Hills Like White Elephants Character Analysis Essay

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The characters of Hills Like White Elephants
Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants short story takes place in a train station in Spain around the 1920s. The two main characters of his story are that of a man and girl waiting for train while drinking and the story is almost entirely told through a conversational dialogue of the characters with a few small descriptive paragraphs of the surrounding scenery of the train station in between. Additionally, Hemingway doesn’t give any characterisation of the mood or theme of the conversation, it is written in a completely neutral manner as if he were only reporting the conversation. He also doesn’t give any context to this conversation leaving the reader for the most part in the dark in regards to the subject matter of the dialogue of the main characters. This can lead many readers to view the story and characters essentially without any actual character or plot making the story pointless. However despite this Hemingway does actually develop his two main characters and gives them personality through their conversation while …show more content…

It is almost entirely told as a conversation and at that a conversation with no direct indication as to the done or context. This style of omission and reportive writing at first glance leaves the reader largely in dark and gives a sense of pointlessness to the story. Yet with close inspection and multiple readings the dialogue of the main figures of the story reveals a lot of details about their character and subject matter of their conversation by allowing the reader to interpret the meaning and tone of what the character are saying without having told them directly. With this method Hemingway not only reveals what his short story is about but also creates characters entirely through conversation managing to make one them a sympathetic character as seen with the

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