hills like white elephants shmoop

Throughout the story, the girl appears helpless, confused, and indecisive. FreeBookSummary.com . From a general summary to chapter summaries to explanations of famous quotes, the SparkNotes Hills Like White Elephants Study Guide has everything you need to ace quizzes, tests, and essays. A man known simply as the American and his girlfriend sit at a table outside the station, waiting for a train to … Hills Like White Elephants Ernest Hemingway\'s \"Hills These themes are added to tremendously by the literary components of setting and symbolism. The reason it is called that is because of the sandy slide that resembles a sheep much like the Cantabrian mountains of Spain resemble white elephants. Jig remarks that the hills look like white elephants, and the remark is not well received by the American. While waiting for their train to arrive and bring them to Madrid, their next destination, they continue an on-going discussion. The two decide to … white elephant something of little or no value. Hemingway uses symbolism, dialogue, and also setting to tell this story. "Hills Like White Elephants" is a great portrait of how we talk at, to, and past each other; how we can go on and on and never quite get at what it is we really want to say. Her rejoinder about the impossibility of him seeing white elephants holds an emotional subtext, but he takes her meaning literally. The landscape surrounding the station is described as the valley of the Ebro River, with long white hills on each side and brown dusty ground in between. Hills Like White Elephants . The short story, “Hills like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway, is about a couple traveling through Spain. Author: Clark L Draney Created Date: 3/19/2014 11:12:28 AM “Hills Like White Elephants” opens with a long description of the story’s setting in a train station surrounded by hills, fields, and trees in a valley in Spain. This change of mind reveals her creative insights as well as her indecisiveness. The short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway, is about a young couple and the polemic issue of abortion.Though the word ‘abortion’ is nowhere in the story, it is doubtlessly understood through Hemheingway’s powerful use of two literary elements: setting and symbolism. Shortly after the girl says that the hills look like white elephants, she looks at them again and changes her opinion, while still maintaining the hills share some qualities with white elephants. An American man and a girl are sitting at an outdoor café in a Spanish train station, waiting for a fast, non-stop train coming from Barcelona that will take them to Madrid, where the girl will have an abortion. Compared to the American, Hemingway’s overly masculine character, the girl is less assertive and persuasive. Author Elaine Palencia (2011), notes that "setting is a primary tool of persuasion, as place is not only a location," which is inevitably apparent in Hemingway's writing (Palencia, 2011, p We meet the couple at a train station and witness a conversation between the two. After the girl says that the nearby hills look like white elephants, the man says he has never seen white elephants.