Essay on Setting in Hills Like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemingway

Literature is a very explicit term that includes so many time honored written masterpieces. A narrative would be exceedingly dull if nothing ever occurred to the characters in a specific surrounding. One of the key elements that affects the plotline are the various major settings throughout the story. The setting is the scene in which a story takes place, which involves the time, the location, and the natural environment. It can also greatly affect the plotline of the novel and the mood of the characters. It can easily create the tone, or atmosphere, of a certain scene in a story. The characteristics of a setting pushes the audience to gain a feeling of the tension a character must experience, and thus the suspenseful tone is developed. There are two major settings that take place in A Prayer for Owen Meany, which greatly adds to the novel as a whole. They are Gravesend, New Hampshire and Toronto, Canada. These two locations are vitally connected to the distinct time period, which deeply explore the roles the characters play and how they are perceived by characters like John Wheelwright and Owen Meany.

Close interpretation of the story "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway leads the reader to an issue that has plagued society for decades. Understanding of the human condition is unveiled in the story line, the main setting, and through the character representation. The main characters in the story are an American man and a female named Jig. The conflict about abortions is an issue that still faces society today. Architectural and atmospheric symbolisms are used to set the mood and outline the human condition. The love bond between the man and Jig is strong; however, the more powerful bond between Jig and her unborn child is sacred.

Ernest Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants" relies on symbolism to carry the theme of either choosing to live selfishly and dealing with the results, or choosing a more difficult and selfless path and reveling in the rewards. The symbolic materials and the symbolic characters aid the reader's understanding of the subtle theme of this story. The hills symbolize two different decisions that the pregnant girl in our story is faced with. Both hills are completely opposite of each other, and each "hill" or decision has a consequence that is just as different as the appearance of the hills.

"Hills like White Elephants" is not the normal story where you have a beginning, middle and end. Hemingway gave just enough information so that readers could draw their own conclusions. The entire story encompasses a conversation between two lovers and leaves the reader with more questions than answers. Ernest Hemingway was a brilliant writer. People that study Hemingway's works try to gain insight and draw natural conclusions about Hemingway and his life. Hemingway led a difficult life full of martial affairs and misfortune. Some of these experiences have set the foundation for Hemingway's greatest works. This essay will analyze the influence

One way the setting has an impact includes the characters. The safe beach is an example of how the setting can impact the character. According to the story, “The boy . . . turned his eyes, which had a frown behind them, toward the bay and back again to his mother” (1). Jerry’s mother wants him to stay at the beach. She feels like the setting of the bay is dangerous, but Jerry feels the pull to explore the more dangerous bay. Secondly, the setting of the water gives Jerry a hard time. Jerry is trying to hold his breath under water so that it will not be hard to breathe while he is swimming (3). He is trying to learn how to control his breathing so he can swim better. He tried to put stones on his arms so he could stay under the water to help him. Also, another example is the tunnel. According to the author, Jerry “…tried to push himself in. He had got his head in, found his shoulders jammed, moved

In this reading, the narrator's tone is very controlled. An example of that would be when Jig compares the hills to white elephants, but the man refuses to imagine

Ernest Hemingway was a groundbreaking author during the 20th century and he left behind many famous pieces of work. He used his own life experiences to contribute ideas and inspiration for his stories whether they involve his military career or his family life (“Ernest Hemingway). Hemingway also uses language in such ways that can convey feelings and ideas throughout his pieces. His use of language and dialogue in some of his short stories really paint a picture for the reader on the situations presented (Link). In the short story, “Hills Like White Elephants,” Hemingway uses Jig’s ambivalence towards the whole situation with herself and the American to convey the idea that Jig holds all the power in the decision although the American, who is powerless, believes he has a say in the matter.

We are all too familiar with the components of a classic, romantic bestseller. Boy and girl meet, boy sweeps girl off her feet, and they both ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after; a tale as old as time. However, this isn’t a realistic portrayal of love. Real love is messy, complicated, and even unfair at times. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), and Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants” (1927) offers a more accurate portrayal of romantic functionality that is still applicable today as it was back then. Written in the pre-feminist movement of the 1970s, these authors have provided a rich base of female suppression under weight of the male counterparts in play. While we explore the depths of this story, and utilizing this theme as our base, we are able to identify the similarities of powerlessness and vulnerability of the women, the stubbornness and selfishness of the men, symbolism, and setting, and the contrasts such as the rhetorical style and endings in both stories as well.

