The Killers by Ernest Hemingway
Quick answer: The Killers by Ernest Hemingway: summary with the ending, Nick Adams, Ole Andreson and the two gunmen, why the Swede will not run, and menace built from talk.
Two men in tight overcoats and derby hats walk into Henry's lunch-room in a town called Summit, order dinners that are not served until six, and settle in to wait for a Swedish prizefighter who eats there most nights. The Killers appeared in Scribner's Magazine in March 1927 and in Men Without Women the same year.
Nick Adams is a witness here rather than the centre, and the story is taught as the model of menace generated almost entirely by dialogue.
The story in brief, ending included
Al and Max eat with their gloves on, mock George and Nick, then take the place over: Al ties Nick and Sam, the Black cook, in the kitchen with towels in their mouths while Max chats with George and a sawed-off shotgun rests behind the service window. They are waiting for Ole Andreson, a heavyweight who, Max admits, never did anything to them; they are killing him for a friend. Ole does not come. At ten past seven they leave, and George tells Nick to warn the Swede.
At Hirsch's rooming-house Ole lies on the bed fully dressed, too long for it, facing the wall. He thanks Nick and says there is nothing to be done: he is through with running around, he got in wrong in Chicago, and after a while he will make up his mind to go out. Nick returns and reports; Sam wants to hear none of it, Nick says he will get out of this town, and George's last line advises him not to think about it. The killing never appears on the page.
The characters
Seven people; the one the story concerns barely moves.
Themes: the meeting with evil and the refusal to run
The exam readings are initiation and passivity. Nick meets casual, professional violence for the first time and cannot absorb that a man will lie on a bed and wait for it. Ole's stillness reads as fatalism, exhaustion or a boxer's code, and the story chooses none of them.
The sharper point is that the true subject is the three reactions, not the crime. Sam refuses to know, George knows and will not think, Nick knows and cannot stay. Each gets one line at the end, and the reader ranks them.
The craft: menace built from banter
The opening promises a dinner order and delivers a siege. The turn comes when Al orders Nick and the cook into the kitchen; until then the scene could be a comedy about rude customers. The shotgun stays offstage, and the threat is assembled from Max's patter and the clock.
The technique to steal is the withheld climax. The killing does not happen; the story lands on Ole's turned face and Nick's decision to leave. A writer who trusts a quiet aftermath over a gunshot is making the same bet, and it is the sort of ending that earns its Emotional Impact marks in Writory's monthly contest, where every entrant receives a five-part score out of 100.
For class and essays
Model answers, vocabulary, one misreading.
What writers can take from this
- For exams, cite the fast clock and the dinner rule as details that make Summit real before it turns dangerous.
- Contrast the three reactions at the end and argue which the story endorses.
- Note that Ole is too long for the bed; one detail does a paragraph's work.
- Writers: keep the weapon offstage and let speech carry the threat.
- Give menace a comic surface; the gap between tone and intent frightens more than snarling.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which two strangers wait in an everyday business for someone who never arrives. Let their talk carry the threat without stating it, keep any weapon out of sight, and end not with the confrontation but with what one bystander decides to do about having seen it.
Questions
What happens at the end of The Killers?
Ole Andreson refuses to run or call the police and stays on his bed facing the wall. Nick returns, says he will leave town, and George tells him not to think about it. The killing itself is never shown.
Who is Nick Adams in The Killers?
Hemingway's recurring young protagonist from Indian Camp to Big Two-Hearted River. Here he is the witness whose decision to leave Summit gives the story its ending.
What is the theme of The Killers?
Initiation into a world of casual violence and the different responses to knowing evil exists: denial, resignation and flight.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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