By Kenneth W. Anderson, Jr.
Diving Below the Iceberg:
Modernism, Language and Ernest Hemingway’s short story
“Hills like White Elephants”
In her modernist manifesto “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,” Virginia Woolf famously proclaimed “On or about December 1910, human character changed.” It would be a year marked by mass suffrage demonstrations, the death of one English king and the ascension of another, Halley’s Comet and a “scandalous” exhibit of Post-Impressionist paintings in a London art gallery. The exhibit, “Manet and the Post-Impressionists,” featured paintings and sketches by Manet, Paul Cézanne, a young Picasso and Matisse, Vincent van Gough, Gauguin and some seventy other artists. Many of the paintings, the daring nudes by Manet and Gauguin in particular, shocked the sensible public and prompted prudish critics to decry it as pornographic, degenerate. Perhaps human character did not change “On or about 1910” as Woolf proposed, but only the “perception” of human character. The art show, despite its critics, was very successful and it opened the door for Modern art and literature.
For a time, Modernist literature would quietly pace behind Modern art, but the horrific carnage of World War I would bring a decided end to the “Age of Innocence” and usher in an “Age of Anxiety,” pushing Modernist literature to the forefront. While Europe would spend the next decade trying to contain revolutions, riots and economic pandemics, modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway sought to fashion language that captured the essence of the individual and create a new narrative free from the fetters of Victorian sentimentality of the previous century. Ironically, it would be a small band of American expatriates living in Paris that would write about the human condition and in the process, somehow understand themselves.
“You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in his highly “edited” and “semi-fictional” memoir, A Moveable Feast, published four years after his death in 1964. Working as a news correspondent in Paris for the Toronto Star in 1921, Ernest Hemingway’s would develop and refine his craft under the tutelage of notable modernist writers Ford Maddox Ford, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. The French cafés became Hemingway’s favorite place to write, and when he felt uninspired or came upon some mental block and unable to write he would take long walks and think. From his little apartment on Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine he would walk along the river Seine and watch the men fish. Often, he would go to the Louvre and study the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. French painters like Claude Monet, Renoir, and Paul Cézanne had rejected past forms and aesthetics prescribed by the European art academies and moved their easels outside, painting their subjects en plein air with the desire to capture the essence of the moment and the transitory qualities of light rather than paint exact reflections or mirror images. Their “radical” ideas and provocative subjects challenged the established art world and changed public perceptions of art. Paul Cézanne would take the Impressionist movement further with Post-Impressionism and open the door for painters like Vincent van Gough and Paul Gauguin. While the starry swirls of van Gough and the exotic brown nudes of Gauguin captured the public’s imagination, it was the subtle landscapes of Cézanne that particularly interested Hemingway. Cézanne’s short, broken brushwork and the juxtaposition of unmixed colors (allowing the viewer to compose the subject in the viewer’s eye) inspired Hemingway to construct stories with implicit language whose meaning seemed to hide just beneath the surface.
While Hemingway’s minimalist style of writing has not always been popular with critics searching deeper in the text for meaning, one should not ignore the fascinating surface for the mere depths. Hemingway’s new found “theory of omission” allowed him to freely draw upon certain events and explore more personal and intimate experiences through implicit language. In his novel Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway explained his revelation:
If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. (182)
Hemingway’s proposition that “if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them,” has more significance than the idea that the writer must be knowledgeable or true to the material, but its application is fundamentally rooted in the structure of the story. The short story format is a small canvas and it does not have the luxury of lengthy commentary or the multiple plot lines afforded to novels. It is however, uniquely suited to the needs of the modernist writer in that greater emphasis is placed on language and characterization rather than plot. Hemingway understood that the careful crafting of language and character, and the symbolism manifested in the text would point to unstated or “omitted information” and generate revelation, meaning.
In his short story “Hills like White Elephants,” Hemingway skillfully showcases his “theory of omission” using implicit language and quick, pointed dialogue. The opening narrative is brief and compact:
The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went to Madrid. (39)
Hemingway’s description of the Ebro Valley and the two people in the bar reflects his journalistic style of writing. The language is straightforward, but it is embedded with images: the long white hills, the train station between two opposing rail lines, the curtain made with bamboo beads. His prose incorporates Ezra Pound’s theory of writing poetry with “concrete images.” But what set Hemingway apart from his modernist contemporaries was his ability to pull out of prose the heavy-laden syntax of the past. The result is language that accentuates the concrete noun:
The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry. (Hemingway, “Hills” 39)
The immediate effect of emphasizing non-abstract nouns gives the prose a tangible, sensory-oriented reality: we can see the girl sitting with the man at the table, taste the cold beer, and feel the heat of the afternoon sun. Hemingway once referred to his writing style as “awkward,” but in its “simplicity” Hemingway succeeds in producing an evocative narrative.
