Rod Duncan's Blog - Posts Tagged "hemingway"
Hills Like White Elephants
A friend recently introduced me to Earnest Hemingway's short story 'Hills Like White Elephants'. It is an account of an interaction between two people at a quiet railway station somewhere in Spain. It opens with a short description of the place and then gets into a conversation, delivered with almost no interpretation.
The really interesting thing to me is the way that readers, deprived of a definitive interpretation, start to make up a story that fits. And each story is different. (We were discussing it in a group and there were many different views expressed about what was happening and particularly the feelings and motivations of the two characters.)
Hills Like White Elephants is perhaps an extreme example of something writers do all the time. We try to let the readers understand certain things unambiguously, whilst at the same time leaving other things unsaid. In this way the readers are active participants, challenged to fill in the blanks, to form an interpretation.
A criticism thrown at some of Tolstoy's short stories is the lack of moral ambiguity. There is a 'correct' way to view the actions of the characters. Thus they can come over as being didactic and preachy.
Hemingway takes the opposite approach in this story, giving so few clues that we can't even be certain what the characters are talking about, let alone take a definite stance on questions of morality.
So, how much should a writer give and how much should they leave to the reader? There is no single answer to this, just as there is no single reader. Even the same reader coming back to a text at another time may want a different balance.
My approach has always been to let the readers know what is happening, whilst leaving the inner world of emotions and morals up the the reader to interpret. If Elizabeth Barnabus is balanced at the top of a roof, I don't want the readers to be in any doubt about the physical layout of the place. But I'll probably want them to do some work in figuring out how she feels about the situation.
That's why Hills Like White Elephants was so interesting to me. It sets out to do something contrary to my usual goals. I've since had a go at writing a similarly elliptical short story and found it very difficult to judge.
Once you have read Hemingway's story, you might enjoy the comments people have made on the Goodreads page.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
The really interesting thing to me is the way that readers, deprived of a definitive interpretation, start to make up a story that fits. And each story is different. (We were discussing it in a group and there were many different views expressed about what was happening and particularly the feelings and motivations of the two characters.)
Hills Like White Elephants is perhaps an extreme example of something writers do all the time. We try to let the readers understand certain things unambiguously, whilst at the same time leaving other things unsaid. In this way the readers are active participants, challenged to fill in the blanks, to form an interpretation.
A criticism thrown at some of Tolstoy's short stories is the lack of moral ambiguity. There is a 'correct' way to view the actions of the characters. Thus they can come over as being didactic and preachy.
Hemingway takes the opposite approach in this story, giving so few clues that we can't even be certain what the characters are talking about, let alone take a definite stance on questions of morality.
So, how much should a writer give and how much should they leave to the reader? There is no single answer to this, just as there is no single reader. Even the same reader coming back to a text at another time may want a different balance.
My approach has always been to let the readers know what is happening, whilst leaving the inner world of emotions and morals up the the reader to interpret. If Elizabeth Barnabus is balanced at the top of a roof, I don't want the readers to be in any doubt about the physical layout of the place. But I'll probably want them to do some work in figuring out how she feels about the situation.
That's why Hills Like White Elephants was so interesting to me. It sets out to do something contrary to my usual goals. I've since had a go at writing a similarly elliptical short story and found it very difficult to judge.
Once you have read Hemingway's story, you might enjoy the comments people have made on the Goodreads page.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
