ipl-logo

Hills Like White Elephants Review Essay

485 Words2 Pages

Review
Hills Like White Elephants is a short story published in 1927 wrote by Ernest Hemmingway. “Hills Like White Elephants” is a extract from Ernest Hemmingway’s second collection of short stories, Men Without Women. The story’s numerous allusions and sparse style are also typical of Hemingway’s writing. The story focuses on a conversation between an American man and a girl at a Spanish train station. The girl compares the nearby hills to white elephants. The pair has a discussion, about an "operation" and the man wants the girl to have this operation, which is implied to be an abortion.
Ernest Hemmingway sent me a lot of different messages throughout this short story. But the main message that I received was that you need to have the courage …show more content…

Ernest Hemmingway uses a technique where you have to think through the text in your mind several times repeated. It’s called the iceberg theory. The iceberg theory is when a meaning sound casual, but it actually has a lot more underneath it. Just like an real iceberg.
Hemingway avoids using dialogue tags, such as “he said” or “she said”. The text is pretty stiff and simply because he doesn’t use fancy words, beautiful describing and varied vocabulary. He doesn’t even write any internal monologues. This makes the readers to perceive how the characters thinks and feels all by them self.
I think that maybe the girl and the man was sitting outside the abortion clinic. And that the train was like symbols that she needs to do the abortion before the train has gone or in simple words before it’s too late to do an abortion.
Also at the end he asked the girl “Do you feel better” and she replied “I feel fine. There’s nothing wrong with me, I feel fine”
Once again the women doesn’t have the courage to say what she really things. She just lied and once again tried to run from her problems rather than facing them feels depressed about the

Show More
Related

  • Compare And Contrast Hills Like White Elephant And The Story Of An Hour

    1004 Words  | 5 Pages

    Chopin may suggest that Mrs. Mallard feels restricted to live her life with a partner in her life. Hemmingway does not reveal the thoughts of the characters leaving readers at suspense. Readers must interpret what is going on between the girlfriend and her boyfriend in Hills Like White Elephants (Hemmingway). The white elephants in his story represent fertility. Both the woman and her boyfriend struggle to speak of abortion.

    Read More

  • Exploratory Essay On Pro Life

    582 Words  | 3 Pages

    The doctor was trying to make her understand that she is not doing anything wrong, she has another child that needs her and if they don’t do what has to be done that child will be without a mother. She had the abortion, and the minute they cut the

    Read More

  • Film Analysis: Pregnancy Pact

    426 Words  | 2 Pages

    This movie showed lots of struggles in teen pregnancies. For example, when Sarah’s friend had her baby, the baby and the girl were not good. She had struggles having the baby, was in severe pain, and the baby was not breathing on its own. Another struggle was with stress. Lots of the teenage girls had lots of stress and they went to smoking and drinking to prevent it.

    Read More

  • Into The Wild Essay

    688 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Into The Wild” by Jon Krakauer is the story of Chris McCandless’s life and journey. In 1992, this young man, Chris, from an average family in the East Coast decided to cut off contact with his family and give up all his possessions so that he could hitchhike into the Alaskan bush. A main reason many believe Chris went into the wilderness was because he was in search of his identity. From reading this book I have come up with my own opinion of what type of person he was. The conclusion I have reached about Chris is that he was a distant and ill-prepared person who had a very strong will.

    Read More

  • Hills Like White Elephants Literary Analysis

    1554 Words  | 7 Pages

    Throughout the short story (1), “Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway is speaking about a seemingly unwanted pregnancy and a woman’s uneasiness with going through an abortion. However, Hemingway never explicitly says in this work of fiction (2) that it is about abortion or that the woman, Jig, is uncomfortable with it, but uses symbolism (3) to present this to the audience. At the time “Hills like White Elephants” was published, in 1927, abortion was illegal in most places and a very taboo subject that wasn’t to be openly discussed in public. Thus, Hemingway relied greatly upon the use of symbolism to get his message across for this reason as well as the third person narrator (4) that did not give insight into the character’s thoughts within this piece of literature (5) . He uses symbols such as the train station, white hills, the baggage, and the drinks to point towards the underlying internal conflict (6) of Jig’s decision that is being heavily influenced by the American man, who wants Jig to get the abortion.

    Read More

  • Hills Like White Elephants Rhetorical Analysis

    739 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout their conversation, you can decipher a tone where the conversation sheds light on his feelings towards the procedure and her feelings. He says “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig. It’s not really an operation at all” (Hemingway 124), in an effort to persuade her to in fact have the abortion. She, on the other hand, seems silent at first, but then questions how their life will be better after this procedure. Her uncertainty shows in her responses, and in other findings “… the sensuous beauty of a love relation that is quickly deteriorating, now that she has become conscious of her lover’s selfishness” (Maynard 273).

