Analysis of Conflict In Ernest Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants
An Analysis of Conflict in Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” has generated diversity and variety in the way that critics have read the story. ... According to Johnston, the conflict between the characters is highlighted through the position of the station in between the rails and in the middle of the Ebro valley surrounded by hills. ... Just as the location of the station illuminates the couple’s conflicting views, so does the reference to the white elephant. Johnston states that the unborn child is a white elephant to the man; it is a burdensome possession that he does not want (167). On the other hand, the white elephant is a rare creature, which is sacred and believed to have spiritual powers (Weeks 77). ... Johnston says that it is evident that the girl is holding the curtain like a rosary in order to give her the moral strength when she needed it (167). ... “Though the girl would like to break the addiction and change the direction of their lives, she lacks the strength to do so without his help, and he has no desire to change” (Lanier 286). ... Hemingway reinforces this conflict of choice between the couple by dividing the setting in half; he establishes both “a physical setting and a symbolic backdrop for the tale” (Magill 396). “The station was between two lines of rails in the sun” (Hemingway 273), and these rail lines run through a valley with hills on both sides. On one side the hills are dry, barren, and sterile. ... On the other side, the hills are fertile with trees and fields of grain (Justice 18); and while a shadow does move across the field as the girl looks at the fruitful side, it does not foreshadow the death of the child. ... Their “choice of abortion is associated with the arid sterility of the hills on the barren side of the valley …The choice of having the child is associated with the living, growing things on the other side of the valley…” (Renner 28); and the girl, who looks at this side, chooses to follow nature. ... Near the beginning of the story, they are sitting at a table in the shade facing the barren and infertile hills. It is at this point that the girl notices the hills “look like white elephants” (Hemingway 273), and she notices the bead curtain. According to Weeks, the white elephant, like the child, is paradoxical. ... Although there is much debate about the meaning of her comment, Renner states that, for the girl, the child is a white elephant. ... After she refers to the hills as white elephants, she looks at the bamboo bead curtain. ... “As a figurative barrier, it separates the sensitive girl, who notices and touches the beads, from the American, who reads the drink advertisement painted on the beads but does not regard the bead curtain any more than he regarded the hills” (Gilmour 47-48).