The Snows of Kilimanjaro
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40 free The Snows of Kilimanjaro trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Ernest Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro is one of the most studied American short stories of the twentieth century. A writer lies dying in a safari camp below Africa's highest mountain, quarrelling with his wife and counting up the stories he always meant to write and never did. This quiz follows the story from its famous opening image to its ambiguous last page: how Harry came to be stranded, what he and Helen argue about, the memories of war, travel and early poverty that surface as he weakens, and the final flight. It also covers the real 1933 hunting trip that gave Hemingway his material, the story's first publication, and the Hollywood adaptation that rewrote the ending. It is written for students revising for a class quiz, teachers who want a ready-made multiple-choice check with an answer key, and Hemingway readers who want to see how much of the story stayed with them. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which condition is slowly killing the writer Harry as he lies on a camp cot?
Gangrene
Gangrene is eating its way up Harry's leg, and its smell hangs over the camp. Because the rot is painless, he has long hours of calm in which to look back over his life.
Q 02The opening of The Snows of Kilimanjaro describes which animal's frozen carcass near the mountain's western summit?
A leopard
A leopard, dried and frozen, lies far above any hunting ground, and nobody in the story can say what drew it so high. Harry's own last dream carries him toward the same summit.
Q 03In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which animal's strange cry wakes Helen on the night Harry stops responding?
A hyena
A hyena has skirted the camp every evening, and Harry comes to feel it as death itself drawing near. Hemingway later joked that a hyena was the best performer in the 1952 film.
Q 04In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, what minor injury to Harry's knee led to the infection that is killing him?
A thorn scratch
A thorn scratch on his right knee was all it took, picked up while he and Helen were out with a camera. He let it go, and two weeks later it is killing him.
Q 05Which star, cast after Humphrey Bogart was considered, played Harry in the 1952 film of The Snows of Kilimanjaro?
Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck took the role and wrenched his knee carrying a co-star during the shoot, which stopped filming for ten days.
Q 06The mountain in the title of The Snows of Kilimanjaro stands in which present-day East African country?
Tanzania
Tanzania is home to the mountain, a dormant volcano and the highest peak in Africa. The territory was called Tanganyika when Hemingway hunted there in the 1930s.
Q 07In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the writer Julian, mocked for his awe of the rich, stands in for which real novelist?
Scott Fitzgerald
Scott Fitzgerald was named outright in an early version, and Hemingway later changed the name to Julian, though the jab at his friend stayed plain to see.
Q 08How does the 1952 film of The Snows of Kilimanjaro change the fate of the dying writer Harry?
He survives
He survives: help arrives by air at dawn and Harry lives to realise he loves Helen. Hemingway so disliked Hollywood happy endings that he reportedly never watched the picture.
Q 09Which American magazine, then under three years old, first published Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro?
Esquire
Esquire ran it in August 1936, less than three years after the magazine launched with Hemingway among its early contributors.
Q 10Years after writing The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Hemingway returned to Africa and lived through two of what in a row?
Plane crashes
Plane crashes on successive flights in 1954 left him almost fatally injured, and he reached Entebbe to find reporters covering the story of his death.
Q 11In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, why are Harry and Helen stranded in camp far from medical help?
Their truck broke down
Their truck broke down when a bearing burned out in the engine, so all they can do is wait for a rescue flight. Helen keeps insisting it will come; Harry is far less sure.
Q 12In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Harry believes he ruined his talent by making his living in which way?
Marrying rich women
Marrying rich women bought Harry a soft life and, he believes, dulled the gift he once traded on. He admits the fault is his own and not Helen's.
Q 13How does the printed text of The Snows of Kilimanjaro set Harry's remembered scenes apart from the camp scenes?
In italics
Q 21In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which antiseptic did Harry fail to put on his wound straight away?
Iodine
Iodine was the simple step he skipped, and the wound festered. When it turned bad he tried a weak carbolic solution, which only made things worse.
