I chose to do option #2 for this response paper because the title of the reading for Hemingway, “Hills like White Elephants” attracted my attention.
When I started reading this story, I automatically began to generate pictures in my head. Hemingway used such vivid words to describe the setting of the story. I pictured a beautiful, sunny paradise. I thought it was interesting how Hemingway did not bother to introduce the characters of the story at all. He simply labeled the characters as the “American” and the “girl,” which doesn’t tell us much about them at all. Since I wanted to understand more about the characters, I tried my best to read the rest of the story carefully. I, then, came to realize that not only was the description of the characters vague, but the entire story didn’t seem to have a concrete meaning or point behind it!
Once the dialogue between the characters began, I got lost. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about and what the meaning behind any of it was. They were talking about different types of drinks, then hills, white elephants, happiness, love, and a whole mess of, what seemed to me to be, random topics. Honestly, none of it really made any sense to me at all! I did realize that a lot of the words and phrases were constantly repeated. I decided to try rereading the dialogue and still could not understand what the point of it what. I think Hemingway might have left out all the details of what the two characters were talking about on purpose, in order to let the readers, us, create our own meaning behind this story. Other than assuming that this might be a love story that somehow related to happiness, I couldn’t find words and meanings to fill in the missing details of the story.
