Hemingway presents takes the several literary styles to present this short story. Hemingway’s use of Foreshadowing, Pathos, Imagery and Personification allows the reader to enter the true context of the frustration and struggle that the couples face. Although written in the 1920’s it the presents a modern day conflict of communication that millions of couples face. At first glance the beautiful landscape of the Barcelonian hillside in which Jig refers to frequently throughout the text appears to have taken the form of White Elephants. The Americans’ response to Jigs’ observation was less than enthusiastic as he provides a brief comment and continues on with his cerveza. This was but the first of the many verbal jousts to come between Jig and the American. The metaphorical inferences in those verbal confrontations slowly uncover the couple’s dilemma and why they may be on the waiting for the train to Madrid. There are a few characters within this short story. Jig is the protagonist and the antagonist is the American. The waitress is supporting the story with quick cameos as she delivers cervezas to the couple. Although these characters were not described in great detail they leave a strong image of a struggling young couple in your mind. Hemingway describing the couple as the American and Jig was purposeful in that it allows for the readers mind to place anyone into that scenario. However, the landscape was described in greater detail to acclimate the reader to the metaphorical inferences and similes that would be exchanged between the American and Jig. The first inference “they look like white elephants” was made by Jig as she describes the hillside past the valley as White Elephants. White could symbolize p... ... middle of paper ... ...e in part, he waited 25 years to turn in a pack of cigarettes but he kept the picture that he had hidden from wife. The Viet Cong’s soldier had this stunning realization” I understand all at once that there is a secret space in the word, not Salem but sa and lem, Vietnamese words, the one meaning to fall and the other to blur, and this is the moment that comes to all of us and this is the moment” that would give him closure to what he had done to an American soldier separated from his Regiment some 25 earlier. Salem offers many images that persist long after the reader has read the last word. The author broke the mold by telling the story from the prospective of an American combatant rather than the American hero. This direction of storytelling was a risky, but the effective narration and visual cues that are taken from this story are stunning and long lasting.
Hemingway provides the reader with insight into this story, before it is even read, through the title. The girl in the story mentions the hills that can be seen from the train station and describes them as looking like white elephants. Jig is at a crossroads in her life, accompanied by her partner. She is pregnant and cannot decide whether to choose life for the baby, or to get an abortion. Throughout the story, she experiences persistent uncertainty over what she wants to do with her life. Whatever decision she makes will have a drastic impact in her later years as a woman. While seated at the bar inside the train station, the girl says, “The hills look like white elephants” (Hemingway). The hills that are spotted in the distance directly parallel the decision that Jig must make. Critic Kenneth Johnston was recorded stating, “A white elephant is a rare pale-gray variety of an Asian elephant held sacred by the Burmese and Siamese. The girl’s reverence for life is captured by this meaning of the phrase.” Johnston also says, “A white ...
“Roman Fever” and “Hills Like White Elephants” are two stories that on surface seem very different from one another, but through careful analysis the two are quite similar. Their similarities are mainly evident through the significant use of the dialogues in the both stories. “Roman Fever” has a third person omniscient narrator which the author allows to know the inner private thoughts of both characters, Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley. In contrast, “Hills Like White Elephants” is composed in a third person limited narrative where very little is known about the thoughts of both Jig and the American. At first Ernest Hemingway’s short story can clearly be viewed as the most ambiguous out of the two. With its simplistic style, written mostly in straightforward dialogue which leaves the readers to contemplate over the ultimate outcome of the story and forces them to ...
In Hemingway’s realistic story, “Hills like white elephants” an idea about the plot is given from the author. He states that the couple waits at a train station for the next express train to come by and take off to their next destination, Madrid. While they wait, they go to a nearby bar to have a few drinks and talk among themselves. In this setting the author shows how the woman seems to be focused at the lines of the hills. He describes the hills to appear white in the sun, and the view to be brown and dry. This proves how Jig imagines the hills to appears as white elephants. “They look like white elephants” (Jig line 20). Hemingway makes the reader believe that white elephants symbolize something big and noticeable. In this case, white elephants are used as the big meaning behind the pregnancy.
Ernest Hemingway was born and grew up in Oak Park, Illinois. By the time he wrote this story he had been wounded in Italy during World War I; had traveled extensively in Europe as a newspaper correspondent and writer; had married, fathered a son, been divorced, and remarried (Hemingway 236). Planted in the midst of a forsaken canyon, the station isn’t a final destination but merely a stage between Barcelona and Madrid. Hemingway sets “Hills like White Elephants” at a train depot to play up the reality that the relationship between the man and the Jig is at a crossroads. The author is showing the couple is at a pivotal point on whether to go with each other and endure their relationship or end things and start new lives. However, the contrast between the white hills and sterile basin perhaps highlights the division between fertility and sterility, between having the baby or having the abortion, between life or death. The girl seems broken between the two landscapes, not only commenting on the beauty of the hills but also walking to the end of the platform and looking out at the desolate dessert around the station. Throughout the story the author uses objective point of view, symbolism, and irony to illustrate the theme that life and death decisions may negatively affect relationships.
The writing expertise of Hemingway and Faulkner, commonly referred to as Hemingwayesque and Faulknerian, are both styles that seem to parallel off of one another. One of the best ways to understand Hemingway is to read Faulkner, and vice versa. The obscurantism of Faulkner and the attentiveness of Hemingway foster their syntax and diction, as well as their similarities and differences. Faulkner displays Gothic remnants in Absalom, Absalom!, while Hemingway creates a more minimalist prose. Hemingway and Faulkner, as seen in The Sun Also Rises and Absalom Absalom! both possess uniquely different writing styles, while being able to hold the ability to parallel off of eachother's themes and diction.