Q 22In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, in which city does Harry recall living in a poor quarter as a young writer?
Paris
Paris, in a poor quarter where he rented a top-floor room to write, held the neighbourhood Harry loved best. He never managed to put it on paper.
Q 23In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Harry remembers renting a trout stream and fishing in which German region?
The Black Forest
The Black Forest trip carries a dark footnote: the hotel owner there, ruined by inflation, later hanged himself.
In italics, five times over, the story slips back into Harry's past: war, skiing, his years as a poor young man abroad. These are the stories he saved up and never wrote.
Q 14In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which friend seems to arrive by air to rescue Harry in the final scene?
Compton
Compton, known as Compie, lands a small aircraft and flies Harry toward the mountain's white summit. The whole flight turns out to be the last dream of a dying man.
Q 15In a war memory in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, what does Harry give the horribly wounded officer Williamson?
His morphine tablets
His morphine tablets, saved for his own use, all went to Williamson, who had begged to be killed. It is among the few selfless acts Harry can look back on.
Q 16In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which drink do Harry and Helen quarrel over as he lies ill in camp?
A whiskey and soda
A whiskey and soda is what he calls for over Helen's protests. Since he is sure he is dying anyway, Harry sees no reason to go without.
Q 17During a quarrel in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, what cruel claim does Harry make to his wife Helen?
He never loved her
He never loved her, Harry tells Helen, then takes it back when she cries. Privately he admits his tenderness toward her has long been an act.
Q 18In the epigraph of The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the local name for the mountain's western summit means what?
The House of God
The House of God is how the story translates the Masai name for the summit, which gives Harry's last imagined flight toward it a religious charge.
Q 19In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which animals were Harry and Helen trying to photograph when he injured his knee?
Waterbuck
Waterbuck were the quarry that day, hunted with a camera rather than a rifle. Harry had planned the whole safari as a return to a harder, simpler way of living.
Q 20In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which birds gather around the camp and wait as Harry grows weaker?
Vultures
Vultures stop circling and start settling on the ground near his cot, a sign Harry reads without any trouble. He had watched how they sailed at first, meaning to use it in a story.
Q 24In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, what did Harry's grandfather lose in a log-house fire and never replace?
His guns
His guns burned along with the log house, and afterwards the old man never bought others and never hunted again.
Q 25A flashback in The Snows of Kilimanjaro has Harry brawling with a British soldier over a woman in which city?
Constantinople
Constantinople was where a lonely Harry went on a spree after a quarrel, still pining for his first love. After the fight he left for Anatolia, and what he saw there he could not bear to speak of.
Q 26In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Harry's first flashback recalls skiing winters and Christmas in which Alpine country?
Austria
Austria gave Harry weeks of skiing, hunting and blizzard-bound card games in mountain inns. Hemingway had skied the same Vorarlberg slopes himself.
Q 27Which famous train does Harry remember boarding at Karagatch in the first flashback of The Snows of Kilimanjaro?
The Orient Express
The Orient Express carried Harry out of Thrace, a route Hemingway knew from covering the Greco-Turkish War as a young reporter.
Q 28In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Harry recalls the cheap hotel in his old neighbourhood where which poet died?
Paul Verlaine
Paul Verlaine, once voted the Prince of Poets by his peers, ended his days in poverty, a fall that shadows Harry's own squandered gift.
Q 29Late in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Harry wants his thoughts written down, but Helen never learned which skill?
Taking dictation
Taking dictation was beyond Helen, so the paragraphs Harry composes in his head die with him. He tells her all the same that he has been writing.
Q 30Which wife of Ernest Hemingway joined him on the 1933 safari that inspired The Snows of Kilimanjaro?
Pauline Pfeiffer
Pauline Pfeiffer, his second wife, came from a wealthy family, and after his safari book met a cool reception Hemingway blamed that wealth for corrupting him.