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Literary devices used in hills like white elephants
Hills like white elephants literary analysis
Hills Like White Elephants English Literature Essay
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I see many people as I wander through the streets, yet I can only hear silence. I see couples getting into a restaurant, order, check their smartphones, eat, and I wonder why they do not look up, face each other and genuinely communicate. What I perceive, are men and women living not with, but next to each other. This is exactly what I imagined when I read Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”. A couple waiting to catch a train and as they sit and drink some beers, they start talking about Jig’s pregnancy and the option of abortion. However, all I can hear is silence because they simply do not speak the same language. They are both living in different worlds filled with divergent ideologies and opinions. As a result, the words do not come across. The American, though, does everything in his power to convince Jig of conducting an abortion, in which he seems to succeed at first. But as the story develops, the divided and childlike Jig transforms into an independent woman, who possesses an internal strength, determination and a mind of her own. Hence, I am going to argue that Jig will not have the abortion and will eventually leave the American.
Hemingway, considered to be a modernist writer, makes his readers work by implementing the well-known theory of omission, which “Hills Like White Elephants” is a perfect example of. As he stated in Death in the Afternoon : ‘If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, […].’ (259). It seems that Hemingway assumed the reader would know what is being omitted, nevertheless many features of “Hills Like White Elephants” have already been covered by various critics. At the end of the story the reader is forced to unravel the most...
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...s the ideological Jig, and Jig’s personal development from girl to woman. She realizes that they are two opposites with incompatible ways of life so in the end the woman leaves her beloved American and embraces (the stream of) life.
Works Cited
Flynn, Elizabeth. Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts. Johns Hopkins, 1986. 280-281.
Hemingway, Ernest. Death in the Afternoon. New York: Scribner, 1960. 259.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.” The Short Stories. New York: Scribner, 1997. 251-255.
Lanier, Doris. “The Bittersweet Taste of Absinthe in Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’.” Studies in Short Fiction, 1989. 279-288.
Rankin, Paul. “Hemingway's 'Hills Like White Elephants'.” The Explicator, 2005. 234-237.
Renner, Stanley. "Moving to the Girl's Side of 'Hills Like White Elephants'." The Hemingway Review 15.1, 1995. 27-41.
In Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants” and Wallace’s “Good People,” both of the young females, Jig and Sheri, experience an unplanned pregnancy and must decide whether an abortion is the right choice. While the former story employs dialogue to depict the relationship of an adventurous, carefree couple in the 1920s, the latter uses third person limited point of view to show a faithful young couple whose religion is their source of morality. Thus, Wallace digs much deeper since both religion and love are a factor in Sheri’s ultimate decision. The enigmatic endings of both stories leave us questioning Jig and Sheri’s choice and its impact on the future of their relationship with their respective partners. The text suggests that Jig will not comply with the American’s wish of aborting the baby because of her vision and the indicative dialogue between her and the American, and Sheri will conform to her religious beliefs and carry the child.
“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 ...
Ernest Hemingway has a superbly unique style of writing in Hills Like White Elephants. His short, to the point syntax and sentence style plays a great role in helping readers understand the theme of this short story. The critique M.A.K. Halliday observed, “The story is frequently generated by the repetition of words, clauses, and groups of related words or ethical sets” (Link, Alex). The first set of dialogue that can be pulled from this story is story is short and to the point. The American states, “We can have the whole world.” Jig replies with “No, we can’t” (Hemingway, Ernest). The sentence length is very short, yet there is a hidden meaning behind the small talk. Jig is referring to not having the baby. She can have everything, but her will to decide things. She can’t have a baby due to unloving pressure from the American. It is in sync with the tone of the story perfectly. The tone is forward, direct, and shallow. That is exactly what happens in this dialogue. There is no emotion, just pure sarcasm on a huge topic. Abortion to this couple is nothing more then a qui...
Hemingway, Ernest. "Hills Like White Elephants." In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1471-1485.
Gale. Weeks, Lewis E., Jr. "Hemingway Hills: Symbolism in 'Hills like White'" Elephants. Studies in Short Fiction. 17.1 (Winter 1980): 75-77.
“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.
There is a common theme in “Hill’s like White Elephants” and “The Birthmark” of a life altering decision. Both women are thinking about having an operation that will affect them for the rest of their lives. In “Hill’s like White Elephants”, Jig and the American are debating whether or not they should have an abortion. This decision is something that will affect both of them deeply throughout their lives together. By the way the two characters interact with each other the reader can deduce how important they feel the operation is. There seems to be a tension in their sentences with each other. Jig says things like “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you've waited so long for” and “That's all we do, isn't it-look at things and try new drinks” (Hemingway 841)? These responses to the American show that Jig is in a distasteful state of mind which would most likely stem from her thoughts about the operation and what they will do in regard to it. Because these thoughts of the operation are affecting her socially, it shows just how important the operation is to her. How Jig interprets the scenery around them while they are discussing the operation also suggests the importance ...
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).
When a woman gets pregnant, she and her partner make a serious decision whether they should give birth to the unborn child or abort it. However, sometimes every couple can have a different outlook about giving birth or aborting because every male and female has his or her ways of thinking. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” the author, Ernest Hemingway tells a story of an American man and his girlfriend, Jig, who have a disagreement in the train station on the subject of whether to keep the unborn child or to abort. However, the author uses binary opposition of life and death to portray the polemic argument a couple encounters regarding abortion. As a symbol for the binary opposition of life and death, he represents the couple’s expressions, feelings, and the description of nature.
The art, literature, and poetry of the early 20th century called for a disruption of social values. Modernism became the vague term to describe the shift. The characteristics of the term Modernism, all seek to free the restricted human spirit. It had no trust in the moral conventions and codes of the past. One of the examples of modernism, that breaks the conventions and traditions of literature prior to Modernism, is Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants”. The short story uses plot, symbolism, setting, dialogue, and a new style of writing to allow human spirit to experiment with meaning and interpretation.
Hills Like White Elephants, written by Ernest Hemingway, is a story that takes place in Spain while a man and woman wait for a train. The story is set up as a dialogue between the two, in which the man is trying to convince the woman to do something she is hesitant in doing. Through out the story, Hemingway uses metaphors to express the characters’ opinions and feelings.
Ernest Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants" touches on an issue as ageless as time: communication problems in a relationship. He tells his story through conversations between the two main characters, the American and the girl. Conflict is created through dialogue as these characters face what most readers believe to be the obstacle of an unexpected pregnancy. Their plight is further complicated by their inability to convey their differing opinions to each other. Symbolism and the title's meaning are other effective means of communicating conflict.
In the short story by Ernest Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants," a couple is delayed at a train station en route to Madrid and is observed in conflict over the girl's impending abortion. In his writing, Hemingway does not offer any commentary through a specific character's point of view, nor, in the storytelling, does he offer his explicit opinions on how to feel or think about the issues that emerge. The narrative seems to be purely objective, somewhat like a newspaper or journal article, and in true Hemingway form the story ends abruptly, without the couple's conflict clearly being resolved. The ambiguity of the ending has been a subject of much debate; however, the impact of what is not said in words can be gleaned through the symbolism of their surroundings. Upon examination of the setting, the couple's final choice becomes instantly apparent.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Hills Like White Elephants." Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. Ed. Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. 268-272.