Earnest Hemingway is known for leaving things out in his writing. He believed that if you knew something well enough, you could leave it out and still get your point across. In the short story "The End of something", he leaves a few things out. Some things he doesn't say at all and others the reader knows something before he says it. He must have know what he was writing about because he the reader can infer certain things.
We learn that the woman in this story is called Jig is worried about an operation, and she is making the effort to talk her way into it or out of it. Her male friend, on the other hand, is out to give her support. The story presents the theme of loss of love. In spite of the transparent assertions of the man assertions, it is clear that he needs Jig to abort so that they can continue living their life as before. The approach that Hemingway uses the theme of love and hate is the loss of love. The “Hills like white elephants” may be referring to the baby who is the risk of death though abortion. The couple also seems to be looking at the hills as the lady defines them as being clean and beautiful. Also, white elephants can mean an expensive and great gift. So about this story the white elephant is the baby who is a joy and wonderful gift as well as a burden. The woman views the baby as an expensive gift because she will have to lose her boyfriend in the exchange of the gift. The baby also means a huge price to pay and also to care for the baby alone requires hard work. Through the story does not provide the topic of sexuality in the case of the other two poems I have discussed above, the effects of desire rein this story. The jig is convinced that she can have the world as she looks out to the mountains. The man represents a fear and restriction that are within
Hemingway has created a situation where she is forced to depend on him because she is a young, immature, girl in an adult situation. It is when the American tells jig that “we will be fine afterward. Just like we were before, it is the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy” that she realizes nothing will ever be the same no matter what he says. During one discussion she says “we could have everything” the man agrees, then she says “no we can’t it isn’t ours anymore and once they take it away, you can never get it back.” He says “But they haven’t taken it away” and her response is “we’ll wait and see.” The American doesn’t realize that at this point she has discovered that if he cannot love her and be happy while she is pregnant how he will ever truly love her as much as she loves him. According to Robert Barron many critics believe that the couple’s relationship has a bleak and ultimately poor ending (Barron). The older waiter in “A clean, Well-Lighted Place” is dealing with a similar situation when a wealthy old man who is a regular at the café he works at comes in after a failed suicide
“The Hills Like White Elephants” is a short story that is about an American man and a girl called Jig. They are sitting at a table outside a train station, waiting for a train to Madrid. While they wait they order drinks and have a heated ongoing conversation over whether or not Jig will have an operation that would be of great significance to their relationship. “The Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway has two important symbols in the story, the hills and the drinks both of which help to give us a better understanding of what is going on between the American and his girl.
Ernest Hemingway is an incredible writer, known for what he leaves out of stories not for what he tells. His main emphasis in Hills Like White Elephants seems to be symbolism. Symbolism is the art or practice of using symbols, especially by investing things with a symbolic meaning or by expressing the invisible or intangible by means of visible or sensuous representations (merriam-webster.com). He uses this technique to emphasize the importance of ideas, once again suggesting that he leaves out the important details of the story by symbolizing their meaning.
A little background information of Hemingway’s short story “Hills like White Elephants” would be the historical and literary context that influenced this story. Hemmingway published “Hills like White Elephants” in 1927 along with his
The story "Hills Like White Elephants" is a conversation between a young woman `Jig' and an American man waiting for a train at a station in Spain. The author never names the topic of their discussion but as their dialogue progresses; it becomes evident that Jig is pregnant. The man wants Jig to abort the unborn child but she is unconvinced and wants to become a mother. Hemingway has brilliantly written the story's dialogue which "captures the feel of a private conversation while at the same time communicating the necessary narrative background" (O'Brien 19). At the end of the story, it is unclear as to what decision has been made; however, Hemingway gives the reader several clues regarding what Jig feels, and what she wants to do. Jig's private thoughts are illuminated by Hemingway's description of the setting, the character, and the conflict. Stanley Renner suggests that, as a result of the couple's discussion, "Jig has become able to make a more clear-sighted estimation, and perhaps a better choice, of men" Wyche(59). The couple's inability to communicate effectively their true thoughts and emotions makes their dialogue very appealing. The story examines the gender differences and miscommunications as they influence the decision whether to abort the unborn child or not (Smiley). In his book on Hemingway, published in 1999, Carl P. Eby points out that "[f]or the past two decades, Hemingway criticism has been dominated by a reconsideration of the role of gender in his work" (Bauer 125).
Hemingway uses multiple symbols in his stories. In “Hills like White Elephants,” there are a plethora of images and objects that project an emotion or a feeling that isn’t explained in words, but rather are left for the reader to filter through and figure out for them. By looking at the setting, the train, and the title itself, we as readers can find a little more meaning beyond the dialogue and into the intentions and emotions of the American and his girl.
In a symbolic reading, the opening paragraph describes the crisis that exists in the marriage of the couple. In other words, the description of the bad weather, of the "empty square"[1](l.10) and of their isolation, reflects this conflict and also sets the negative mood. In fact, since the beginning, Ernest Hemingway insists on the isolation of the couple that "does not know any of the people they passed" (ll.1-2) and are "only two Americans"(l.1). Here it is interesting to notice that they are isolated from the outside world but also from each other. There is no communication and they have no contact, they are distant from each other.
Ernest Hemingway was a famed U.S. author who wrote many novels which was strongly influenced by the World War One and World War Two. As he participated in the both major wars, the first hand experience of the brutal war is conveyed with great detail and with heartfelt feelings. His works were majorly on the effects of wars on human beings and the men’s sense of honor and pride. Ernest Hemingway was inspirational writer of men’s ideals, especially during war, who clearly had uncommon experiences in his life, such as going through both World War One and World War Two, which was reflected upon most of his literary works.