Dialogue And Symbolism In Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

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Hemingway writes his works so that not everything is as it seems. It makes readers take a deeper insight about what he’s writing about. In the story ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ he writes about an operation. Now from the surface, it seems as if they are just going on a trip and when he brings up this operation, readers don’t understand that they are talking about an abortion. The story has to be read a few times, before readers really understand that the argument is about a pregnancy and how the man wants the abortion. This is how Hemingway wanted to write his story. By using his dialogue and symbolism, Hemingway plays everything out in a way that makes readers analyze the story. In the short story “Hills Like White Elephants” written by Ernest …show more content…

Throughout the story, Hemingway has the couple order and consume alcohol whenever their conversation gets to a point of causing one or both of them discomfort. The couple drinks alcohol at the story’s beginning. Settling in at the table, the prospect of facing each other for forty minutes and having to make conversation spooks them into ordering drinks before they do anything else new. They spend the first third of the story dancing around discussing the pregnancy without ever directly mentioning it. They are trying to avoid a decision they need to make about the pregnancy. The alcohol is also being used as a way to change the subject. When they start thinking about bringing up the subject while sitting together, they order another drink and talk about the “white elephants” …show more content…

He uses the symbolism in a way that makes you have to think about what they stand for in terms of what the couple is going through. The short story, ‘Hills Like White Elephants’, is all about how selfish the man is. The couple are not compatible together and throughout the story you can start to see that. This is through symbolism and the dialogue that is in the story. The way the dialogue is placed, helps Hemingway’s idea for the story a lot by having the woman silent the whole time that they are “discussing” the operation. During that time period, it wasn’t normal to get an abortion, but during the short story, it is made to seem like it was a very normal thing. The beaded curtain, alcohol, and the two sides of the valley, are just some of the symbolism used in the short story to tell what the couple views as individuals. While analyzing the dialogue, readers can tell that even though the woman is silent she still wants to keep the child and the man does

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