...Analyzing Hemingway Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills like white elephants” at first glance is difficult to understand. It undoubtedly causes most readers to go over it multiple times to grasp exactly what is taking place. The way the story is written is so complex with the 50/50 mixture of traditional storytelling and an abundance of character to character dialogue as well. That’s not the best part; the story’s setting means everything to it. The Train station setting ties in to the plot of the story, the characters behavior, and even the point of view that the story is being told from. The story is about a man and a woman discussing the sensitive subject of abortion. They are at a train station waiting for their train while having this conversation. The man and girl are sitting by other passengers awaiting the train while you the reader are told of their surrounding landscape. On one side it is a dessert-like environment with scorched land and no sign of life in sight. The other side of the train station was a green and healthy environment like what you would expect to see inside a greenhouse. The setting in the story greatly an example of this is the point of view of which the story is told. As mentioned earlier the average reader after reading once may say the author is the narrator of the story there are some lines in the story that mean otherwise though. There are two instances near the beginning that caught my attention. “It’s pretty hot,” the man said...
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...Can You See The White Elephant? Have you ever been forced to make a life altering decision? A decision where you much choose one option or the other? The short story Hills Like White Elephants depict a situation in which many, if not all readers can relate to at one point in their lives. The author Ernest Hemingway describes this scenario with a young couple who are at a crossroads in their life, and they are unsure of the future. The young couple are forced, but shying away from the rather large “white elephant in the room”, deciding to go through with having a child or an abortion. The theme in Hills Like White Elephants is expressed using typical thematic literary elements. Hemingway uses elements such as character, setting, conflict, and irony all to express the short story theme and symbolism. All of these elements help to develop the theme of decision making and sacrifice. The reader gets very little background on the relationship of the young couple but at the same time receives insight into the norms of the relationship between the “American man” and Jig the “girl” who is pregnant. Jig is represented as a young dependent girl, in article Tim O’brian writes, “Even the nickname "Jig" develops this central conflict. The name suggests a dance, the music for the dance, and a joke, for instance, and thereby exposes the man's ultimately condescending attitude toward her: she is entertainment, material for an interlude, perhaps. “Hemingway uses the character as an element...
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...Symbolic White Hills ENG 125: Introduction to Literature Elizabeth Parks Symbolic White Hills Ernest Hemingway was a Pulitzer Prize and Noble Prize winning author. He wrote both novels and short stories. While the majority of his work was written with a theme of “death and violence”, his short story “Hills Like White Elephants”, written in 1927, features a much different theme (Clugston, 2010, 7.3). In this short story, the predominant themes are coercion and how difficult it is to make life altering decisions. Hemingway used third-person limited omniscient point of view in writing “Hills Like White Elephants” which means that he wrote the story in the third-person; however, he only discusses one characters thoughts and feelings (Clugston, 2010). Using the literary elements of tone and symbolism, Hemingway was able to explain the difficulty with making a tough decision while being coerced. In “Hills like White Elephants”, you are met with two characters whom you would assume to be lovers, Jig and the American. Hemingway did not give the American a name which leads one to believe that the story wasn’t about him at all. The majority of the story is dialogue between the two characters about whether Jig should get an abortion. The American is trying to coerce Jig into having an abortion. “‘It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.’” (Clugston, 2010, line 41). “As the man persists in opposing the continuance...
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...Rational Sentiment: A Formalist Essay on Hills Like White Elephants Rightful choices come whenever the realization of something wrong occuring comes. The various, contradicting dialogues of the characters evident in Hemingway’s literary piece exemplify their baffled minds and frequent loss of reason in seeking for transformation despite the circumstances. The short story focuses on a couple set in Spain who are faced with the argument as to whether she would have the operation or not since according to him, it would be as easy as “let[ting] the air in.” At one part of the text, the man would say, "I think it's the best thing to do. But I don't want you to do it if you don't really want to," where it is clear that he is still giving the woman some options although the American has made his choice final. From the beginning of the story, the American’s decision was made clear to the readers that he wanted no baby, no family, no responsibilities, and only pleasure. Just like what he said, “That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's made us unhappy.” It is also seen many times in the text that he would always try to divert the conversation whenever the woman becomes too serious with the issue of abortion so he asks her to drink more beer with him; this line being frequently repeated: "Should we have another drink?" Jig, the woman in the text, had actually took into consideration the idea of giving away her child, as seen in the lines "Oh, yes. But I don't...
