The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

The title foreshadows the story’s conclusion, making it clear that Francis Macomber will die. However, suspense and character development arise from questions of why his life is both short and happy. Initially, Macomber lacks the courage to make his life happier, just as he lacks the courage to confront the lion.

Despite the great wealth that permits him to fund his safaris, Macomber is initially depicted as emasculated, timid, and inadequate. His money can hire a huntsman and staff to manage his safari, but it cannot provide courage, his wife's respect, or security in his manhood. His wife, Margot, controls and belittles him. She tells Wilson that her husband’s “face is never red” (117); as implied in the subtext, unlike Wilson, Macomber obeys his wife's orders and wears his hat to keep the sun off his face. He is not sunburned because he is not rugged or adventurous, but sheltered, compliant, and cautious.

Further, Margot tells the men that “it’s [her face] that’s red today” (117), indicating her shame at the lack of courage her husband demonstrated by running from the wounded lion, leaving other men to finish his job and kill it to end its suffering and protect others from the beast. After she has sex with Wilson and returns to the tent, her husband says, "You think I'll take anything" (131). She replies, "I know you will, sweet" and calls him "a coward" (131).

When Macomber attempts to stand up for himself, his wife threatens to leave him (133). He attempts to comfort himself with the knowledge that he’s too wealthy for her to leave. The stagnant state of their marriage is rooted in its transactional nature: “Margot [is] too beautiful for Macomber to divorce her and Macomber [has] too much money for Margot ever to leave him” (131). When Margot realizes her husband has developed confidence, she becomes uneasy; the balance of power has shifted, and this formerly timid man might be sufficiently empowered by his newfound confidence to leave her and make a new life for himself.

At the start of the story, Margot held the power in the marriage, threatening to leave Macomber if he didn’t “behave.” She was brazenly unfaithful to her husband on the safari, slipping out of their tent in the night in a way that practically ensured he would learn of her betrayal. By the end of the story, their roles have inverted: Macomber experiences courage and “a wild unreasonable happiness” (139) for the first time in his life, but his wife loses her hold over him. After shooting the buffalo, he says, “I’ve never felt any such feeling. Wasn’t it marvelous, Margot? [...] You know I don’t think I’d ever be afraid of anything again […] I feel absolutely different” (139). These lines demonstrate his character's development from cowardice to courage and from misery to happiness. His short and happy life is the one he creates for himself just before he’s killed, and it is rooted in an exhilaration and sense of autonomy, not in his marriage.   

Throughout the story, Wilson and Macomber are portrayed as foils of one another. After Macomber fails to kill the lion and reveals his cowardice, he sits and waits alone on his bed for his wife to come in. When she enters the tent, she doesn’t sit with or speak to her husband, and he leaves. She demonstrates no empathy for him, and there is no evidence of intimacy in their marriage. His desexualized nature is also evident in Wilson's perception of him as someone who will continue to look like a teenager until midlife; this frames him as a perpetual adolescent, not a fully formed adult.

Further, Macomber’s knowledge of “sex in books, many books, too many books” (130) appears to be mostly theoretical, rather than based in experience. Foiled with this sexual inexperience is Wilson, who recalls his many encounters with women on safaris: “Robert Wilson, carried a double size cot on safari” to accommodate all the women who “did not feel they were getting their money’s worth unless they had shared that cot with the white hunter” (134). He has a one-time sexual encounter with Margot after he kills the lion her husband ran from; he models the traditional masculine norms of aggressiveness and dominance that Macomber initially fails to attain. 

Other descriptions portraying the two men as foils include their physical appearance. Wilson’s face is red from hard work and grit, spending hours in the sun, but Macomber's is red from embarrassment. Wilson’s red face demonstrates his ruggedness and physicality; it is long-lasting and demonstrates his courage and dedication as a brave hunter and skilled outdoorsman. Macomber's red face, however, is a temporary symbol of shame.

Likewise, their clothes reflect their opposing natures. Wilson’s clothes are old and worn out from his many experiences hunting. His left breast pocket is missing, his pants are “old,” and his boots are “very dirty.” In contrast, Macomber is wearing the same outfit as Wilson, but his clothes are “new.” The pristine condition of his wardrobe reflects his inexperience and his passivity; he remains clean because he doesn’t engage in the way that the other men do. Macomber confesses to Wilson that “there are lots of things [he doesn’t] know” (119), further highlighting the distance between the two men. Wilson is set up as a model of the form of masculinity to which Macomber aspires early in the story.

Hemingway suggests that these foils exist because of Macomber's wealth and position in civilized society. Unlike Wilson, who is driven by his physical urges, until his brief triumph as a hunter, Macomber is emasculated by his privileged, sheltered life and elite social position.