Frequently, Hemingway uses setting as a significant role within his story to symbolize what the characters do not speak. Throughout the story, the two main characters sit at a bar nestled within a remote train station. All the while, Jig takes note of her surroundings: “On this side there was no shade and no trees…” (Hemingway 274). She also mentions, “…the country was brown and dry” (274). Hemingway’s description shows how bare and desolate the land is on that particular side of the train station. By way of contrast, the opposing side of the station paints a different picture, “On the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of Ebro” (276). The clash between the two landscapes is profound. On one hand there is arid, lifeless land. Conversely, the opposing side yields, beautiful fertile land. Hemingway wanted to emphasize how Jig’s life would develop one way or another depending on the route she took. Notably, the dry land seems to represent the frailty of the situation and how unpromising the future looks should she go through with the abortion. Alternatively, the lush land she gazes at from the train station gives her a glimpse of what could be and perhaps represents her true feelings toward the pregnancy. Throughout the story, Jig has hesitation about the surgery and does not seem to want to follow through with it. Jig mentions, “’We can have everything’” (276) as she stares off into the mountains. The quote signifies that she wants to be as fruitful as the land and do away

From the beginning of Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”, Jig has been a character of mystery, even until the very end of the short story. During the American’s and Jig’s whole conversation, it seemed as though everything was uneasy; and that’s because it was. The whole text was a conversation about the American wanting Jig to abort her baby during a time when abortion was still fairly new.

This imagery of the train station is brought about by more than the actual setting, but rather is corroborated by the presence of bags “against the wall of the station. There were labels on the them from all the hotels where they had spent nights” (Hemingway 592). Hemingway’s choice to mention Jig’s bags is used to further extend the effect of transition, as the bags are covered in stickers, portraying a map of the various places that the couple have been together, both physically visited as well as the many emotional attachments that have grown between the two along their journey. An employee emerges, and offers to move Jig’s bags to the end of the train tracks for her as the train nears. Hemingway’s choice to have Jig’s belongings move towards an end of the tracks creates the effect of another man entering Jig’s life in order to bring her, and her belongings, closer to the decision of what track to choose.

the baby to have, but does it stop her from drinking? No, this only indicates

In the short story by Ernest Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants," a couple is delayed at a train station en route to Madrid and is observed in conflict over the girl's impending abortion. In his writing, Hemingway does not offer any commentary through a specific character's point of view, nor, in the storytelling, does he offer his explicit opinions on how to feel or think about the issues that emerge. The narrative seems to be purely objective, somewhat like a newspaper or journal article, and in true Hemingway form the story ends abruptly, without the couple's conflict clearly being resolved. The ambiguity of the ending has been a subject of much debate; however, the impact of what is not said in words can be gleaned through the

Hemingway puts effort in the simplicity of word and sentence structure, but he does this in a certain technique, which adds on to the meaning of the story “It was late and everyone had left the café except an old man who sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree made against the electric light” (157). Hemingway uses everyday words and begins his story with the simplicity of observation. Hemingway sets his story up chronologically, making his story flow. The story is written in third person, which emphasizes how the narrator doesn’t matter to

Relationships can be difficult when two people have an opposing stance on a controversial topic such as abortion. Men, in their self-interest, perceive this option as an easy way out, in which they can have all the pleasure and none of the consequences. However, for a woman an abortion causes both physical and emotional pain which a man could never understand. Thus, making this one of the utmost difficult issues a girl may need to face in her life. In Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” there are two Americans traveling in Spain. The setting of the scene is a bar located near the train station where the man and the girl discuss this life altering operation, as they await the arrival of the train to Madrid. Throughout the story the man is persuasive, as he attempts to convince the girl to have the operation, while at the same time, the girl expresses her reluctance and remains unconvinced that an abortion is the answer to their problems. Abortion remains as controversial today as it was when Ernest Hemingway wrote “Hills Like White Elephants”. Although Hemingway never used the word abortion in his story, he found ways to evoke emotions of sympathy for the girl and disdain for the man through his creative use of symbolism, setting, and characters in the short story.