Theme Of The Lady With The Dog And Hills Like White Elephants

Considering the locale In the approach to understanding the underlying meaning behind a story, it is critical to sympathize that while setting and time may change, its elemental meanings remain prominent and an essential tool in the development of understanding the character’s motivations. In both Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway’s short stories, they both utilize the ability to manipulate their settings in order to emphasize what they want their characters to depict, especially within “The Lady with the Dog”, and “Hills Like White Elephants.” Both stories compromise the significant analysis of setting to take the reader on a journey that illustrates the structure and main propositions the author is seeking to tackle. Presentation

Using analysis of season, landscape, weather, etc., in “Hills Like White Elephants”, Hemingway introduces the image of the train station, containing hills across a valley along the Ebro River in northern Spain. While waiting for the sight of their train, Jig glances across the vast landscape of their waiting junction and describes the far away hills and mutters, “They look like white elephants.” (Hemingway 591). The term “White elephants” meaning: A possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to get rid of. In this case of conflict, the two are discussing the controversy of whether or not Jig will abort, in other words, “get rid of” her child. As their conversation progresses, Jig begins to describe the hills as being lovely, and yet they are not really white elephants after all. The idea of her possible newborn child is rather lovely and not troublesome. Her choices rein between life and death, symbolized by the hills and the field of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro to which she inspects. Landscape in this case ideally represents a choice the characters will eventually make, characterizing the scenery as casts of their choices. The motifs of seasons likewise play a necessary role in understanding the atmosphere amongst the characters of Hemingway and Chekhov. In Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog”, from start to finish the season change throughout the time in Russia have contributed a fascinating role as an atmospheric symbol as characters advance. When seasons begin to change, the character 's actions do as well. For example, when Gurov and Anna first meet, the season in Yalta during this time is fall, the season of change, representing their change of scenery into each other’s lives as strangers who begin to fall in