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When “The Killers” was first published in 1927, Chicago was a hotbed of crime thanks to Prohibition. Gangsters like Al Capone ran the streets, smuggling alcohol and running other illegal services. This story takes advantage of what would doubtless be on many readers’ minds at the time, as newspapers printed sordid and sensational details of racketeering and mob violence. Ernest Hemingway lived in Chicago for some years after returning from World War I, and his stay coincided with the earlier years of Prohibition. He also reported on Prohibition stories while working as a freelance reporter and editor earlier in the decade, which probably gave him more insight into this criminal world than an outside observer would have. 

In addition to drawing from real life for inspiration for the crime focus of the story, Hemingway turned to real life to find his setting. Summit, Illinois, was a real town founded in the late 19th century, and it certainly would have a front-row seat to the crime and racketeering that filled Chicago during the 1920s. Hemingway could have picked this town due to its small town-feel, or perhaps even because it was a close counterpart to his own familiar hometown. Hemingway was born and spent his early years in Oak Park, also a suburb of Chicago. 

Many of the themes and ideas present in this work could also reflect choices made during times of life-threatening peril, such as during World War I. This world-changing event heavily influenced Hemingway’s writing as well as the work of other modernist writers of the same period. In his fiction, Hemingway explores themes of violence and fear and writes about characters’ choices in the face of looming death, which are emotions and experiences he would have faced during the war. These themes show up all throughout “The Killers,” which was written a mere nine years after the end of the war and is one of his earlier pieces of writing.

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