"When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first"
About this Quote
Hemingway turns the clean romance of the hunt into a blunt meditation on diminishing returns. The line starts with an old frontier brag - one bird, then all birds - but it’s really a confession that novelty dies fast. He acknowledges difference ("They are all different and they fly in different ways") only to wave it away in the same breath. The phrasing does what Hemingway always does: plain words that smuggle in a darker argument. Variety exists, sure, but the body doesn’t care. The sensation is the commodity, and once you’ve bought it, you’re chasing a rerun.
The subtext is less about birds than about appetite: for violence, for mastery, for experience itself. "Shot" is both literal and reputational, a bullet-point of identity. After the first success, the act becomes repeatable, almost industrial. That’s why the punch lands on "the last one is as good as the first" - not better, not worse, just interchangeable. It’s a cold comfort disguised as bravado: if the peak can’t be topped, at least the floor doesn’t drop.
In context, this fits Hemingway’s obsession with threshold moments - the first wound, the first kill, the first real fear - and what happens after. His men (and his narrators) keep moving because stillness would force them to admit the whole enterprise might be empty. The sentence isn’t celebrating the hunt; it’s diagnosing a lifestyle built on sensation, and the quiet terror that comes when sensation stops feeling like meaning.
The subtext is less about birds than about appetite: for violence, for mastery, for experience itself. "Shot" is both literal and reputational, a bullet-point of identity. After the first success, the act becomes repeatable, almost industrial. That’s why the punch lands on "the last one is as good as the first" - not better, not worse, just interchangeable. It’s a cold comfort disguised as bravado: if the peak can’t be topped, at least the floor doesn’t drop.
In context, this fits Hemingway’s obsession with threshold moments - the first wound, the first kill, the first real fear - and what happens after. His men (and his narrators) keep moving because stillness would force them to admit the whole enterprise might be empty. The sentence isn’t celebrating the hunt; it’s diagnosing a lifestyle built on sensation, and the quiet terror that comes when sensation stops feeling like meaning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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