Narrator and point of view
The short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway is told by a third-person narrator.
The narrator borrows in turns the perspective of the main male characters in the story, Francis Macomber and Robert Wilson. There is even a passage written from the lion’s perspective as it gets shot (p. 7-8, ll. 46-2), which occurs inside Macomber’s flashback. However, it is not Macomber’s perspective as he is too absorbed by his own fear at that time: “Macomber had not thought how the lion felt as he got out of the car. He only knew his hands were shaking” (p. 8, ll. 3-4). This supports the idea of an omniscient narrator.
Although the narrator is omniscient, relevant information in the context of the narrative is deliberately wit...