Hills Like White Elephants
by Ernest Hemingway(1927)
Short Storyc. 5 pages
“The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white.”
One great work, every day
by Ernest Hemingway(1927)
“The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white.”
Ernest Hemingway(1927)
A man and a woman wait at a Spanish train station, drinking beer and talking around a decision they cannot name. Hemingway never uses the word 'abortion,' but the story is about nothing else. The dialogue is stripped of context; the reader must infer everything from what is not said. The hills across the valley look like white elephants: the simile is obscure, suggestive, never explained. The story is three pages of omission. Hemingway called his method the iceberg theory: the dignity of movement comes from what is beneath the surface. This story is all surface, all depths.