In the following essay, Monteiro identifies elements in "The Killers" that serve as a metaphor for bullfighting.

After an earlier unsuccessful attempt to write the story, Hemingway was finally able to set down "The Killers" on a day in which he was confined to his Madrid hotel room because the San Isidro bullfights were snowed out. He originally entitled the story "The Matadors." In some ways, it is a pity that he dropped this title, for this is a story about a killing that does not take place only because the human being marked for death does not play his part that day. If one considers it as a planned, if not quite ritualized, killing in which the "animal's" own habitual behavior (each day he comes to Henry's lunchroom at the same hour) will bring him to his death at the hands of "professional" killers whose duty...