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...The Presentation of Selfishness: Similarities and Differences in To Room Nineteen and Hills Like White Elephants Selfishness is a shared theme in the short stories To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing and Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway. The topics of suicide and abortion are points of similarity between the two, illustrating Susan’s and the man’s selfish thought processes and decision-making. The stories do have considerable differences, however, in how they present and develop selfishness within the characters and the storyline itself. Both stories involve the decision to end life. In To Room Nineteen, Susan struggles with the home life she and her husband have created, seeking to temper her feelings with intelligent reasoning. Slowly she distances herself from her family until she finds herself on the brink of suicide, feeling hypocritical for “worrying about the children, when she was going to leave them” (Lessing 890). As she lay down with the gas filling the room, “she was quite content”. In Hills Like White Elephants, the man is working to convince his partner to undergo an abortion: “They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural” (Hemingway 663) While she does not seem happy with the idea, he continues to reassure her that “We’ll be fine afterward. Like we were before. … It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy” (663). In To Room Nineteen, Susan’s life is “grounded in intelligence” and ruled by “sensible discrimination”...
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...“Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway is a short story every student studying English Composition should read. The narrative explores the difficult topic of abortion which college students should read about. Not only did the story explore the couple's dynamic it also delved into the feelings each partner had about the pregnancy. In “On Reading Fiction”, the author explains that readers enjoy fiction for three reasons, because it is an escape from reality, a possible answer to problems in their lives, and allows the reader the comfort of knowing that others are facing the same problems and feeling the same emotions as them. The author states, “we like it because fiction, as an image of life, stimulates and gratifies our interest in life.” This is without a doubt true, knowledge is power and reading about people’s lives and their experiences gives a leg up to the reader in his or her own life. While there are numerous short stories to choose from, “Hills Like White Elephants” should be part of the curriculum for college students because it digs deep into the conflicts everyone may face at one point in their lives about decision making, relationships, and changing your destiny. Being an ongoing issue in society, the topic of abortion is important to read about. Regardless of gender, reading about abortion is important because both parties should have a say in whether to keep the baby. Although not pointed out in black and white, in “Hills Like White Elephants” the reader...
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...An Argument for the case of “The Story of an Hour” The decision to keep “The Story of an Hour” instead of “Hills like White Elephants” is an easy one based on the plot, the characterization and the conflict that these stories have. “The Story of an Hour” is a short story with an interesting plot with a dynamic character that has personal conflict, while “Hills Like White Elephants” has no real plot, there is not much information about the characters at all and the conflict is minimal at best. The textbook would be of better service to the students if “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin remained in it. “The Story of an Hour” is a story about a married woman named Louise Mallard who was known to have a heart condition. This is the first sentence in the story so the plot is introduced right away. Immediately the reader knows that she has a heart condition and her husband had died. The story goes on to describe her sadness and then the awakening that she has when she realizes that she is free of her marriage. The author describes the emotions that Mrs. Mallard goes through. For example, she sums up the emotions of Louise Mallard when she says “She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday that she had thought with a shudder that life might be long” (Chopin 654). The plot thickens as the front door opens and her presumed dead husband walks through the front door. However, in the story “Hills like White Elephants”, the plot is never clearly defined...
