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Essay On Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

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Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants is a short fiction depicting two people waiting at a bar for their incoming train. At first, when going over the story, it appears the man and the woman are simply engaging in a casual conversation. However upon reading a little closely, one

will realize that the lurking tension between them, and that their casual conversation is actually about the woman getting an abortion. This story is a great example of integral setting, this means that the place and time of the story influences the characters, the themes and the plot itself. In such a story, the plot line itself is tied to the setting(s), therefore the action could not be taking place in any other location, time etc. Using this type of setting, Hemingway controls his characters and the way the story will go and how …show more content…
When placing a character in a specific setting, the author defines this character a certain way. Hills Like White Elephants is set in Northern Spain, “across the valley of the Ebro”, in a train “station […] between two lines of rails in the sun.” (p.77). The train station is one of the many stops in the main characters’ and other travellers’ journeys, like any other station stop, this is where they decide whether they want to get on or not. The station quickly becomes a symbolic place, a place in betweens for arriving and departing. The reason hidden behind why the action takes place at a train station is to indicate that the two character’s relationship is at a crossroads. They are on vacations, travelling fast from one place to another. Once again the setting allows us to understand this as the man “looked at the bags against the wall of the station [where] there were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights.” (p.79). One could even go as far as to say that the man and the woman have just met on this trip, this could be the reason why he

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