Discussion Topic
Hemingway's techniques in "Hills Like White Elephants" to develop characters and express their emotions
Summary:
Hemingway uses dialogue and minimalistic descriptions in "Hills Like White Elephants" to develop characters and express their emotions. The characters' conversations reveal underlying tensions and the complexities of their relationship, while the sparse descriptions allow readers to infer emotions and motivations, creating a powerful and subtle narrative.
In "Hills Like White Elephants," how openly do characters express their feelings?
‘If I do it you won’t ever worry?’
‘I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.’
‘Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t care about me.’
‘Well, I care about you.’
‘Oh, yes. But I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine.’
‘I don’t want you to do it if you feel that way.’
It might easily be argued that neither the American man nor Jig give any
open expression to their feelings, as in the excerpt above. They both evade,
feign, and falsify their expressions of their feelings, while on occasion also
using sarcasm, as when Jig says: ‘And afterwards they were all so happy.’
The easiest type of expression to see is when Jig overtly tries to evade
further talking about the operation and related feelings. Jig clearly evades by
saying:
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The easiest type of expression to see is when Jig overtly tries to evade further talking about the operation and related feelings. Jig clearly evades by saying:
'Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?’
At one point, in a moment of a sort of absent-minded reverie, Jig honestly says, more to herself than to the man, that everyday it becomes more impossible for them to have their dream of love and happiness:
‘And we could have all this,’ she said. ‘And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.’
While her remark leads to an exchange between them, it characteristically ends with Jig's evasive, ‘We’ll wait and see.’
Shortly after, the man does a good job of seeming to falsify his feelings then following up with feigning a rationalized expression of his other feelings: he doesn't give direct and honest report of his feelings:
‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you? ...'
‘Of course it does. But I don’t want anybody but you. ....'
In "Hills Like White Elephants," how does Hemingway show the couple's nature through character development?
The development of these two characters makes their relationship very clear in the story. The American (the man is never named) seems more worldly than Jig; he speaks Spanish and plays the role of "teacher" to what he considers to be her less sophisticated self. He is pushy and even domineering in their conversation. He shows no sign of empathy or sympathy for her; he is self-centered and arrogant. In his arrogance, he assumes to be the expert of the two on abortion as a medical procedure.
Jig, in contrast, is quieter and given to introspection. She is the sensitive one of the pair. It is Jig who steps forward to view the lovely hills in the distance across the green plain, a sight he had not seen and which he belittled when she mentioned it. Jig possesses more emotional depth. She considers her pregnancy in terms of what it would mean to their relationship, imagining what a real life together might be like. The American sees her pregnancy only as an impediment to their current carefree, purposeless existance.
From the development of their characters, it seems clear their relationship is deeply flawed. The American, no doubt, has acted as the driving force, while Jig has assumed a secondary role. When he pushes her to have an abortion, however, he may have pushed her too far. Jig, at least, asserts herself enough to tell him that she will scream if he does not stop talking about it.
At the start of the story, the relationship between the man and the woman is very uncertain, because as we discover, they have to decide on whether the woman is going to get an abortion or not. It is the man who clearly wants her to have an abortion, and the woman who is unsure about this. However, what changes during the course of the story is the way in which the man is completely unthinking about what the girl is facing. He keeps on talking about the abortion, repeating again and again how painless and easy the procedure is, until she says the following:
Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?
Even this is not enough to get him to shut up, and the girl is forced to threaten to scream in her efforts to make him stop refering to the abortion. At the end of the story, her final words and the obvious deception that they include clearly tells us a lot about the nature of the relationship they have and how it has changed. When the man asks his lover if she feels better, note how she responds:
"I feel fine," she said. "There's nothing wrong with me. I feel fine."
During the course of the story, it has become clear to the woman that her lover's will is something that cannot be denied or challenged. She faces the terrifying future of living in a relationship where he has all the power and where he will not stop until his desires are achieved, no matter what she thinks or wants.
The two main characters in "Hills Like White Elephants" are depicted almost entirely through dialogue. The reader knows very little about the details of their lives. The man is American and unnamed. The girl is of unknown nationality, and the man calls her "Jig," which may be an abbreviation of her name or a nickname.
While external details remain sparse, the reader learns a fair amount about the lifestyle, personalities, and priorities of these people by listening to their tense, laconic conversation. They appear to be aimless drifters, with enough money not to have to work. The girl remarks, and the man agrees:
That's all we do, isn't it—look at things and try new drinks?
This, in Hemingway's typical style, says a lot about both of them in a few words, not only revealing their lifestyle but showing that the man is content with it, since he does not see that life has much more to offer, while the girl is restless and unsatisfied.
The man's selfishness and the girl's dependence on him, emotional if not financial, are depicted in the subtly insistent way he pushes her to make a decision (which most readers have presumed is to have an abortion). His studied appearance of indifference is at odds with the way he keeps harping on the subject of the operation, until the girl has no option but to reveal the extent of her distress.
What techniques does Hemingway use in "Hills Like White Elephants"?
As early as the 1920s, motion pictures had an strong influence on novelists and short story writers. Some of Ernest Hemingway’s stories are like movies—which explains why so many were adapted to movies. The same was true for Dashiell Hammett, who wrote in an objective way and relied heavily on dialogue to convey exposition. His novel The Maltese Falcon was made into movies three times. When a movie opens—that is, when the camera "fades in"—there is usually no explanation of the problem, the setting, or anything else. There may be a so-called “establishing shot.” For instance, if the story takes place in Paris you will see the Eiffel Tower and know you are in Paris. If it takes place in New York you are likely to see a lot of skyscrapers. Movies usually can only show people doing things in outdoor or indoor settings and talking to each other. The viewer has to pick up information from the actors’ dialogue. Sometimes there is a "voice-over" narrator, which is equivalent to prose exposition in a story; but movie makers do not like voice-over narrators. "Hills Like White Elephants" opens with the equivalent of an "establishing shot":
The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun.
This is description, not exposition. Hemingway tried to avoid straight prose exposition because it makes the author intrusive and at the same time distances the reader from the characters.
In "Hills Like White Elephants," how does Hemingway use dialogue to show characters' emotions?
The dialogue in "Hills Like White Elephants" is almost as short as the phrase, "The elephant in the room." The dialogue is short and to the point but actually does not provide much information in terms of who exactly the man and woman named Jig really are and of their relation to one another. Much like the woman's name suggests, the couple is doing a dance together through their dialogue but still remain on their own as they complete each move. They are not connected with one another as intimately as they would be if they were doing the tango. The couple is doing a jig verbally. The movements are quick and jumpy.
Through the dialogue there is a sense of some level of familiarity but not enough to gauge a true connection between the two. There is the awareness of an operation that is tossed around as being "simple" on the part of the man in the story. The woman on the other hand, seems to be working out something in her head as she comments on the hills resembling white elephants. Her attempts at conversation are blocked with the man's unwillingness to discuss "the elephant in the room."
Later, the couple's quick banter is met with Jig's cry of, "Can't we maybe stop talking?" Her request reveals her fear of the operation the man deems as "simple". Her request also gives an indication that she is at the mercy of the man in the story. While the man is not mean to Jig, the man's emotions come across as one who is just preoccupied. He is concerned with either the problem at hand or perhaps with how he may escape the problem by not becoming emotionally involved in the solution of it, as his short and lack of real conversation about Jig's feelings may suggest.