Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway "Which line of criticism best suits this short story? Discuss".

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

AS English, Literary Criticism

CRITICAL ESSAY

Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway

“Which line of criticism best suits this short story? Discuss”.

Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ is suited to a Psychoanalytic perspective criticism and is the most effective, as it contains hidden, deeper meanings which the author had represented in this piece, by explicating the text to explore the themes of choices, plot, setting and imagery, and essentially abortion.

Psychoanalytic criticism expresses the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author. This particular thought of criticism is associated with looking for evidence of psychological conflicts, guilts, ambivalences, which undoubtedly is overflowing in this particular piece. The couple in this short-story have to deal with the conflict of ambivalence, for it is anti-climatic in terms that throughout the piece, there is conflict of ambivalence, the undecided minds of these two people of whether or not to abort their unborn child. Firstly, the whole first paragraph alone immediately is filled with themes to the consciousness mind of the reader. ‘The hills across…were long and white’ establishes an abortion theme and plot, and is not just hills that are long and white’; hills are shaped like bumps which suggests the image of a womb. The title of the story ‘Hill’s like White Elephants’ makes its stand on the theme of abortion – as a white elephant is associated with something helpless and useless – like a foetus inside a mother’s womb. Therefore, the title already established to the reader (before reading the text) that there is a complex meaning to this story, thanks to a psychoanalytic viewpoint. The fact that the couple are sat at a table ‘in the shade’ invokes the idea that they are concealed in darkness of the shade, a sense of trying to hide away from something. The weather is ‘very hot’, and the emphasis of ‘very’ creates an image of the sun really beating down on this couple. By not taking the new criticism approach, by just really believing that the sun is just hot and that’s it, the psychologically of this phrase suggests the beating of stress and pressure to decide whether or not to abort the baby. And despite the fact that they have concealed themselves in shade, gives us the alternative to consider that them hiding away from this stress and pressure gives a sense of what the decision they make will be the wrong one. These examples of clever uses of imagery used in the text displays how the author wanted us to interpret what he represented in the text.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Conflict is a term that relates well with psychoanalytic criticism. There is obviously a conflict of interests between the man and the girl. The man shows a high sanguinity of the situation, and is obviously forcing the girl to abort their child. He tells the girl ‘we could have everything…we could have all this…we can have the whole world’. This man obviously thinks that not having this baby will make their lives much more easier and perhaps more happier for them to carry on with their lives. He does not mean literally that they can have the ‘whole world’, but it really means that they aren’t burdened with the responsibilities of raising a child – and that they are free from that other way of life. The girl is quick to oppose his optimistic approach to the situation, in short repetitive phrases of ‘No we can’t’. This brings out the conflict of how she possibly feels about her situation that she does not want to go through with this.

The theme of choice is overflowing heavily in this story, ‘...The station was between two lines of rails’. The setting of the station itself suggests coming to the end of one part of the journey (of your life) and really trying to settle on which path do I take? The two lines of rails both lead in different directions of travel (consciously represented), but different or alternate ways of life (unconsciously represented). Once this particular phrase is put into the deeper meaning of life and choice, the reader can certainly interpret what is represented on the text. The couple can go either one way or another – ‘crossroads of life’ so to say. This form of deciding relates to the overall theme of abortion, whether or not they will abort their baby. The station ultimately provides a setting for the theme of abortion.

The man now senses his other half’s ambiguous change of heart and as the story comes to its end he is evidently desperate to change her mind and we invites her ‘back in the shade’ and tells her ‘you mustn’t feel that way’. Back in the psyche world, this demonstrates the man is manipulating her back into the shade, back into darkness, back into running away from a decision. This is indeed a strong notion as the girl persistently asks him ‘stop talking’ about it, and is conscious to avoid talking anything more to do with the abortion, because she confidently is having second thoughts of aborting her child. Now the conversation becomes very emotionally dramatic for her as she is bombarded with his eagerness to keep enforcing her to make a decision repetitively telling her, ‘that I don’t want to you to do it if you don’t want to. I’m perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you.’ She replies back she doesn’t want anyone else but him – in the sense she is telling him that she does not want the baby getting in the way of their relationship, but she retaliates back to his persistence, ‘please please please please please please please stop talking’. This now brings us to believe that she as a woman is feeling psychologically emotional and very undecided. She obviously loves this man, and wants him, but is made to feel that if she would like to have him and the baby both. The man, however, is trying to quickly butter her up to make a quick decision, especially before the train arrives, before they press ahead to the next step of their journey through life.

It is apparent that Psychoanalytic criticism is, nonetheless, the best method of criticism for this particular piece. Although Hemingway was commonly known as a New Critic author, one cannot understand the piece by reading it literally (as a new critic would methodise) without fully understanding and retrieving the hidden meaning of what he really wanted us to tell us in the text. Sharp use of imagery acting as background effects to the plot and theme of abortion weaved into a setting of crossroads of life (different directions of journey through life) help bring the fuller meaning of the story and the author’s intention, which is finally sought by the reader.

GK 12A/E Page of