"Hills Like White Elephants": Lean, Vintage Hemingway

Abstract

"HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS": LEAN, VINTAGE HEMINGWAY Kenneth G. Johnston Kansas State University His stories came back in the mail, slipped through the slit in the saw-mill door where he lived, "with notes of rejection that would never call them stories, but always anecdotes, sketches, contes, etc. They did not want them, and we lived on poireaux and drank cahors and water."1 Those were the early, lean years in Paris when Ernest Hemingway was submitting to the discipline of hunger and to the discipline of his new theory of fiction: "That you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood": Well, I thought, now I have them so they do not understand them. There cannot be much doubt about that. There is most certainly no demand for them. But they will understand the same way they always do in painting. It only takes time and it only needs confidence .8 Time has proven Hemingway right, although his short fiction based on the theory of "omission" is not universally admired, or fully understood , not even by some of his fellow craftsmen. Frank O'Connor, for instance, complains that "Hills Like White Elephants" does not provide the reader with enough information to make the necessary moral judgments. "The light is admirably focused," admits O'Connor, "but it is too blinding; we cannot see into the shadows."3 One does not take lightly criticism by a short story writer of O'Connor's stature and talent, but O'Connor is wrong. The reader can see, clearly and deeply, into the shadows if he submits to the discipline of close reading and fleshes out the implications of this lean story. A rich pattern of dialogue, setting, action, and allusion is carefully woven into "Hills Like White Elephants." With swift, sure strokes, without a wasted word or motion, Hemingway creates a taut, tense story of conflict in a moral wasteland. "Hills Like White Elephants" opens quietly. The day is hot, and a young couple, who are waiting for the train from Barcelona, are relaxing in the shade of the station and discussing the small matter of ordering a cool drink. When the girl remarks that the hills across the valley look like white elephants, an argument flares, but is quickly extinguished by the girl. But moments later it flares again, this time sparked 234Notes by references to licorice and absinthe. These small clashes, one gradually realizes, are part of a larger conflict that centers on the question of abortion. Hemingway makes no mention of that key word, nor does he explicitly state that the conflict has been smoldering and flaring for weeks. But since nearly every topic of conversation rekindles the argument, it is quite apparent that this is not the first time that this vital issue has been discussed. The unborn child is dominating the couple's thoughts and emotions and has been for some time. The man's impatience with the girl is attributable in part to his anger at discovering , with the bags all packed, and apparently with the final decision made, that the issue is not settled at all. Now, once again, they resume their intense dialogue, with the unborn child's life hanging in the balance. An untitled ink manuscript at the John F. Kennedy Library reveals that Hemingway had originally planned to have the couple aboard a train as the story opens. The girl in the manuscript version, it is interesting to note, is named Hadley, suggesting that the story, at least in part, is autobiographical: The train moved through the hot valley Heads were out the open windows. Ripo grain fioldo grow fields of ripe grain started at the rails to stretch across the valley. Far off beyond the-g«»B-(brown) fields A line of {line of) trees marked grew along the course of the Ebro and beyond the river rose abruptly the white Aiysterious) white mountains. We had called them that as soon as we saw them. Too be disgustingly accurate I had said, "Look at those goddam white mountains ." Hadley said, "They are the most...