    Read More

  • How Is Abortion An Issue For All Society By John Doe

    613 Words  | 3 Pages

    Doe writes, “By showing how the conversation changes, he develops the theme that the girl takes control of the situation and supports the assertion that abortion is a female issue.” (2) The evidence he

    Read More

  • Hills Like White Elephants Literary Criticism

    1098 Words  | 5 Pages

    Hills Like White Elephant is a short story by Earnest Hemingway from 1927. The story is talking about a failing relationship between an American man and his girlfriend. This couple is at a critical point on their lives. At the bar in a train station in Spain, the girl, Jig, does not want to end up her pregnancy, but she is going to sacrifice the baby to satisfied him. Because he is critical of the exploitation of his girl’s feelings concerning the continuation of unbalanced relationship.

    Read More

  • The Theme Of Abortion In Hills Like White Elephants

    893 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the short story, “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway from the start makes us draw out our own conclusions and does not give us a great deal of information. For example, we are only told about two characters, an American man and a girl who are waiting for their train to arrive. Other than this, we are not told what relationship the characters share together or where their final destination is. The protagonist who is referred to as “the girl” is in the middle of a tragic situation which can take a turn for the best or the worst and her partner, the “American man” is not helping but making the situation more heated.

    Read More

  • Hills Like White Elephants Character Analysis

    1044 Words  | 5 Pages

    In his story “Hills Like White Elephants”, Ernest Hemingway points out the couple's inability to make the decision: whether to abort the unborn child or not. The reader finds that the story deals with couple's miscommunication through the conversation and the emotions that they express. One can observe that no descriptions are given to the characters, thus, Hemingway creates universal dilemma to focus on the crucial issue. In this way, Hemingway leads the reader to identify with his female character that undergoes a struggle.

    Read More

  • Hills Like White Elephant Literary Analysis

    746 Words  | 3 Pages

    They each bring up different points as to why throughout the story. In Earnest Hemingway’s short story Hills like White Elephants written in 1927 he uses the hills themselves, the scenery that the couple is surrounded by, and the beaded curtain as symbols to describe the situation that the couple faces. In this short story, the hills that the train station overlook are compared to white elephants. This is because the conversation Jig is wanting to have with the American consists of whether or not to keep the

    Read More

  • The Dialogue In Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

    1629 Words  | 7 Pages

    The dialogue in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” reveals a man’s and a woman’s incongruent conflict on abortion, and the author’s fundamentally feminist position is visible in the portrayal of the woman’s independent choice of whether or not to keep the baby she is carrying. The plot is very simple in the story which is less than 1500 words long. A woman and a man spend less than an hour on a hot summers day at a Spanish train station in the valley of Ebro as they are waiting for a train heading for Madrid. Their dialogue takes up most of the space and only few major actions take place.

    Read More

  • Symbolism In Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

    1128 Words  | 5 Pages

    Symbolism plays a fundamental role in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”. The different symbols used throughout the story are capable of subtly conveying intricate concepts to the readers of this recognized literary work. It then becomes essential for them to detect all these symbols, and discern the deep meanings which they hold in order to truly grasp the story’s message which the author intended to transmit. Without this insight, many first-time readers may view the story as a simple and casual dialog between two people, a man and a woman, waiting for a train from Barcelona to Madrid. Thus, they become unaware of the intense conflict the two main characters are actually facing, haunted by the difficult decision of terminating a pregnancy

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of Hills Like White Elephants, By Ernest Hemingway

    2016 Words  | 9 Pages

    One of the most notable facets of “Hills Like White Elephants” is the repetition of sentences throughout the short story. With the story running at barely two thousand words, the repetition of these key phrases stands out among the dialogue. The phrase from which the title comes from, “like white elephants”, reoccurs five times within the text. In cultural context, an elephant in the room is an idiom for a burden or an issue at hand that no one wants to discuss.

    Read More

  • Masculinity And Womanhood In Hills Like White Elephants

    797 Words  | 4 Pages

    If we observe their relationship, it seems like it is not going too well either. With attention to Jig’s view and the man’s view we can say that they both have a different attitude towards the abortion and their relationship. Remarkably, the girl’s thoughts change through their conversation. Renner divides the stages of the decision-making process into four – what he calls – ‘movements’. (28)

    Read More

More about Hills Like White Elephants Review Essay

Open Document