Hemingway’s minimalist prose seems even more distinct when it is compared with the clear, rich language found in the novel Emma by Jane Austen, published in 1815:
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and
happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of
existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very
little to distress or vex her. She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage,
been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had
died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance
of her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman
as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.
Jane Austen’s narrative is complete and confident: there are no ambiguities in Emma Woodhouse. Austen takes great care in providing detailed information about her characters and their environment, reassuring the reader that by the end of the story that nothing is left unexamined or unexplained. The modernist narrative in contrast, discards the well defined, demarcated characters of Victorian literature in favor of ambiguous, alienated and often contradictory individuals who search unsuccessfully for meaning and love.
Hemingway’s story of an American man taking a girl to Madrid for an abortion is told mainly through dialogue, blurring the line between drama and fiction. Hemingway’s use of verbal irony, juxtaposition and understatement in his innovative dialogue exposed the hidden aspects of his characters’ psychology:
'It tastes like liquorice,' the girl said and put the glass down.
'That's the way with everything.'
'Yes,' said the girl. 'Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe.' (Hemingway, “Hills” 40)
The girl’s remark “It tastes like liquorice,” seems to the outside observer a casual comment, but the extension of the simile with “Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe,” encapsulates the girl’s feelings and underscores the irony of the situation. Their gypsy lives, marked by the luggage with “labels on them from all the hotels where they spent nights,” and with the unborn child now dominating both of their thoughts, the girl begins to realize that she cannot live the transient life, wandering from place to place, bar hopping across Europe drinking absinthe. Absinthe is an anise-flavored spirit that was outlawed in many countries for the hallucinatory effects of wormwood. It was also believed that it was an aphrodisiac and thought to cause male sterility. The pending abortion has become a sobriety check for both of them and absinthe reminds the girl that her relationship with the man is sterile and no longer has the same excitement or appeal.
Hemingway does not mention the word abortion or provide commentary about their relationship, or any explicit information that would direct the reader through the story’s labyrinth. The narrator is noticeable absent; however, Hemingway’s characters provide a narrative compass through dialogue:
'They look like white elephants,' she said.
'I've never seen one,' the man drank his beer.
'No, you wouldn't have.'
'I might have,' the man said. 'Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything.' (Hemingway, “Hills” 41)
The cutting exchange between the girl and the man immediately establishes relationship. They are not strangers obeying the rules of social decorum or the polite turn-taking observed in conversation, but their frank speech indicates familiarity and intimate knowledge of each other. Furthermore, their speech displays calculated and involuntary self -revelation. The girl’s observation that the white hills looking like white elephants demonstrates her ability to imagine the possibilities. The man misunderstands her inspirational observation and only responds that he literally has not seen a white elephant. The girl has never seen “one” either, but she can imagine the possibility that the hills do look like white elephants. Her sharp retort “No, you wouldn't have,” suggests impatience and vocalizes her belief that the man is unable or unwilling to imagine the possibilities. His defensiveness and dismissive response reflects his attempt to discredit the truthfulness of the girl’s statements and regain dominance in the conversation. In these four compressed lines of dialogue; Hemingway defines their present relationship and sets the tone for the rest of the story.
Hemingway’s short stories illustrate the complexities of human relationships and the nuances of male and female discourse. Hemingway’s genius was in his ability to extract from the banality of common speech, highly verisimilar discourse that captured the drama of real life. However, difficulties arise when trying to create “truthful” dialogue for a character due to the inherent pretense of dialogue. In "Notes on Writing a Novel," Elizabeth Bowen addresses the issue of why dialogue is difficult to write for fictional modernism:
Dialogue must imitate certain realistic qualities: spontaneity, artlessness, ambiguity, irrelevance, allusiveness, and erraticness. Yet, behind the mask of these faked realistic qualities, it must be pointed, intentional, relevant. It must crystallize situation. It must express character. It must advance plot. (Bowen 255)
Bowen is not advocating that modernist writers must be mere transcriptionists, but that the dialogue must serve a purpose. Hemingway understood that calculated dialogue could effectively express character and relationship and reveal situation:
'It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig,' the man said. 'It's not really an operation at all.'
The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
'I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig. It's really not anything. It's just to let the air in.'
The girl did not say anything.
