In “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, a man tries to persuade his presumed girlfriend to try and get an abortion. The girl has a brusque attitude towards the man and the subject. Her attitude is shown through her direct dialogue and her distracted body language. Throughout the short story, the girl often repeats simple phrases that leave no room for interpretation, giving off the sense that she does not enjoy the issue at hand and has little tolerance for it. At one point the man attempts to change the girl’s mind, but she repeatedly replies, “‘No, we can’t.’” (315). She does not feel the need to say anything different to the multiple questions being asked to her. The repetition suggests she thinks that one sentence is clear enough to get her point across. The man keeps pushing the topic though, and by the end the girl is at her …show more content…
In order to avoid eye contact with the man, she looks around her environment, desperate to find a way out of the situation. At one point, she is “looking off at the line of hills…” that are described as “...white in the sun” (313). The hills are not particularly interesting, yet she looks at them anyway; there is another reason she’d be looking at the hills only described as “white”. She also “looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads” (314). The girl, rather than paying attention to the craftsmanship of the beads, is using them as an outlet for her frustration; the evidence is provided by the description of the curtain: “made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door… to keep out flies” (313). “Keep out flies” is not a very flattering description of the beads, lacking in elaborate diction and relying on direct, purposeful word choice. Being so careless towards the man and the conversation is impolite- it is a clear indication of the girl’s short, temperamental