy can do anything… He can cook and everything. You'd make some girl a nice wife, bright boy." Al describes Sam and Nick, gagged and bound in the kitchen, as "a couple of girl friends in the convent." Al and Max are counterpoints to Nick Adams, an innocent, who believes he can do something to change the situation by telling Ole about the men. This story marks Nick's initiation into the world of men and its attendant violence, chaos, and strategies for survival.
Societies have laws to ensure a safe environment for their citizens, to maintain order, and to instill a sense of justice in the populace. The blatant flouting of laws, as in Hemingway's story, suggests not only that society has deteriorated but also that there is nothing to be done about it. Al and Max do not fear being caught and, indeed, claim to have no stake in killing Andreson, saying they are doing it "to oblige a friend." Sam's response to the events, to have nothing to do with any of it, underscores the sense of resignation informing the story. George's response is that addressing crime is someone else's responsibility and tells Nick to visit Ole. Nick's response is one of disillusionment and shock and a desire to run away from the town rather than accept its random dangers. These reactions represent a range of responses that Chicagoans had towards criminal activities in the 1920s. The sense of resignation, in large part, stems not only from Hemingway's own dark view of human nature but from the knowledge that many of the Chicago crime bosses had bought off the police, ensuring that law and order became a privilege for the few rather than a right of the many.
Dialogue, the conversation between two or more characters, is a primary tool of characterization. Writers create characters through shaping their speech in ways that reflect their desires and motivations. In addition to physically describing Max and Al as stereotypical gangsters, Hemingway has them talk like gangsters as well. Their speech is peppered with insults, wisecracks, and slang, and they never answer a question directly. They speak like characters out of a Dashiell Hammett novel, in terse bursts. Hammett was popular for his detective stories and his character, Sam Spade, a wisecracking antihero. Dialogue also characterizes the other players in the story as well. For example, when Sam speaks, he makes it clear that he does not want to be involved in any way, and when Nick speaks, he expresses his youth and innocence through his incredulity.
"The Killers" begins with two men walking into Henry's lunchroom and discussing what they want to eat. Max and Al bicker over what menu items are available with George, the counterman who had been talking with Nick Adams, the only other customer. Some confusion occurs over the correct time. The clock says 5:20, but George tells the men it is twenty minutes fast. The men finally order eggs with ham and bacon and then taunt Nick and George, sarcastically calling them "bright boys" and making fun of their small town, Summit. Al and Max order George to tell the cook, Sam, to come out of the kitchen, and then Al takes Nick and Sam back into the kitchen. They call Sam "nigger," a much-used epithet for African Americans in 1920s' America.
December 6, 2014
I feel sort of blasphemous giving a writer like Hemingway 2 stars. I recognize that writers used to have a lot more writing freedom than they do now and Hemingway was a popular writer in his day, but I can not stand when I have to read a story three times before I can even figure out who is saying what.
September 18, 2016
Hemingway knows how to create an authentic, honest story. The character Ole Anderson from "The Killers" was probably my favourite piece of the story because he was this heavyweight prizefighter and everyone had this image of him that he was this intimidating, stoic man. But in reality, he's internally broken and weak. Hemingway didn't make him invincible, he didn't dehumanise him - he gave him real emotions.
But, what I didn't like about the story is that it reeked with dialogue and lacked in description. I wanted to connect more with the characters and know more about their backstories. I was a bit confused so I had to go through it a couple of times in order to understand it. Both features are very important - but I think there should always be a balance between the two.
But, what I didn't like about the story is that it reeked with dialogue and lacked in description. I wanted to connect more with the characters and know more about their backstories. I was a bit confused so I had to go through it a couple of times in order to understand it. Both features are very important - but I think there should always be a balance between the two.
May 23, 2018
I found something strange that the writer(Ernest) did not allow us to recognize the characters unless they speak for themselves! wasn't new, but weird.
The story was quiet even though it tells killers and fraud!
I liked the story, it was quite short, primitive, but I didn't like the unnecessary conversations like the conversation that took place in the lunchroom between Sam and the killers.
The story was quiet even though it tells killers and fraud!
I liked the story, it was quite short, primitive, but I didn't like the unnecessary conversations like the conversation that took place in the lunchroom between Sam and the killers.
Read
May 9, 2022Los cuentos que leí:
Los asesinos 3/5
Colinas como elefantes blancos 4/5
El gato bajo la lluvia 2/5
Los asesinos 3/5
Colinas como elefantes blancos 4/5
El gato bajo la lluvia 2/5
September 28, 2017
underwhelming. its underwhelming
May 29, 2018
Why have I even tried picking this up? Maybe because it's written by Hemingway and it's just a short story. BUT EVEN W/ THAT FACT I DNF'd this at 10%.
Read
March 5, 2019- The Killers -
January 1, 2024
I did not appreciate this book. This author does not celebrate life and must have been depressed, a sadist.
September 15, 2024
what the hell is hemingway talking about ??
May 6, 2025
All the machismo that you’d expect of Hemingway, yet lacking some of the subtlety that paints life into characters of his greater works
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews