Home > Hills Like White Elephants Summary & Study Guide > Essays and Criticism > Hemingway Hills: Symbolism in ‘‘Hills Like White Elephants’’

Hills Like White Elephants | Hemingway Hills: Symbolism in ‘‘Hills Like White Elephants’’

In the following essay, Lewis E. Weeks, Jr. discusses the imagery and symbolism in ‘‘Hills Like White Elephants,’’ focusing specifically on the image suggested by the title.

Although subject, setting, point of view, characterization, dialog, irony, and compression all make ‘‘Hills Like White Elephants’’ one of Hemingway’s most brilliant short stories, the symbolism implicit in the title and developed in the story contributes more than any other single quality to the powerful impact.

Emphasis by position and repetition clearly suggests the importance Hemingway attached to the comparison. Besides the reference in the title, there are, within this very short three-page story, two references to the whiteness of the hills and four to them...

[The entire page is 1338 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

Summary and Analysis – Themes – Characters – And much more...