'I'll go with you and I'll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural.' (Hemingway, “Hills” 42)
The man calls the girl “Jig.” It is obviously not her real name, but a crude nickname given to her by the man. Besides the emotional and sexual connotation, to “jig” a person about emotionally or the physical movement of sex, the nickname allows Hemingway to skillfully move the reader’s sympathy away from the man towards the girl. The girl’s nickname also reveals hidden information about the man: it reflects the man’s low opinion of the girl and it speaks to his feelings about the nature of their relationship. Hemingway’s characterization of the man as the “American” also has European cultural connotations in that it suggests that he is larger and more powerful, and perhaps abusive to the girl. Hemingway makes no mention of the word “abortion” nor does he make clear that the subject between them has been perhaps festering weeks before. An American man taking a “girl” to Madrid for an abortion, in a religious conscious country like Spain not only draws attention to the social and moral issues concerning abortion, but it frames their relationship.
The train station in the Ebro valley is a place of embarkation and debarkation: it is the beginning of a journey and an end to another. Then train to Madrid carries the man’s desire for the girl to have the abortion. The land next to the rail line is barren, childless. On the other side of the train station, a rail line leads in the opposite direction. The land on this side is fruitful and pleasing. It is a land where “fields of grain and trees along the banks of the river grow,” flourish and sustain life; suggesting the possibility of a fruitful life for the girl if she decides not to go to Madrid. When the girl “glimpses through the trees,” she sees the river and the mountains beyond. She sees “beyond” her present life; a life that could have meaning and a child to love. But noted Irish novelist Frank O’Connor argues that Hemingway does not provide the reader with enough information to make the necessary judgments about the characters. “The light is admirably focused,” admits O’Connor, “but it is too blinding; we cannot see into the shadows” (O’Connor 24). O’Connor criticism is based on Hemingway’s departure from traditional narrative that reveals the character’s thoughts and observations and sheds light into the dark shadows of their psyche. But we can see clearly into the “shadows” if we recognize the shifts in the dialogue, fleshing out all the implications of the lean material:
'That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's made us unhappy.'
The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.
'And you think then we'll be all right and be happy.'
'I know we will. You don't have to be afraid. I've known lots of people that have done it.'
'So have I,' said the girl. 'And afterwards they were all so happy.' (“Hills” 44)
It is from the dialogue we perceive the underlying tension between the couple, specifically the girl’s reevaluation of her future with the man. Jig’s hesitancy about the abortion reveals that she is no longer an innocent “girl” and that the pregnancy has forced her into adulthood. The girl’s pressing doubts about the abortion and her thoughts about the possibility of a better life and future, illustrates her desire for autonomy and an identity apart from the man.
Too often male writers have focused on strong male characters with subservient female characters, depicting women as weak and lowly helpers, aiding the man along in his quest. Nina Baym observes that frequently female characters like Jig are not autonomous individuals, but their identity is defined and circumscribed by their male relationships:
Stories like Hills like White Elephants present a woman’s point of view and attribute her plight – and there is always a plight – to a combination of male’s self-involvement and self-aggrandizement, a combination of which the text is aware and it is not sympathetic. (Baym 112)
Hemingway was aware that as a modernist writer it was necessary for him to present the issue of the abortion and the moral dilemma from Jig’s perspective. Jig’s sarcastic tone and aggressive questioning indicates her resistance to the man’s manipulation and underscores her understanding that the abortion will have great consequences:
'And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.'
'What did you say?'
'I said we could have everything.'
'No, we can't.'
'We can have the whole world.'
'No, we can't.'
'We can go everywhere.'
'No, we can't. It isn't ours anymore.'
'It's ours.'
'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.'
(Hemingway, “Hills” 45)
Hemingway presents Jig as a believable, sympathetic young woman. Jig wants meaning and purpose for her life. For her, the child represents possibilities, hope and a future. For the man, the child represents an unwanted burden. His perceived responsibility of having the child would take away his valued freedom. His attempts to evade the problem with their relationship, the assurance that they “can have everything,” if she proceeds with the abortion, illustrates his selfishness, insecurity and his continued desire for domination over her: he is the “man” and she is the “silly” girl. He continues to try to convince her that the pregnancy is the only reason for her unhappiness. His impatience with her surfaces as he tries to reassure her that everything will be fine afterwards:
'You've got to realize,' he said, ' that I don't want 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.'
'Doesn't it mean anything to you? We could get along.'
'Of course it does. But I don't want anybody but you. I don't want anyone else. And I know it's perfectly simple.'
'Yes, you know it's perfectly simple.'
'It's all right for you to say that, but I do know it.'
'Would you do something for me now?'
'I'd do anything for you.'
'Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?'
He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of the station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights.
'But I don't want you to,' he said, 'I don't care anything about it.'
