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Ernest Hemingway6
In Ernest Hemingway's story "Hills Like White Elephants". The possibility of its interpretation as various rhetorical figures is proved: quotations, metonymies, comparisons.
The author's use of the title of the work "Hills like white Elephants", in our opinion, assumed to hide the true problem, to keep this mystery a secret throughout the story.
Hemingway's Iceberg Theory
«If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story»7
Also known as the "omission theory," Hemingway's iceberg theory states that the words on a page should make up only a small part of the entire story-they represent the proverbial "tip of the iceberg," and the writer should use as few words as possible to point to the larger unwritten story that lies beneath the surface.
Hemingway made it clear that this "omission theory" should not be used as an excuse for a writer who does not know the details behind his or her story. As he wrote in Death after Noon: "A writer who misses things because he doesn't know them only leaves voids in his works."
In the work "White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway, the theme of motherhood is raised. The main problem of the story, in my opinion, is abortion.At less than 1,500 words, "Hills like White Elephants" exemplifies this theory through the brevity and conspicuous absence of the word "abortion," despite undoubtedly being the main subject of the story. There are also several signs that this is not the first time the characters have discussed a problem, such as when a woman interrupts a man and ends his sentence in the next conversation:
"I don't want you to do what you don't want..."
"And it's not good for me," she said. "I know."
White elephants
The symbolism of the white elephants further emphasizes the essence of the story.
The origin of this phrase usually goes back to the practice of Siam (now Thailand), when the king gave a gift of a white elephant to a member of his court that he did not like. The white elephant was considered sacred, so at first glance this gift was an honor. However, keeping an elephant would be so expensive that it would spoil the recipient. So the white elephant is a burden.When the girl notices that the hills look like white elephants, and the man says that he has never seen them, she replies: "No, you wouldn't." If the hills represent female fertility, a swollen belly and breasts, she can assume that he is not one of those people who have ever intentionally had a child."Hills like White Elephants" is a rich story that brings more with each reading. Pay attention to the contrast between the hot and dry side of the valley and the more fertile "grain fields". You can consider the symbolism of railway tracks or absinthe. You can ask yourself if a woman will have an abortion, if they will stay together and, finally, if any of them knows the answers to these questionsThe author's use of the title of the work "White Elephants", in our opinion, assumed to hide the true problem, to keep this mystery a secret throughout the story. After all, in fact, the usual everyday situation was described, but there was a huge emotional tragedy behind it.. The writer's use of the "iceberg principle" – not to describe, but to name, when only one-eighth is on the surface, seven-eighths is under water - poses the problem of the ability to identify the subtext, and this changes the function of the tropes.
In Hemingway's novella, the comparison "hills like white elephants" does not contain a poetic meaning. It can be noted that the phrase "hills like white elephants" repeatedly reproduced means each time a return to the conflict and determines the development of the plot as a whole: movement in a circle and, as a result, the absence of a denouement in the finale.
James Joyce wrote:
"Hemingway reduced the distance between literature and life, and every writer should strive for this. Have you read "Where it's Clean, it's Light"? It's masterly. Perhaps this is one of the best stories ever written."8
We believe that this recognition introduces deeper than general formulations into the subtext of modern perception and assessments of one of the greatest prose writers of the XX century. There are writers whose work has found genuine recognition only among descendants. Hemingway had a different fate. For many contemporaries, he was a beloved writer and comrade-in-arms, a real symbol of the unity of ethics and aesthetics in the conditions of disintegration, dehumanization of man and culture. Back in the 60s, Hemingway's books and personality were perceived as living participants in literary and social life; the first "reassessments" in the USA and in Europe in the mid-60s were still inseparable from the exceptional authority of the writer, the artistic and moral impact of his work. And we think, that's why our current perception of Hemingway, in many ways different, is not free from the same connection: "The attitude towards Hemingway has become part of the attitude of America and the whole world to the first half of our century, a period of frenzy and hope" Hemingway is a kind of philosopher in life and work, obsessed with the eternal questions of human existence. Starting from Pascal's thoughts about "entertainment" as a person's escape from himself, we consider the image of Hemingway that has developed in the public consciousness of the 30 - 60s: in fact, the underwater part of the "iceberg" is Hemingway– a nihilist, the solution to whose personality lies in the "misfortune of a man deprived of God", forced to seek in sensual excitements - be it hunting, bullfighting or war – oblivion from a certain "nothing".
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