"Dark Ecology" and the Forces of Modernity in Hemingway's Early Work

Abstract: Extending upon recent interventions by "environmental Hemingway" scholars, this article suggests that several of Hemingway's early short stories and poems exhibit a reluctant, panic-infused realization of their protagonists' complicity in mass environmental degradation—a phenomenon that Timothy Morton calls "dark ecology"—tempered by their deferral of personal responsibility for such degradation. While Hemingway's protagonists strive to construct a pastoral understanding of the natural world as an autonomous site of salvation, care, and escape, this article suggests that ultimately, their relationships with nature remain inextricable from the logics of extractivism and haunted by the imminent ravages of industrial modernity.