'I'll scream,' the girl said. (Hemingway, “Hills” 45)
Jig is not fooled by the man’s placating speech and his veiled assurances. She understands that he strongly wants her to abort their child, and that he doesn’t really love or want her. She knows that the abortion will not solve their relationship problems, stating: “And afterwards they were all so happy.” The train is due in five minutes and the man still finds the necessity to stop at the bar for yet another drink. The people in the bar he casually observes “Were all waiting reasonably for the train” (Hemingway, “Hills” 45). The dialogue between the man and the girl in the confines of the pressing time adds to the urgency of the situation and contributes to the tension of the story’s final outcome.
Hemingway’s short story “Hill like White Elephants” explores the relationship of two people and their inability to communicate. The open-ending of the story is unsettling for those seeking a resolution to the situation. But the question of whether Jig’s gets on the train with the man to Madrid or walks away and keeps the child is secondary to the artistic aim of the modernist writer. “Art,” observed Arnold Isenberg “is nothing if it is not control. But we control only those of our acts whose outcome we foresee; and we foresee no results unless we have been over the ground before. It is technique, therefore, that gives direction to impulse and marks the difference between art and caprice” (58). For the modernist writer, the crafting of language, the aesthetics of language and the linguistic and gender based aspects of dialogue becomes paramount and takes precedence over subject. Although Henry James, whose literary theories of the 19th century were widely disseminated to Hemingway and his modernist contemporaries, argued that dialogue’s only function was to be “directly illustrative of something given us by another method” and “it was impossible to make people both talk all the time and talk with the needful differences” (James 1404). Henry James’ use of indirection and ambiguity in his novels provided the standard for 20th century modern writers. In his pivotal work “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,” Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein further proposed that language “disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized” (Wittgenstein 10). Wittgenstein argues that language as a means of communication is unreliable and in an unsettling modernist world, discourse becomes contradictory, fragmented and constrained by the individual. How is it possible then for the modernist writer to construct language that uniquely expresses thought when language itself becomes an obstacle? Even the idea of organic dialogue that embodies “drama” seems problematic and more suited to theater than to fiction. Hemingway was acutely aware of the limitations of language and dialogue and understood James’ theories on narrative and the role of dialogue in fiction, but believed in the idea that dialogue in the modern short story could serve a purpose other than being complimentary to the narrative: implicit dialogue could be highly suggestive and express character and subject.
The success of Hemingway’s short stories and his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, allowed Hemingway’s to take the lead in this new genre. His short stories stayed away from lengthy narrative and he continued to rely on compressed dialogue to maneuver the reader through the story. His characters greatly differed from the erudite, cultivated characters of the nineteenth century in that they were approachable despite their often dysfunctional behavior. His stories portrayed men and women searching for identity and meaning in a constantly changing world. Many of his stories were based on actual events that occurred in his own life: his boyhood in upper Michigan, his fishing excursions, his relationship with his father, his boyhood friends, and his experience as an ambulance driver during the “great war,” the “war to end all wars.” Hemingway had served in the Italian army, hauling the wounded and the dead from the front lines. He had himself been wounded and spent time recovering in an Italian hospital and it is there where he would fall in love with the nurse attending to his wounds. He would write about all of this and her too. Despite Hemingway’s three failed marriages and the struggles with his own personal demons, Hemingway did not attempt to separate his life from his writing, but somehow, translate experience into writing that is “fictionally true.” Hemingway’s stories were not literal autobiographies — real life rarely fits nicely and completely into fictional prose — but he had no reservation about mixing fact and fiction, weaving stories together to extract one true story, one true character, all fashioned to suit his desire to write “one true sentence.”
Woks Cited
Baym, Nina. “Actually, I felt sorry for the Lion.” New Critical Approaches to the short stories of Ernest Hemingway. Jackson J. Benson. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990. 112.
Bowen, Elizabeth. "Notes on Writing a Novel" [1945]. Collected Impressions.
New York: Knopf, 1950. 250.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills like White Elephants.” Men without Women. New York, NY: Scribner’s, 1932. 39-44.
- - - . Death in the Afternoon. New York, NY: Scribner’s, 1932: 192.
Isenberg, Arnold. “The Technical Factor in Art.” Journal of Philopshy.43.1.Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1975. 43.
James, Henry. "London Notes" [1897]. Literary Criticism: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers, the Preface to the New York Edition. Ed. Leon Edel. New York: Library of America, 1984. 1404.
O’Connor, Frank. The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story. Cleveland, OH: World, 1963. 24-25.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. New York, NY: Routledge, 2001.10