Death in the Afternoon for an Emotional Experience

Hemingway Death in the Afternoon defines a moral act as something "you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after" (703). In terms of the Spanish bullfights, Hemingway attempts to prove in his short story that the slaughter of innocent animals has value to the audience by providing them with the extreme "feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality" (703). In response to the animal lover's dismay, Hemingway argues that "the bullfight is a Spanish institution; it has not existed because of the foreigners and tourists" (705). Therefore, Hemingway supports killing innocent animals for entertainment and cultural value as the Zulu tribe in South Africa does in their cultural celebration of the new harvest called Ukweshwama.









In my opinion there is no justification for killing another living being for entertainment in a stadium. I am quite certain that men can find other ways to prove their strength and courage within their culture. Hemingway believes that "the tragedy of the bullfight is so well ordered and so strongly disciplined by ritual that a person feeling the whole tragedy cannot separate the minor comic-tragedy of the horse so as to feel it emotionally" (705). Thus, the horses are only part of the whole experience and if we are shocked by their death, we have thus been blinded of the emotional purpose of the bull fight that is to feel the emotions of life and death.









Every year, approximately 50,000 bulls will die in bullfights across Europe to prove the courage of one man and to entertain the masses (Lopes). Hemingway fails to mention that the "business of the horses" is not a simple death, but a painful one where the have been gored by the bulls horns. Maria Lopes writes in her article, Horses - The Forgotten Victim that "The horses are blind-folded to prevent them from becoming terror stricken at the charge of the bull. It is commonly believed that their ears are stuffed with cotton wool to prevent them from panicking and their vocal cords cut to stop them screaming with fear at the bull's attack."







The emotional experiences that Hemingway claims have good value are compared to having an ear for music and a palate for wine. He believes that in order to enjoy the whole experience we can not focus on a single instrument in music or a particular taste of the wine because it will ruin the experience of the activity as a whole. I find it ironic that both his supporting elements do not include the death of any living thing for entertainment. Hemingway also states that the "horse tends to be comic while that of the bull is tragic" and compares the horse's death to that of a "awkward bird" (704). Check out the video below and see if you feel that the horses appear to be "pelicans" with the blinders we put on them and the sounds we take away from them.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofMAEkgnNiQ







It is interesting that across the ocean in America that we can realize the Longhorn's "social factor" and "economic agent" without brutally killing it for entertainment. Rather, The Longhorns is a story about how an animal used as the primary factor in an agricultural business can have a deep emotional connection with people - alive. Part of the "walking Texas Longhorns," Sancho was a Longhorn who was driven to Wyoming, only to leave the herd and return home to the Gulf Coast region because he identified the land and the people as home. Rather than sending the Longhorn back to Wyoming, he "lived right there on the Esperanza, now and then getting a tamale, tickling his palate with chili peppers in season, and generally staying fat on mesquite grass until he died a natural death" (300).

Contrastingly, American can also be charged with breaking the spirit of the once free Mustangs. By putting them through "the process of breaking" they lost their spirits and freedom to the men who desired to ride them (315). According to Dobie, "Only the spirited are beautiful" (314). As someone who personally shows horses for pleasure, I find it hard to believe that breaking these animals is ruining their spirit. Horsemen are merely training them to do something different. In return, they are provided with shelter, food, proper farrier care, and veterinarian care. In the expansion west with our steam engines and later the settling of these lands, the Mustang would not have survived. Their continued existence in addition to many other breeds of horses, is showcased in equestrian competitions.