Text appreciation

The text under consideration presents a piece of prose, a short story written by Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899− 1961), one of the prominent and prolific American writers. He used to serve in a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army, to work as a reporter in Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution and the Civil war in Spain. He reflected his wide life experience in a great deal of novels such as “The Sun Also Rises”, “A Farewell to Arms”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “The Old Man and the Sea”. Portraying soldiers, hunters, bullfighters, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith, Hemingway embodied the moods of the people of that time called “the lost generation”.

He also excelled himself as a short-story writer and essayist. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories. The story in question “Hills like white elephants” was first published in 1927 as a part of a volume of collected stories “Men Without Women”. “Men Without Women” was well-received as were Hemingway’s other early works. Although he continued to write novels and stories throughout his career, the early short stories are often considered to be among his finest works.

All the features such as short simple sentences, stock phrases, monosyllabic words, specific precise details, few adjectives, increased number of verbs, lack of abstract notions, and simple grammatical constructions, they form the style of Hemingway, i.e. telegraphic style. It was built up under influence of the “iceberg theory” in which the reader is left to find the meaning beneath the surface. Objective manner, deep hidden meaning, and tense understated dialogue are found in this story. Such a short story implies the author’s philosophy, his view on a problem in one person’s life, the tragedy of the person.

The idea in the analyzed story is in keeping with the title. The metaphor “white elephant” means a valuable possession whose upkeep exceeds its usefulness and it implies a liability. The term derives from the sacred white elephants kept by traditional Southeast Asian monarchs. To possess a white elephant was regarded as a sign that the monarch was ruling with justice and the kingdom was blessed with peace and prosperity. And the man in the story intends to get rid of such a burden, an unborn child and to put off responsibility implied by this child on him.

The story opens with a description of nature and circumstances in which the two main characters are found. The author indicates the place and time precisely. The events take place in the valley of the river Ebro in Spain. The leading characters are a man (referred to only as “the American”) and a girl, Jig. They’re staying at a station for forty minutes waiting for an express from Barcelona going to Madrid. While they are sitting and drinking they have a talk. Their conversation seems to be mundane and meaningless, but soon it becomes clear that he is pressing her into an operation. Though it is never made explicit in the text, it is strongly implied that the operation in question is an abortion. In the end they are going to get on the train that is coming in five minutes.

The story is made up almost entirely of dialogue with few digressions such as descriptions of nature.

The author holds the reader’s attention for the fact he doesn’t name the topic the personages are speaking about. With the open end he also lets the reader think himself of the further development of events.

The theme is formulated implicitly in the text. The author touches upon problems in relationships. He shows the turning point in people’s life when they have to take a decision that will influence their whole life but they reveal that they are different and cannot understand each other anymore and their ways part. In the story the man is insincere in his insistence that he would not have the girl undergo the operation if she does not want to. He hypocritically adds that “if she doesn’t want to she doesn’t have to”. His efforts to appear caring and sympathetic are insincere and his true desire is only to preserve his carefree lifestyle. In the girl’s turn, she makes an attempt to understand the man and what he actually wants. She deceives herself thinking he wants the best for her and he will eventually change his intention, but then, understanding that they will not be able to stay together after this, she makes her decision. We cannot guess if she decides to save her child or not, but the idea is that her calm and unemotional reaction at the end of the story supposes that something has broken in her soul and she will not be able to perceive the world in the way she did before, the disillusion in life and the world has left its imprint on all her life: “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine”. The author draws the characters from everyday life and by these means he makes the reader understand the tragedy of an ordinary person.

The author has chosen the place of the events in Spain not accidentally. The disillusion in life is typical of Hemingway in his works about Spain and, particularly, about the Civil war in Spain. His passion to this country and its people remained with him throughout his whole life. Spain was his favourite country where he spent his best time and was associated for him with youth and carelessness. And he reveals in the story the tragedy of losing them when a person has to take serious decisions.

