Literary Analysis of “Hills Like White Elephants” By Ernest Hemingway

Introduction

Ernest Hemingway is a minimalist writer and believes in showing the reader only the proverbial tip of the iceberg, leaving everything else not exactly for guesswork, but more for analysis and inference, as the story is ironically so rich in detail from symbols and foreshadowing. In this paper, I seek to infer what the possible resolution of the conflict is, based on the ever so subtle wordings, clues and symbolisms Hemingway utilized in the story. The writer goes everywhere but records only what he sees or hears. He does not make remarks on the characters but let the readers do it themselves, lets they infer what the characters are like, what they feel or think about, the narrator is not there to explain the actions of the characters. Like it should be in the classical story structures, there is an introduction that very quickly introduces us the main characters and gives brief but quite exact information about the place where the action of the story happens (Carter, 87). The shortness of this story makes all the points of the theme more powerful. Hemingway's writing is very journalistic and without any nonsense; he express dialogues directly and very cleanly, without any downy adjectives or fancy descriptions. This limited use of words is one of the things that made Hemingway so famous in the 1920s, and his distinctive style is still much admired today (Plimpton, 133).

Discussion

The story “Hills Like White Elephants” is filled with symbolism, some of which the reader may never find. The title itself can be explored a lot deeper. The 'hills' refers to the shape of the female body during pregnancy and the 'white elephants' symbolize a property requiring much care and expense and yielding little profit. The story is about a man and a woman taking a train to get an abortion. A girl named Jig and an American man are at a railway station in Spain waiting for the train headed to Madrid. While waiting, they get drinks and they talk about an "operation." And due to Hemingway's trademark minimalist approach, it can only be inferred to be an abortion, because it is not explicated stated.

What seem to be simply white elephants and drinks in their conversation are actually deeper than that. A sense of tension is felt between the couple as they bring up the choice of abortion. Being wary of the consequences, the girl is undecided whether the operation is the best thing to do as the American says it is. After which, things will return to how they used to be—having a happy relationship—at least for the American. The story has a chronological sequence although there is a problem that is implied to have been existing even before the story started. Having the story written mostly in dialogue makes us dig deeper into their conversation and the meaning behind each spoken word. If the story were simply narrated, the meaning and impact of the story ...