Male Dominance In Hills Like White Elephants, By Ernest Hemingway

Structure is Key It is easy to read and understand a story when the events are revealed in chronological order. There is no guessing or inferring involved in reading. There is a distinct satisfaction reading a story in which the events do not happen chronologically. The author lets the reader search and wonder and come to a conclusion on their own. In the short story, “Hills Like White Elephants”, Hemingway uses an obscure structure in which he expresses the theme of male dominance. The first indicator of the twisted structure is the fact that there is no back story or history on the characters. The story starts with the setting being laid out and then it jumps into dialogue. This allows the reader to development their own opinion on the characters based on this

The man is trying to use reverse psychology to get the girl to do what he wants. He says, “If you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to (Hemingway n.p.).” He says this so she will think she is doing the operation for herself, but instead it is for the man’s benefit. Another way the man is manipulative is when he says, “Well I care about you (Hemingway n.p.).” He wants her to believe he has her best intentions at heart and that he truly cares for her when in reality he is just taking the blame off of him. Another evident way the male is portrayed as more dominant is in each character’s title. Throughout the story the male is always referred to as ‘the man’. The female, however, is referred to as ‘the girl’. Her being called ‘the girl’ shows that she is less than the man. Typically a girl is seen as sort of naïve, young, and useless where as a man is seen as strong, smart, and above females. The man also calls her Jig once in story. The meaning of the word jig is to whine, which is a derogatory term, which shows how he exerts his dominance over the