A girl finding her voice in ‘Hills like White Elephants The true question: will she undergo an abortion?
In 1927 Ernest Hemingway wrote a collection of short stories including ‘Hills like White Elephants’. As a modernist writer, he believes that the reader has to work in order to understand the meaning of his stories. This can be connected to his writing style, in which he uses a lot of metaphors, symbolism and other stylistic elements, this makes it difficult for the reader to discover the true meaning of his writings. A very good example of this is actually the notion of abortion in ‘Hills like White Elephants’; is the girl going to have the abortion or not? The question is left open, even at the end of the story. Again, you can say …show more content…
Assuming both lines go in opposite directions, you can say that they represent the choices of the couple. If they go to Madrid, the girl will undergo the operation, this actually sounds rather ironical because Madrid sounds familiar to the Spanish word Madre, which means mother. Hemingway describes two different types of landscapes on each side of the railroads. On one side the hills are looking dry, almost dead; whilst on the other side, they look very much alive and those are the hills that look like white elephants. Again, the one side refers to the rail line to Madrid and therefore also to the girl having the abortion done, and the other line refers to Barcelona and the girl keeping the baby. At the beginning of the story, the couple is sitting “at a table in the shade”, outside the building’ (p. 251) facing towards the dead-like hills. This shows us that, at this point, the abortion is still the only option they have got, because the girl did not yet realise what her own feelings towards the baby are, and how to express them. When the American changes the bags from one railroad to the other, he shows the girl’s
In 1927 Ernest Hemingway wrote a collection of short stories including ‘Hills like White Elephants’. As a modernist writer, he believes that the reader has to work in order to understand the meaning of his stories. This can be connected to his writing style, in which he uses a lot of metaphors, symbolism and other stylistic elements, this makes it difficult for the reader to discover the true meaning of his writings. A very good example of this is actually the notion of abortion in ‘Hills like White Elephants’; is the girl going to have the abortion or not? The question is left open, even at the end of the story. Again, you can say …show more content…
Assuming both lines go in opposite directions, you can say that they represent the choices of the couple. If they go to Madrid, the girl will undergo the operation, this actually sounds rather ironical because Madrid sounds familiar to the Spanish word Madre, which means mother. Hemingway describes two different types of landscapes on each side of the railroads. On one side the hills are looking dry, almost dead; whilst on the other side, they look very much alive and those are the hills that look like white elephants. Again, the one side refers to the rail line to Madrid and therefore also to the girl having the abortion done, and the other line refers to Barcelona and the girl keeping the baby. At the beginning of the story, the couple is sitting “at a table in the shade”, outside the building’ (p. 251) facing towards the dead-like hills. This shows us that, at this point, the abortion is still the only option they have got, because the girl did not yet realise what her own feelings towards the baby are, and how to express them. When the American changes the bags from one railroad to the other, he shows the girl’s