A dream vacation gone wrong sets the scene for Ernest Hemmingway's story of a man who finds his courage and happiness in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber". Francis Macomber and his wife, Margaret Macomber, two attractive people with a large amount of wealth, set out on an African safari to add "spice" to their marriage in this unconventional story of cowardice and courage. But what the papers rave as an adventure in a decadent romance begins with blood and ends with death. At the beginning of the story, Hemmingway presents Francis Macomber as a hero of sorts, as a man that has done something worthy of being "carried to his tent from the edge of camp in triumph on the arms and shoulders of the cook, the personal boys, the skinner and the porters" (29). This makes the revelation later on of Macomber's cowardice even more striking in contrast. But his cowardice was not as shameful as Macomber believed it to be, instead, it was a normal human reaction to fear of death and pain, spurred on by his relationships and interaction with his wife and Robert Wilson.
Hemingway first presents Macomber as "very tall, very well built.dark, his hair cropped like an oarsman, rather thin lipped, and was considered handsome"(30). He likes comfort and is not a great hunter, but rather a rich American man who is in Africa to add "adventure"(45) to his life and marriage. He sits in a "comfortable canvas chair"(30). during lunch, but he's on a safari in the middle of Africa, this shows that he expects comfort and pampering even in the savage wilds of Africa. "He was dressed in the same sort of safari clothes that Wilson wore except that his were new-(30) Macomber's effort to wear traditional safari clothes that are strikingly clean and unused in comparison to Wilson's runs parallel with an easterner going to the west in fringed breaches and a wide brimmed cowboy's hat, he's just a "tourist" playing at being a hunter with his professional hunters and comfortable surroundings.