Ernest Hemingway was celebrated for his direct, clear and concise style of writing. And this characteristic comes in handy today, as I need to be brief and straightforward so as not to risk losing my generous neighbor’s Internet connection… 
In “Hills like white elephants”, his powerful use of dialogue is greatly responsible for building up tension between the two main characters of the short story. I would like you to discuss the narrative technique he employs in the text. Once again, feel free to brainstorm!
To help focus your discussions, read the article entitled “Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” and the tradition of the American in Europe“.
Finally, in case you would like to have some hints from Nobel-prize winner Ernest Hemingway on how to write your assignments, click here! 
And for a moment of relaxation after a lot of serious work, click here! 
Note: Folks, I’m really sorry I haven’t been present here as I intended to. This post was supposed to have come out on Thursday and it’s already Sunday! I know I told you these 2 weeks would be hard, but I didn’t count on not having Internet access for so long… I hope tomorrow all these technological issues will be solved and I will be able to catch up!
Like mentioned before, the focus of the short story is a conversation betweeen a couple while waiting for a train somewhere in Spain.
We are aware that there is a problem affecting them, but we never get to know what it is. Like Larissa mentioned, we have access to the characters’ reactions, like standing up and walking around, but never to their thoughts on the subject.
From their dialogue we can see that once they were a happy couple and the problem(which can be “solved” through an operation) had an impact on them and now they feebly struggle to find this lost happiness.
This narrative strategy of being absent from the characters’ minds intentionally leads us to guess what is happening between them, never giving the reader the truth about the subject.
When I read the short story at the first time I didn’t understand anything. I just thought it was “papo de bêbado”. When I reread I really saw there is no sense in the conversation. So, I begun to reflect about it. I think the attempt of author was not make us understand the dialog and it was achieved. What we have to pay attention is in the communication between the couple. I admit that always when I read a story it is the last thing I pay attention. Doesn’t matter how they talk, what matters to me is the meaning of the dialog. So, if it was the attempt of author, he had success because now I (I mean the reader) see the structure of the dialog.
In this short-story, there is no interference of the narrator and there are lots of direct speech which leaves us with only what the character’s really say. Nevertheless, this makes the story more interesting because the conflict is shown through the dialogue between the characters.
At first, their conversation seemed not to have any sense to me, but later I realized that they were at a crossing point in their lives and they didn’t seem to agree much on what to do about it. In my opinion, this conflict can be represented by the train station, like Branca said before it can represent life vs death, what comes and goes and to me that was what it was happening to them.
As already mentioned before, the narrator doesn’t offer much information about the couple and their situation. We basically know that they are somewhere in Spain waiting for a train to Madrid, and that the guy is American. However, by these restricted pieces of information he gives us, we’re able to see that the couple is going through a hard moment in their relationship and that it might eventually come to an end. Besides that, we’re aware of the fact that the girl must make a very serious decision concerning an operation, i.e., whether she’ll undergo it or not. In other words, the reader is responsible for putting the pieces of this puzzle together, and only after that (s)he is able to realize the depth of this short story. For instance, even though the word “abortion” is never mentioned in this text, we can assume that this is the sort of operation they are referring to by the way the guy describes it: “it’s perfectly simple”, “it’s the best thing to do”, “it’s really not an operation at all”, etc. Besides helping us figuring out the sort of operation they’re talking about, his description of the facts also shows us his position towards the abortion of his child: he’s not only in favor of it, but he’s also persuading the girl to do it. In my opinion, Hemingway is really depicting men as these rational beings who try keep control of everything and end up forgetting how important a bit of sensitivity can be in moments like these, and the girl’s reaction towards his rationality corroborates it : “Would you please please please please please please please please please stop talking?”.
Sorry! I’ve just realized one of my sentences was totally ambiguous! I meant “the girl’s reaction towards the GUY’S rationality”.
I don’t understand “Hills Like White Elephants”, however I felt a sensation of escapism when I read it. It was the same sensation when I read Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?. As Marcia Pantaleão and Danilo pointed, they were talking, talking and hiding their thoughts from us. So we have to build the puzzles without any clue. This way in which the narrator presented the short story gave for the reader a lot of work.
I did not understand very well what was the Short Story about, when I read it. The only thing I knew was that the couple was trying to decide upon a subject, and the narrator does not make clear what the subject was.
I kept on thinking that their decision was about running away, but it did not make sense.
Reading my classmates’ opinions helped mea lot.
The abortion is the most probable subject the characters were talking about, and the way the author builds the dialogues is perfect, because it was (and still is) a complicated subject, and people has problems to make decisions about it, and even to talk about it directly. They are unable to have a real discussion about it, so they try to make clear their decisions, but in an evasive way. The man tries to convince the girl that it is the better decison, but in the same time he does not want to be guilty, so he pushes this decision to her.
The alcohol is another evasive element, the more they drink, the more they distance themselves from a real talk.
It was difficult for me to understand this short story. It reminded me of another story “Waiting for Godot”. That is the same atmosphere.
The conversation between the girl and the guy is not clear, they contradict each other, desagree, come back to the same subject all the time. We can see differente points of view to refer to the same thing. At the same time we have a kind of pessimist feeling, that things is not going to be the same it was before. when the train arrives, this feeling does not go away. In my opinion the train can mean the beginning of another life, but also the unknown. It is not clear where they are going to, it can be desperate, too. She says she feels well now, but I am not sure to what she is refering to.
The textual structure of Hemingway’s “Hills…” resembles that of dramatic genre, focusing on the dialogs with only practical actions and superficial settings being narrated and briefly described respectively. This characteristic, along with the characters’ subjective, inconclusive lines and the expectation of improvement through an event that is never really clear, really reminds, as Fernanda pointed out, Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’.
For me the ‘abortion’ discussion by the main couple reveals the readers an interesting perspective on how the couple can communicate more clearly and effectively with a foreign-language speaker(the woman that serves them drinks) than amongst each other.
Another insteresting feature of their conversation is the portrait of the characters’ personalities: while the man sounds opportunist and contradictory regarding his willing to convince his partner do what he thinks is best, the woman seems to have more volatile emotions; and the ability to make her partner stop ‘worrying’ so they can be happy once again seems to be a priority above even herself.
She ends up ,though, showing she feels fine feeling/thinking/acting that selfless and maybe sacrificial way.
I agree with Fernanda. In the short story “Hills Like White Elephants” we can see features from Theatre of the Absurd: dialogs with clichés, non linear plot, without well defined beginning and end, but a circular plot, and a lot of blanks, where we can build a link, so that the story makes sense.
[...] I will give, to those who haven’t commented on “Bernice bobs her hair” and “Hills like white elephants“, a chance to do so until next Sunday, June 03rd. Aside from these two short stories, all [...]
Because the reader have basically the dialogue between the two characters to infer anything about the short story, it is clear, like it has been said here, that the main point of the narration technique is the narrator’s omission. The reader feels like he/she is there, at the train station, with the characters, just listening.
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