Hills Like White Elephants

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Hills like White Elephants Candice Hines ENG 125: Introduction to Literature Instructor: Megan Pope 08/06/2012 Hills like White Elephants The theme in, “Hills like White Elephants”, is about a couple in love that has to make a possibly life altering decision. From what I gathered from the text, this couple has been traveling the world together when the girl becomes pregnant. The girl does not know if she wants to go through with it, but the man, though half way supportive of whatever the girl choses, in his heart wishes that she would go through with it. The distant mountains and the river are symbols of separation; the girl is far from experiencing a resolution of her dilemma. The girl is obviously having some issues about separating herself from her unborn seed. The writer used a train station as the setting of the story, which leads me to believe that the couple travels. I knew the story took place in a train station because the writer stated that the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Another clue it took place in a train station was the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went to Madrid. I got the impression that the couple traveled because the writer stated that the baggage with the couple's hotel tags is a reminder of their carefree life together that is now changed. The dialogue between the characters was kind of hard to pin point. It was kind of edgy and sarcastic at some points. The symbols the author used in this short story dealt with life and death. The landscape around the station symbolizes death. The landscape was of distant hills, which for the female character symbolizes a place of escape. She looked at the hills as white elephants, symbolizing the consequences she had to face. Hemingway symbolizes life by moving the bags to the point

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