"Hills Like White Elephants"

Ernest Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants" is considered by many critics to be about abortion. In order to understand this story, one needs to understand Hemingway's views on women, relationships, friends, and children. One also needs to understand Hemingway's artistic method and use of language, including the symbolism that is apparent in this story.

Hemingway can be classified as a modernist in fiction. Modernism is a term applied retroactively to certain literary and artistic trends at the beginning of the twentieth century. Modernism rejected traditions that existed in the nineteenth century and sought to stretch the boundaries, striking out in new directions and with new techniques. More was demanded of the reader of literature or the viewer of art. Answers were not presented directly to issues raised, but instead the artist demanded the participation of the audience more directly in elucidating meaning and in seeing the relationship between technique and meaning. In literature, writers developed new structures as a way of casting a new light on such accepted elements as character, setting, and plot. Much of modernist fiction shows this increased demand on the reader. Ernest Hemingway gives the illusion of moving in the other direction by simplifying language to the point where it seems ascetic, but in truth his language is complex in its way, building meaning into every word and the placement of every word much like poetry. The reader needs

Related Essays

Hills Like White Elephants There are two central characters in Hemingway's short story Hills Like White Elephants. A nameless American man and woman converse .... (486 2 )

Hills Like White Elephants In Hills Like White Elephants, Hemingway (p. 172) provides us with a simple story with two characters, a nameless American man and a pregnant woman discussing .... (1110 4 )

Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" is the story of a man and a woman whose relationship is troubled if not doomed by her pregnancy and by his .... (1505 6 )

"Hills Like White Elephants" & Abortion Ernest Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants" portrays what is very probably the end of a relationship between a man and a woman over their .... (1827 7 )

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Babylon Revisited .... Hills Like White Elephants A young man and woman are waiting at a train station for a train. They have drinks to pass the time, and make small talk. .... (621 2 )

Elephants" in the way the two people are introduced: "The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building" (Hemingway 211). He is "the American," and she is simply "the girl with him." However, in the course of the story, there is a shift as the man remains unnamed and the girl becomes "Jig," as the man calls her at one point. She has more identity than does he by the end of the story. Bloom describes the characters and shows how Hemingway has more regard for the woman than for the man. The man is a "rootless, hedonistic American" who is "notable as much for his selfishness as his insensitivity" (Bloom 35). Wagner echoes this and calls the man a representative of "an advanced stage of the insensitivity to women's needs" (Wagner, Ernest Hemingway 105). Bloom notes of the woman that she is "Far more imaginative and emotional than her companion . . . [and] also much more vulnerable" (Bloom 35). Bloom further points out, "Hemingway refers to her primarily as the 'girl,' rather than the 'woman' to emphasize her powerlessness" (bloom 35). Even the nickname "Jig" emphasizes her youth. As with many Hemingway stories, "Hills Like White Elephants" is deceptively simple in form. Two people wait

Category: Literature - "