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...Literary Analysis: Hills Like White Elephants The story “Hills Like White Elephants” is an incredible short story written by Ernest Hemingway. When readers read this short story, it forces readers to visualize the situation, an attempt to comprehend the dialogue, and infer the concluding symbolization of “Hills Like White Elephants.” Ernest Hemingway style of writing seems to give readers minimal facts; Hemingway does not provide the characters inner thoughts. Also, it is unclear of who said what. Readers have to make assumptions, speculations, and theorize a probable interpretation of the story. The story “Hills Like White Elephants” is written in a first person point-of-view with limited amount of facts and details. However, the title of the story implies the signification of what the story means. Based off the characters dialogue, the characters are presumably young couples struggling with their relationship and moral decisions. The conversation between the two characters seems vague but also neutral in the beginning of the story. However, when readers gather all the responses and organize each character response, the conversation implies a struggle in their relationship. The author tells the readers the man and the woman is drinking “two big ones.” In the middle of the story, the two characters consume more and more alcohol. The supporting of this evidence is when the woman said, “I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it- look at things and try...
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...Short stories can be both fiction and non-fiction. Either way, the purpose of short stories is to convey a message, moral, or lesson. Setting often sets the mood and tone of the story. Characters in the story are usually affected tremendously by the setting. The setting is the time, place, day, or location in which the story takes place. The setting reveals clues to the readers as a sense of direction of what will happen next. The plot can be affected by the setting as because it affects what will happen throughout the story. The two short stories, “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck and “Hills like White Elephant” by Ernest Hemingway displays how setting can give hints to what can possibly happen, describe the characters trait, and effect the plot. “The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side, it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot” (Steinbeck 581). This quote is stating that the Allen’s foothill ranch was closed off to the outside world, they are living in a rural setting. The Allen’s lived in a neat white farm house with red geraniums...
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...Setting the Scene for Conflict: A Structural Analysis of “Hills Like White Elephants” Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “Hills Like White Elephants,” is a short story that takes place in Spain and is centralized upon the two main characters. Hemingway is able to focus this story on the current conflict in the lives of these characters through many means. The way the dialogue is presented contributes to the setting, ultimately contributing to the conflict, which is abortion. Hemingway has structured this work in such a way that the setting presents both sides of the abortion conflict, while also enhancing the sensory environment of the story. The binary opposition Hemingway presents throughout “Hills Like White Elephants” is immediately apparent in the first paragraph of the story. The names the characters have been assigned show their inequality, seeing as they are “The American and the girl” (335). By making this distinction, Hemingway is giving the American more personality, in the sense that we know where he is from. Being an American makes him seem as if he has more power or more importance than just a simple girl. Naming the female character the girl is questionable, because after being impregnated, she is considered to be a woman. Although this is a widely accepted idea, Hemingway identifies her as the girl anyway. We learn nothing about her until later on when she is given the name Jig. However, she only gains this identity after she establishes who her character is...
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...Hills like white elephants “Hills Like White Elephants” is a short fiction story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story is about a couple and we only know them as the American and his girl Jig. In the beginning of the story they are sitting at a station bar in Ebro in Spain having a beer and waiting for their train to arrive. Jig looks out of the window and she looks at the hills across the valley and tells her boyfriend that they look like white elephants. As they are sitting at the table “Jig” looks at the bead curtain in the window and there is paint on the curtain saying “Anis Del Toro”. It was apparently a famous drink and they ordered two of them. Their regular conversation suddenly turned in to an argument after she compared the hills with white elephants. Jig is pregnant and that has made the couple unhappy. The American tries to convince Jig into having an abortion if she wants to. She says that she wants to have the abortion but only because that she no longer cares about herself. The American tells her not to do it for that reason. Their argument escalates quickly and they order two extra drinks just before their train arrives. The story is written in a 3rd person narrator. The narrator is a “fly on the wall” and observes everything about what the two characters “Jig” and the American say and how they act. In this story we follow the two characters the American and “Jig” through the whole time. This story is primarily a conversation between the two of them but...
