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Sunday, March 9, 2014

Blog Response to “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway: From the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction 7th Edition

 I have read this short story by Ernest Hemingway several times in the past, and though I still cannot honestly say whether or not I like it, I can say that it’s extremely effective. In particular the way in which the dialogue not only reveals the story, but conveys the building and often unbearable tension between the two characters.  The way in which Hemingway employs social niceties and politeness as a FOIL to the taboo topic and growing dissent is especially brilliant. At one point Hemingway writes:
          “Yes,” said the girl. “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things
           you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.”
           “Oh, cut it out.”
           “You started it,” the girl said. “I was being amused. I was having a fine time.”
           “Well, let’s try and have a fine time.” (662)
That instant is where the tension is first fully introduced, and reading it you become aware there’s an underlying message being exchanged between the two characters. Hemingway recreates the feeling of a brewing argument, of painful undertones, and makes you feel as if you are there listening to a private exchange you’ve yet to fully understand. He continues throughout the piece with the characters hedging the topic of abortion with platitudes, but never outrightly saying what they’re going to do, even to each other. In this unwillingness to directly confront either the current state of the female character’s pregnancy, or the difficulty of the abortion, Hemingway makes the readers aware of the characters’ deep desire to return to their “before” as well as their awareness of that impossibility.  One example of this is when Hemingway writes:
     “And you think then we’ll be alright and be happy.”
     “I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have
     done it.”
     “So have I,” said the girl. “And afterward they were all so happy.” (663)

Rather than the dialogue revealing that the couple feels the same about the events to come, the discord that the events have created between them becomes more and more apparent as you read, making one feel caught along with the characters in the story. One also senses the incomprehensible nature of their decision as Hemingway repeatedly uses the phrase, “it’s perfectly simple” to illustrate that it is not (663). Regardless of their decision, things have inevitably changed for the characters and one can feel this as they read through the dialogue, can feel the characters’ struggles to right something that cannot be righted, of returning to an intimacy that as the female character states, “isn’t ours anymore” (664). Throughout this piece you feel the discomfort and concealed desperation that the characters feel. You understand the explosiveness of things left unsaid. Hemingway creates a tension, albeit understated, that cannot be escaped or ignored.

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