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Compare And Contrast Hills Like White Elephants By Ernest Hemingway

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Short stories are fast anecdotes, quickly delivering a message to a reader. Typically, they are one-thousand to twenty-thousand words long. There is a small emotional impact – especially compared to larger pieces of literature – but the theme is still conveyed. And there are countless themes when writing stories. Nonetheless, observing the many aspects of literature in short stories, there are always similarities within the differences. One story is Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway. The short story describes an American man and woman – named Jig – drinking at a bar. They love one another; the man wants Jig to do a simple operation, relieving them of stress and leading them towards a happy life together. However, it is a tough …show more content…

The settings are completely different, as the couple is in a bar while the wolf-girls are in a church. Specifically, Hemingway’s story takes place in Spain, while Russell’s story is inspired by her upbringing in the Florida Everglades, a swamp similar to the outside in the story. Also, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is much longer than Hills Like White Elephants, resulting in more detail as well as many more characters which are static, dynamic, flat, or round compared to Hemingway’s three flat, static characters. On top of that, the styles are different, somewhat due to the time periods they were written in; St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves was created in 2006, while Hills Like White Elephants was written in 1927. Hemingway’s story can be an allegory for the debate regarding abortion, saying it should be allowed, while Russell holds symbolism representing change in a person. The long-lasting argument was talked about in the 1920s, and still is discussed …show more content…

Besides the plots themselves, the setting Paley made is unknown; possibly a home or hospital, due to the father being 86 years old and bedridden (50) compared to a bar in Spain. Hills Like White Elephants is a third-person narrative in the past-tense, while A Conversation with My Father is first-person in the present-tense. A Conversation with My Father is also written in a slightly-modern prose compared to Hills Like White Elephants; Paley published her writing in 1974 compared to Hemingway writing Hills Like White Elephants 47 years earlier. Both ended up being conventional, or in modern writing during their

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The pace throughout the stories were completely different as in “Going for a Beer” by Robert Coover the pace of the story is fast as the man's life flashed before his eyes. He remembers going to the bar, then next thing you know he is a father and back at the bar again. He did this to create a better effect on the meaning of not wasting your life as it will flash before your eyes. But in “Elephants like white hill's,” Hemingway used a slower pace, throughout the entire story it takes place at the bar and about them contemplating making their decision on having an abortion or not. As Hemingway did this, he created a better plot that allowed the audience for a deeper interpretation.

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In “Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway employs characterization and diction to illustrate that men can be very powerful and horrible. While introducing the characters the narrator says, “The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building” (1). Ernest Hemingway uses diction to emphasize that there is an American man and a foreign girl. He wants readers to consider that the man has power because he is more experienced than the underage girl. After telling her it’s her decision and trying to sway her decision he reveals “‘I think it’s the best thing to do.

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Throughout the short story (1), “Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway is speaking about a seemingly unwanted pregnancy and a woman’s uneasiness with going through an abortion. However, Hemingway never explicitly says in this work of fiction (2) that it is about abortion or that the woman, Jig, is uncomfortable with it, but uses symbolism (3) to present this to the audience. At the time “Hills like White Elephants” was published, in 1927, abortion was illegal in most places and a very taboo subject that wasn’t to be openly discussed in public. Thus, Hemingway relied greatly upon the use of symbolism to get his message across for this reason as well as the third person narrator (4) that did not give insight into the character’s thoughts within this piece of literature (5) . He uses symbols such as the train station, white hills, the baggage, and the drinks to point towards the underlying internal conflict (6) of Jig’s decision that is being heavily influenced by the American man, who wants Jig to get the abortion.

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