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...Fighting for Feminism With a Fetus: “Hills Like White Elephants” The empowerment and the continual push for equal status for women has become widely popular and successful in recent history. Women have stepped out of traditional roles of the housewife and mother to become the submissive doormat to more assertive natures. Many controversial issues surround women`s crusade of freedoms including the widely debated right to choose what they do with their body, referring to an abortion in “Hills Like White Elephants” and depression in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Gender roles had an impact on the woman in the short story “Hills Like White Elephants”. The personal evolution of the female protagonist can be divided into four major steps, the first revolves around the typical submissive and passive behaviour expected of a women. Through the ordering of drinks this demonstrates the gender role of male dominance and female submissiveness. The controlling manner displayed by the male character through ordering drinks is a stepping stone into his relentless pushing for her to receive an abortion. His oppressive nature is not only reflected at the bar but more importantly he displays a chauvinistic attitude in regards to the abortion as he states, “it`s really an awfully simple operation, Jig. Its not really an operation at all”(476). She attempts to downplay the procedure and with the continual pushing she agrees to do the procedure stating, “I don’t care about me. And ill do it and then everything...
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...Indecisive: Essay on “Hills like White Elephants” Communication is often mistaken by just talking and talking. We interrupt, advise, reassure, judge, analyze, criticize, etc. But, good communication requires good listening as well as talking. In the story “Hills like White Elephants” what seems to be the cause of the characters dispute is that neither of them can express themselves clearly to one another. Although the story is basically a conversation between the American man and the girl (Jig), both have a point to say but does not understand each other. Mainly because the man has his mind set on convincing Jig to take the operation no matter what and that if Jig takes his option, their lives will go back to the way it was before. In the beginning Jig described the child she is bearing as a “white elephant” meaning, something not wanted. As the story progresses Jig then realizes that the child is not totally a white elephant. But she is not certain that if she took the man’s option, their life would be the same as he says. Jig does not directly says that she wants keep the child. Though she was giving small hints to the man but the man ignores this little action. Alcohol played a big part in the story. They needed alcohol because the characters think that this will help them discuss their dispute or avoid discussing what they need to discuss. When Jig stated “I want to try this new drink. That's all we do isn't it- look at things and try new drinks?” She is as if accusatory...
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...Man VS. Woman: A Literary Analysis Of Conflicts In Two Stories Gena Jones ENG125: Introduction To Literature Instructor: Denya Ciuffo August 31, 2015 Man VS. Woman: A Literary Analysis Of Conflicts In Two Stories In the short stories “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston and “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, there is a very similar conflict of Individual vs. Individual between the men and the women that represents the constant struggle for power in the human relationship. While “Sweat” allows us to see the resolution of conflicts by the end of the story, “Hills Like White Elephants” presents us with these conflicts and does not really give us clear resolution in the end. Imagery and epiphany are techniques used in both stories to give the reader more detail as to the nature of the conflict. Plot as a literary technique is present in “Sweat,” but absent in “Hills Like White Elephants” and this has an impact on the understanding and resolution of conflict in both stories as well. Through careful analysis, I will demonstrate how plot, imagery, and epiphany as literary techniques give depth and meaning to the conflict of Individual vs. Individual in both “Sweat” and “Hills Like White Elephants. In the short story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, we see a conflict between a lazy man and his hard-working wife. “Sweat” is about a woman named Delia Jones who picks up and launders other people’s clothes to make a living, while her husband lives off of the money she makes...
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...Theme and Narrative Elements in Hills like White Elephants Lila Wright ENG 125 Kendall Shearman October 2, 2014 Theme and Narrative Elements in Hills like White Elephants In the short story Hills like White Elephants, symbols are other narrative elements are used to illuminate the theme by stirring feelings in the reader, heightening the conflict, or creating a certain mood while reading the story. Theme in a story is a representation of the idea behind the story (Clugston, 2014). In Hills like White Elephants the theme of meaningless is contributed to many literary elements, in which setting, symbols, and characters will be discussed in this paper. In Hills like White Elephants, the story is primarily a conversation between an American man and a girl nicknamed Jig. The rift between the two characters is shown by the way the course of the conversation, in which it is merely just talking because neither of the characters is truly communicating with the other. Both the American man and the girl are talking but not listening to the other’s point of view. Although it is not mentioned by name, the operation they speak of is an abortion. The American man is frustrated and tries to convince the girl, his girlfriend, to have the operation anyway he can. He tells her things will go back to the way they used to be if she has the abortion. The girl’s mind keeps changing and she ends up telling him at one point that she will do it just to get him to shut up. After he still persists...
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