The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Set in Africa, it was published in the September 1936 issue of "Cosmopolitan" magazine concurrently with "The Snows of Kilimanjaro". The story was eventually adapted to the screen as the Zoltan Korda film "The Macomber Affair" (1947). "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is a third person omniscient narrative with moments of unreliable interior monologue presented mainly through the points of view of the two leading, male characters, Francis Macomber and Robert Wilson. Francis and his wife, Margot,
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 .