Hills Like White Elephants

I certainly hope I'm not the only one who looks at how long an assignment is before I read it. It helps me to know how much time I'm going to have to spend on it, whether I can get it done in just five minutes or if it's going to take me fifty. Well, when Ernest Hemingway writes a short story, he puts an emphasis on the short part (ever read his shortest one? It reads: "For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn."). Hills Like White Elephants is a paltry 3 pages. I figured it would take me somewhere between four and seven minutes, ten minutes tops, before I could have the story down and move on with my life.

It turned out to take much longer than that.

I mean, sure, I read it in the expected four minutes but that wasn't really enough time to wrap my head fully around what I just devoured. It took two more readings, much slower and more contemplative, before I felt I was really getting a handle on what Hemingway was writing about. This wasn't just some idle conversation between a couple waiting for a train. It's not even really a conversation about getting an abortion. No, instead Hemingway is treating his readers to a tiny glimpse of the struggle between a man and a woman trying to balance a relationship thrown entirely off kilter by an unexpected pregnancy.

And that is exactly what I love about Hemingway's writing. It's not so much that he's telling a story as he's introducting characters. These people have depth and histories, but not names. Their lives come to life in only three pages and that's enough. Certainly, that was enough for me to become attached enough to the characters that the ending found me muttering angrily at a long dead Hemingway about how I felt gypped to not know what happened to the couple.

I suspect I know, though. The woman is going to have the operation, pressured by the domineering man and the societal pressure to forego her own feelings so she can cater to the man's desires. She doesn't want to, of course not; everyone involves knows that at some level or another. The American knows it and asks her about it, but she refuses to admit and so he feels justified it not admitting it to himself. The woman, on the other hand, knows full well how much she doesn't want it. She can hear just how flat all her words fall, how lifeless the promises the man makes are. Things won't go back to how they were before. They can't have the whole world, not now and not afterwards.

But she'll let the operation happen anyway and it will probably be wholly successful. They'll try to go back to how things were before but it won't be the same. The white elephant might be gone physically but its presence will remain in the relationship, straining things between the man and the woman. Both will insist that they "feel fine", but really, that's a lie.

Somewhere along the way they'll split the relationship, aknowledging how far they've grown apart as a couple. And that's where I see the story ending. I don't think Hemingway ended the story after three pages, that's just when he stopped supplying the words.