The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber bull herself. If this is the case, she wins back her power, but ironically, she destroys the thing she is trying to control. The bullet accomplishes exactly what she was trying to avoid. "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" has been acclaimed as one of Hemingway's most successful artistic achievements. This is largely due to the ambiguous complexity of its characters and their motivations, and the debate this ambiguity has generated. In the estimation of critic Kenneth G. Johnston, "the prevailing critical view is that she deliberately—or at best, 'accidentally on purpose'—murdered him", but there are many, including Johnston
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber charges Macomber. He stands his ground and fires at it, but his shots are too high. Wilson fires at the beast as well, but it keeps charging. At the same time, Margot fires a shot from the car, which hits Macomber in the skull and kills him, as narrated by the omniscient narrator: “. . . and Mrs. Macomber, in the car, had shot at the buffalo with the 6.5 Mannlicher as it seemed about to gore Macomber and had hit her husband about two inches up and a little to one side of the base of his skull .