Hemingway Just Knows Things

Quite like the rest of Hemingway's great material, "Hills Like White Elephants" manages to say very little and mean a whole lot. He has manipulated the story so that the context is relatively obvious, and the content has us wondering what the hell anybody is talking about before we're able to piece together that Jig is uncertain about her procedural abortion while the Man is all for it. In the end, we'd like to think, "Uh-oh" about a pregnant girl (specifically not a woman, and with a childish name like Jig) downing beers and absinthe, and yet there's something about the terse, abstract dialogue that is too distinctly recognizable and real in its casual delivery. We are left with some curiosity as to what will come of their situation--especially when we don't know how convoluted it truly is. The story ends with Jig in what sounds like a huff, but our concern is limited based on a lack of intimacy between the readers and the characters. Similarly to listening in on a stranger's conversation, we are listening in on their conversation without being offered any insight to either character from the Narrator. He delivers the dialog almost journalistically, as though he'd heard it and jotted it down. There are lengthy exchanges during which we're not even offered a "the man said" or a "said the girl." The conversation stands by itself--we are merely eavesdropping. For instance, we can consider what it would be like to sit at a bar and suddenly over-hear something like this:

"It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig,' the man said. 'It's not really an operation at all."

The girl looked at the ground the the table legs rested on.

"I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig. It's really not anything. It's just to let the air in."

Our ears would be open to the conversation the entire time, despite the abortion language being very subtle throughout their exchange. The promise of an operation, or a human dissection equipped with a vacuum, is Hemingway's most disconcerting detail. The bulk of their argument, oddly enough, stems from the tiniest mention of an operation.

Hemingway's low style functions with the sole purpose of getting information across quickly, no fuss. His many conjunctions squeeze in details conversationally, recalling details as if they came to mind the second he wrote them down, without restructuring thoughts or ideas for suspensive purposes. The diction, too, is quick and colloquial.

Before:

The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.

After:

The girl flexed her legs from the sitting position and pressed the firm ground upon which she walked directly towards the station's end. Plentiful fields of grains and tall trees followed the industrious banks of the Ebro on the opposite side of the bustling station. In a far off distance that exceeds the river, as we've seen it earlier, there is tremendous landscape of white mountains. The cloud's densely cast shadow progressed forward throughout the vast fields of grain that she had witnessed mere moments earlier through the scope of the trees.