Hills Like White Elephants
analyze literary works week's readings, completing: Explain literary work captured interest, terms concepts text support explanation. Describe analytical approaches outlined Chapter 16, details text support interpretations.
"Hills Like White Elephants:" Using dialogue to advance a story
Ernest Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants" is a spare, poetical tale told almost entirely in dialogue. The plot of the story is simple -- a man and a girl are traveling through Spain. They are both lovers. The girl is pregnant and the man is pressuring her to have an abortion. By the end of the story, the reader is certain that the girl will get the abortion but the relationship is permanently soured. This is revealed gradually, over the course of the couple's rather elliptical dialogue. By stressing the dialogue between the two characters and keeping description at a minimum, Hemingway is able to bring the lack of communication between the two characters to the forefront of the reader's consciousness.
"Effective dialogue works by implication. The tone of a comment or the choice of words or the hesitation with which something is said can indicate that beneath the spoken words there is a feeling very different from what the words seem to express" (L'Heureux 2011). The reader is immediately struck by the unusual subject matter of the man and the girl, after they order their drinks. "They're lovely hills," the girl says. "They don't really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees." The term 'white elephant' is often a synonym for something false, and the girl's words seems to temporarily suggest that she is confused between the simile she is using to describe the elephants and the reality of the hills in the distance. Hills cannot have 'skin.'
This confusion implies...
Hills Like White Elephants" -- Ernest Hemingway Will the couple agree to an abortion? Jig, the girlfriend, knows she is going to have to give in to the man and have the abortion, and there are hints and there is foreshadowing (albeit very subtle) that provide the clues. This paper reviews the subtleties and on pages 2 and 3 points to specific passages that suggest she will in fact give in
Ernest Hemingway's - Hills Like White Elephants, write essay supports Final Act It is quite possible that Ernest Hemingway was being deliberately deceptive when he wrote "Hills Like White Elephants," which first appeared in 1927 in the collection of short stories entitled Men Without Women. Regardless of his intention, when the story is read outside of the social and cultural context in which it was written -- as is the case
Wyche agrees with this notion, adding that the station's position "between two sets of rails, whose significance lies 'in their figurative implications' (Renner qtd in Wyche 34), and between two contrasting landscapes that symbolize the couple's options" (Wyche). One side of the tracks, the landscape gives the couple the scene of the hills and the valley and on the other side of the tracks trees and grain flourish on
"She relaxed limply in the seat. "Oh, no. No. I don't want to go. I'm sure I don't." Her face was turned away from him. "It will be enough if we can have wine. It will be plenty." She turned up her coat collar so he could not see that she was crying weakly -- like an old woman" (Steinbeck). There are a number of fairly eminent points to be
Hills tells the story of a young American man and his pregnant lover waiting for the train that will take them to an abortionist. In addition to the directness of speech characteristic of Hemingway's writing, Hills explores several themes characteristic of Hemingway, to include boredom, dissatisfaction, and self-destruction as a moving paralysis. "And we could have all this," she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we
Ultimately, Lady Lazarus uses her status as a failed suicide as a source of power, not disempowerment. The haunting words of the end of the tale that she is a woman who eats men like air are meant to underline the fact that despite the fact that the doctors feel that they are the source of her coming to life again and again, there is a strength of spirit within
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