Set in the hills of Spain, Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” is a short story of an American man and a woman who is presumed to be his girlfriend, though it is never actually spoken of. The couple is awaiting a train to Madrid and decide to take shade in a near by bar and have a few drinks. While drinking the American sparks up conversation with the girl, and although Hemming way uses direct dialoged between the characters, the subject of the conversation is left for analysis. Some
Ernest Hemingway creates a symbolic setting to develop his characters in “Hills Like White Elephants”. Instead of discussing his characters' dilemma directly, Hemingway uses symbolic words like “white”, “two”, “beaded curtain”, “dry side” to create a setting that suggests the struggle that the characters are engaged in while making a life-changing decision. The word white, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is defined as “free from color, free from spot or blemish”2. I feel Hemingway uses
In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” setting details allow the reader to understand background as to the characters’ principles and struggles with identity. Hills Like White Elephants - Theme: The two characters, the girl and the American, struggle with the possibility of accepting new identities: that of being parents. To add to the complication, it is clear that there is a divergence in their opinions on keeping the child with the girl
We all share a fundamental drive to communicate. Communication has become the process of understanding and sharing meaning. In Ernest Hemingway’s, “Hills Like White Elephants” the American and the girl Jig, struggle to communicate with each other. The characters in the story live in a world without traditions and established values. They are in a situation that neither of them is able to resolve, due to a lack of proper communication. The dullness of the man and the desperation of the girl reveal
In his short story “Hills Like White Elephants”, Ernest Hemingway brings the reader to a train station somewhere between Barcelona and Madrid. An American and a girl are having an argument that could be seen as trivial on the surface, but is actually a painful discussion about aborting their child. The much older American tries to persuade the young girl to give the baby up in hopes that he might be able to leave her without any obligations left behind, but she seems to want to keep the child and