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Irony In Enerest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

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Enerest Hemingway’s short story, Hills Like White Elephants, may seem at first to be simple and plain, or as if not much is going on throughout the narrative. However, the story is actually very intricate; the author was able to say a lot without using many words. The story is about a conversation between a man and girl who are waiting for a train in Spain. The couple are both distressed about how they should make a decision of whether to keep their baby, or terminate the pregnancy. Hemingway is able to say indirectly that the conversation is about abortion without clearly stating it by using literary elements. Some of the elements Hemingway uses are symbols to illustrate different meanings for concision, irony to talk about something complicated …show more content…

One of the reasons he uses irony is to show emotions and feelings of the character without having to give up his position of being the observer. Through the way the characters communicate, and by style in which he writes is ironic. The way Hemingway’s style is ironic is by how he tells a complex story in a simple manner. A lot is going on beneath the surface of the story, and the author is able to tell all of this in a way that is clear and concise. The way the characters interact with each other is another example of irony. The man for instance, is thinking about primarily himself without thinking about his significant other. His words say one thing, and his actions say another. He tries to acts as if he is being sincere and considerate such as saying “if you don’t want to you don’t have to” (277), after trying to persuade her by saying “I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig” (276), meaning the abortion. The man is exhibited as being disingenuous and selfish when he says “it’s all perfectly simple” when it is everything but simple. The girl responds to his deceitfulness out of anger by the way she reiterates his lies, for example, when she says, “I know its perfectly simple” (277), or after when the man says he knows people who have done it, she says, “[A]nd afterward they were all so happy” (277). Verbal irony is used throughout to help show the character’s emotions, as well as, help one understand the …show more content…

Writing in the third person objectively makes him just the observer. He is indifferent towards both the man and the girl. In this story, the authors job is not to educate the reader of what the characters are thinking, for it is up to the reader to distinguish what he or she thinks of the situation. Instead of telling the reader what the characters are thinking or emotions they are feeling, he instead incorporates things such as verbal irony, to show what the characters are feeling, and symbols to represent alternative

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