The attitude of the man toward the problem can be summed up in the following phrase: “That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy”; and the girl sincerely loves him and can do anything for him forgetting about herself: “Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.” In the beginning the heroine takes the world with admiration. Thus her comparison of the hills with white elephants contains the meaning not only of a burden, but also of a mirage. The hills are far away and they lure by their enigmatic beauty but they are unavailable. She admires the nature; she looks at the fields of grain, and trees, and river, and mountains, and tells to her companion that they “could have everything”, but “everyday they make it more impossible”: “it isn’t ours anymore”. Saying that she means that after the operation they will not be able to live as they used to live before in spite of the man’s attempts to assure her in the opposite: “And once they take it away you never get it back” – “But they haven't taken it away” – “We’ll wait and see”. We can feel the subtle undercurrent of the author’s bitter irony in these words. Even discussing drinks the girl mentions that Anis del Того tastes licorice as everything she has tried recently, like absinthe. It can be interpreted in the way that now she doesn’t feel and perceive things around her as she did before, her condition influences her and she cannot behave as she was used to doing anymore. That implies that their life cannot be as it was before, despite the man tries to persuade her in the opposite. And when the woman serving at the bar tells about the train coming in five minutes, the story achieves its culmination point, and she smiles at the woman, “to thank her”, because at this crucial moment, in these five minutes she will finally make sure if her partner values her and their relations. His immediate reaction when he tells that it's “better to take the bags over to the other side of the station”, determines everything. Then his drinking an Anis by himself before rejoining the girl can be defined as his celebration of a simply solved problem. At first sight the man seems to win the conflict between them, but the heroine happens to be morally stronger. And the text is permeated with the author’s sympathy for the girl.

The characters try to conceal their feelings. Neither the man nor the girl want an open conflict. He doesn’t want to make his real thoughts be evident and she doesn’t want to admit his actual feelings towards her. That’s why she agrees with him when she sees he doesn’t share her opinion that the hills look like white elephants: “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees”. On the other side when she is getting more decisive speaking about the world that would never be theirs anymore, the man says: “Come on back in the shade” where the shade in its figurative meaning stands for reserved emotions. The reader should pay close attention to eye contact in the story. The man and the girl rarely look at each other and look at other objects like the table and the hills: “the girl was looking off at the line of hills”, “the girl looked at the bead curtain”, “the girl looked across at the hills”, “the girl looked at the ground”. This contributes to the tension that settles between them. She hopes for a more meaningful life. The man, on the contrary, wants to preserve their carefree lifestyle and the baby would be a hindrance to this.

The story is filled with symbolism including the white elephant, a costly and unwanted burden. The nature reflects the life of personages. The rails symbolize their course of life where they have the power to choose their way to go ahead or go back. The station between the two lines of rails symbolizes the present moment in their life when they have to make their decision. And the emptiness, bareness of the valley without any shade symbolizes the situation when everything will be evident, no matter how delicately it will be concealed. And the hot weather implies the tension, climax in their relations.

The language of the story is informal, colloquial. It contains some foreign words, barbarisms (“Dos cervezas”, “bamboo”, “Anis del Того” − the name of a drink, “reals” − Spanish old silver coins) to supply the narrated events with the proper local coloring, to convey the idea of the country where the story takes place. There are also mentioned geographical names (“Ebro”, Barcelona”, “Madrid”) to make the situation more real.

The writer makes an ample use of stylistic devices. The general tone of the text is tragic. On the whole, the author manages to expose: the acute problem and to portray the personages not describing their appearance and feelings, but revealing their inner state through their words, behaviour, actions, i.e. he employs indirect characterization to delineate the characters. That’s why though the story contains strong emotional conflict, it is entirely without adverbs indicating the tone of their remarks. The tension is expressed implicitly in the increased number of verbs indicating actions of the personages: “asked”, “said”, “took off her hat”, “came”, “went”, “brought”, “put”, “looked”, “drank”, “stood”, “saw”, “picked up”, “carried”, “walked”, “smiled”.

The text contains simple grammatical constructions that are constantly repeated: “I love you now. You know I love you”, “But I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to”, “Would you please please please please please please stop talking? ” Then the girl begins to interrupt the man when she gets bored with him: “But you’ve got to realize − ” “I realize”, “I don’t want you to do anything that you don't want to do − ” “Nor that isn't good for me... I know”, i.e. suspense holds the reader in tense anticipation. Their dialogue is alternated with the moments of silence. Then as indicating the climax the girl says: “I’ll scream”. The simile (“like white elephants”) is used to enliven to narration and to catch the reader’s eye, and also to convey the meaning of the problem as it is perceived by the characters. The antithesis (“They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry”, “The warm wind” − “The beer’s nice and cool ”)is resorted to set off the difference between the characters. Trite oxymoron (“an awfully simple operation”, “perfectly simple”, “perfectly natural”) serves to indicate roused emotions.

The author reveals himself as a master of indirect characterization of personages and selects his words with great precision. Taking all into account, we can speak about the originality of Hemingway’s style that implies forcefulness of presentation and helps to expose burning problems of the time.

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