短篇小说论文
An Analysis of the metaphors in Hills Like White Elephants
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Abstract
Hills Like White Elephants is one of the most famous American short stories ever by Ernest Hemingway. It is of all the main features of Hemingway s writing with telegraphic style metaphors and Iceberg Theory. This paper tries to analysis the metaphors existing in this story and explore the character images.
Instruction
Hills Like White Elephants was first published in Paris in transition magazine in August 1927. In October of the same year, Scribner's published it in New York as part of a Hemingway short-story collection, Men Without Women. It is a short story about an American man and a girl named Jig. In the story the two are sitting in a train station in Spain , drinking beer and anise liquor while waiting for the train to Madrid. While they are waiting, they have an intense, ongoing discussion over whether or not Jig will get an abortion. The man is attempting to convince the woman to get an abortion, but the woman is ambivalent about it. At the end of the story, the train is about to arrive and the man carries the baggage to the tracks as they prepare to depart. The ending of the story is unclear ,because Hemingway didn t give us the outcome of Jig s decision. In the end of the story, Jig just says, "There s nothing wrong with me,I feel fine."-- her happiness is a central theme of the story, but we are still wondering whether she went through with with the operation or not after finishing reading this story.
As we all know, Hemingway is very strict in choosing scenes in his works. In the world of Hemingway, each story can only belong to the scene where it happens. Choosing a good stage or scene contributes to save a lot of language but to express better. Hills Like White Elephants is no exception. Each scene appears in this story is not by accident - the hills, white elephants, the railway station, and so on. All of these are metaphors with implied meaning which contribute to painting a true picture of what lies beneath.[1]
The Hills
In the novel, the girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.
"They look like white elephants,” she said.
"I've never seen one," the man drank his beer.
"No, you wouldn't have."
In this dialogue, the hills may symbolize big obstacles that we must climb, but they are not enormous mountains. This represents the fact that the girl's baby is a major obstacle in her life, but it is not the end of her life and she will make it through.
Jig looks at the hills and sees opportunity, yet at the same time the man looks at the hills and