Innocence and Experience Theme Analysis

In “The Killers,” Max and Al—a pair of hitmen—travel to a small town to kill one of its residents, the former prizefighter Ole Andreson. At the diner where the murder will take place, Max and Al take three hostages: Nick Adams (a young man who is eating there), George (the manager), and Sam (the cook). When Ole Andreson doesn’t show up, however, Max and Al leave, and the hostages grapple with their experience of evil. Sam and George—who are older and more experienced—want to stay out of the situation, but Nick Adams, the youngest of the men, feels that he needs to do something to help Ole Andreson—a plan that fails when he finds that Ole Andreson himself is resigned to his fate. By showing Nick’s naivety in thinking that he could save Ole Andreson from evil or death, and then showing Nick’s subsequent disillusionment (which brings him more in line with the worldviews of the older men), Hemingway suggests that aging and maturing is a process of learning to accept the inevitability of death.

Although Hemingway does not provide many details about Nick’s age or his past, it is clear that he is still very young and naïve. Other characters (including Max, Al, and Sam) make comments that provide clues about Nick’s age and level of maturity. Max and Al repeatedly refer to Nick as a “boy,” calling attention to both his youth and their complete lack of respect for him. After Max and Al leave, Sam also calls Nick a “little boy” for choosing to go to Ole Andreson’s, which Sam sees as an immature lack of judgment. During his visit to Ole Andreson, Nick rather innocently suggests that there is an easy resolution to the issue or that “it was just a bluff” and Ole will be fine. Only when Ole makes it clear that he’s “through with all that running around” and is not willing to avoid his problems anymore does Nick begin to accept that Ole’s death, no matter how terrible, is unavoidable and that it was foolish of him to think Ole could escape it.

In contrast to Nick’s naïve desire to get involved with Ole, Hemingway presents Sam and George—who are somewhat older and more experienced—as jaded. They are resigned to what is happening and feel like they cannot, or should not, fix it. Sam, for instance, prefers that they all stay out of it. Even though he has literally been tied up in the back of the restaurant by a man with a gun, Sam’s first reaction is simply to say, “I don’t want any more of that.” In service of this goal, he discourages Nick from going to see Ole Andreson, because—while Nick believes that warning Ole Andreson is a courageous and good thing to do—Sam finds it foolish, thinking that it will just bring more trouble. Furthermore, once Nick returns from Ole Andreson’s, Sam literally shuts the kitchen door that he can’t hear Nick and George discussing the situation. He doesn’t want to be involved at all, because, it seems, experience has taught him that avoidance is best. George, meanwhile, encourages Nick to go warn Ole Andreson, but refuses to go himself. Perhaps this is simple cowardice, but clearly George doesn’t want to be personally involved, either. Later, when Nick returns from warning Ole Andreson and seems haunted by the man’s inevitable death, George tells Nick that he had “better not think about it.” This shows that George, like Sam, ultimately prefers to shut out difficult realities and pretend they don’t exist.

Ole Andreson, whose name implies that he is the oldest and wisest of the men, has the most cryptic reaction to the story’s events: like Sam and George, he accepts that he will die, but unlike Sam and George, he’s not in denial about it—he’s depressed. When Nick visits Ole Andreson, he finds the man unable to get out of bed and barely willing to speak. Nick warns him about the hitmen and Ole, at first, “did not say anything” and then says, “There isn’t anything I can do about it.” Nick suggests fleeing town or going to the police, but Ole believes this “wouldn’t do any good.” Instead, he plans to “make up his mind to go out”—and, presumably, meet his death. On the one hand, Ole seems to be paralyzed and unwilling to take action to fix the situation, much like Sam and George. On the other hand, unlike Sam and George, Ole is not ignoring a difficult reality: he has fully internalized what is going to happen to him, and he plans to work up the courage to meet it head-on. Unlike George’s advice to “not think about it,” Ole is thinking about it deeply and deciding how to act based on this knowledge. Hemingway implies that Ole is correct to accept his fate; Nick, after all, feels “silly” as soon as he warns Ole about the hitmen, and his attempts to give advice seem more annoying than helpful. Furthermore, across his published works, Hemingway equates courage and dignity with the ability to accept death as inevitable and meet it without flinching—something Ole is steeling himself to do.

In the story’s final scene, Nick returns to the diner a disillusioned man: what he thought was an act of bravery was actually silly and useless, and he knows now that Ole Andreson will certainly die. Instead of becoming as wise as Ole, however, Nick only becomes as mature as George and Sam: rather than confronting the inevitability of death, he seems to resort to denial. This is clearest when Nick tells George that he’s going to “get out of this town.” Instead of staying and grappling with the reality of what is happening (like Ole, who refuses to flee his killers), Nick’s impulse is to get far away from a difficult situation. It’s somewhat similar to Sam closing the door on a conversation he doesn’t want to hear. Furthermore, Nick says of Ole contemplating his death, “I can’t stand to think about him.” This shows Nick’s weakness and immaturity. Nick is now mature enough to know that he can’t change fate, but not mature enough to be able to live with the reality of that fate. He behaves more like George, who advises him to push difficult truths from his mind, than like wise Ole, who actively contemplates and accepts his fate. In this way, Hemingway shows a progression of maturity from young idealists like Nick, who naively think they can thwart evil and death; to middle aged men like Sam and George, who understand that these things are inevitable but prefer to ignore this reality; to the wisdom of age—embodied in Ole—in which one accepts their fate and acts accordingly.