Hills Like White Elephants Group

Question:

luna15
luna15
Student
College - Freshman

Where would you like to have more information (besides "he said" and "she said")?

Hemingway once suggested that his purpose in such a story is to tell the reader as little as possible directly yet to reveal characters' motives and their conflict. How does this principle operate in this story?

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Posted by luna15 on Thursday October 2, 2008 at 3:00 PM and tagged with characters, dialogue, hills like white elephants, purpose.

Answers:


  1. kwoo1213 Teacher
    College - Junior

    eNotes Editor

    Best answer as selected by question asker.

    Hemingway reveals his much about his characters through his use of dialogue and description of their actions and reactions.  Readers can make educated assumptions about a character's personality based on these things.  Hemingway wanted the reader to be able to formulate his or her own conclusions about his characters, which engrosses the reader that much more into the story.  "Less is more" was his philosophy!  

    To answer your first question, I would not like to see any more information provided in the story because the readers are able to get enough information from the story and characters to obtain the theme and/or meaning.  

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    Posted by kwoo1213 on Thursday October 2, 2008 at 3:06 PM