Wow, I really admire Hemingway. I just finished rereading “Hills like White Elephants.” True to his style, Hemingway manages to say so much with few words. The first reading didn’t provide much insight for me. But, a second more careful reading and I can sense the tension in this couple’s dialogue. They are obviously having a disagreement about an operation he wants her to have (an abortion). Then, I begin to feel the tension of the argument. Their relationship seems to be at a crossroads. They may not last and the woman has a difficult choice to make.
Hemingway leaves it up to the reader to “read b/w the lines” and infer what is happening in this scenario. A master writer, he developed his technique when he worked as a journalist. He learned to write direct and short sentences. Hemingway stated: "Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling as you had." (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/articles/hallengren/index.html). A Nobel Winner, Hemingway is truly a master. He can make the reader feel all the emotion of characters by using only the barest essentials of words.
Hi Rach, I went to the site you posted and it had so much info. I was thinking about how Hemingway wrote about abortion in, "Hills Like White Elephants," and in, "Snows of Kilimanjaro there was a woman who made herself loose her baby by purposely falling down a flight of stairs. I found that interesting and a common thread. The man in the, "Snows of Kilimanjaro," wanted the baby but did not tell her because he did know about her pregnancy but in the story, "Hill Like White Elephants," the man knows about the pregnancy and keeps telling the girl that it is a simple operation. Anyway, it just kind of made me wonder why he used abortion in both of the stories. Any ideas?
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