Critical Reading of Literature in English
Critical Analysis of the short story ‘Hills like White Elephants’ by Ernest Hemingway.
Word Count: 1367
Hills like White Elephants – Ernest Hemingway “Will Jig have the abortion and stay with the man; will Jig have the abortion and leave the man; or will Jig not have the abortion and win the man over to her point of view?” (Hashmi, N, 2003). These are the three different scenarios that have been seriously considered in Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “Hills like White Elephants”.
Ernest Hemingway is a great writer, he worked as a reporter after graduated from high school and continued this career on and off for the rest of his life. He was badly wounded while helping to rescue another wounded man. These experiences stayed with his for lifetime and influenced his work greatly. After the war he returned to his work as a reporter and moved to Paris, where he met other expatriate writers (such as: Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, etc), after his marriage. However, Hemingway finished his own life with a shotgun in 1961 when he was suffering from physical and mental pains. His life was filled with highest adventure and deep depression that influenced him a lot on his writing, thus his stories are all brilliant and meaningful.
“Hills like White Elephants” first published in August 1927 which became a significant piece in Hemingway’s “Men without Women” short stories collection. The story is mainly about an American and his girlfriend, Jig, are having some sort of disagreement of an “operation” outside of a train station while they are waiting for the train. However, the story ends before the train arrives and with little indication of what the final decision or the status of the relationship might be in the future.
Hemingway’s early short stories are considered to be among his finest work, and “Hills like White Elephants” has been widely-anthologized that