n's philosophy is likely to change dramatically.
In London's case, he was originally an "individualist" primarily because, as he puts it, "because I was strong myself" (1117). He was a healthy young man who knew life only through his own personal experience and his own experience told him that if he was strong, everybody was strong, and so everybody could and should take care of himself. Individualism made sense to him in the context of his self-centered experience.
However, as London says, socialism "was hammered into me" (1117) by the experience he received as he left his isolated youth and encountered people who had lost their strength and youth and suffered as a result of circumstances beyond their control: "At the bottom of the [Social] Pit I saw them, myself above them, not far, and hanging on to the slippery wall by main strength. . . . What when my strength failed?" (1119). That realization of human vulnerability was the beginning of the process of London's evolution from individualism to socialism. Had he chosen to live only amongst other individualists, it is unlikely that he would have evolved in the same way.
Ernest Hemingway, in his short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," intends to present the changes that a couple goes through as the man dies from gangrene. In fact, they go through little or no change at all from the beginning to the end of the story. This is the failure of the author to put the evolution of his characters above his own macho perspective on life, death, and the relative roles of men and women. Hemingway is so intent on showing the courage and the toughness of the man in the face of death, and the shallowness of the woman in the face of both life and death, that his story suffers from a lack of character development.
The story begins with the man philosophizing about whether the vultures in the trees overhead were drawn to the "sight" or the "scent" of his rotting leg (150). The woman does not...