Ernest Hemingway "Hills Like Elephants" and "A Clean, Well Light Place"

"Hills Like Elephants"  (1927 -6 pages) and "A Clean,  Well Light Place" (1926, pages) both by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (1899 to 1961) won the Nobel Prize for fiction in 1954.   He is the author of such American classics as A Farewell to Arms  (based on his WWI experiences as an ambulance driver), The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and The Sea all of which I read long ago. He also wrote a number of short stories that have near canon status including the two I just read.    In the public eye he is identified with hyper-masculine activities like bull fighting, big game hunting,  deep sea fishing and wars.    He was initially helped into print by Ford Madox Ford but in time turned against him.     Hemingway is known for his lean sparse prose.    Some consider him a writer that "manly men" can admire and take with them on a moose hunt.   Some see him as a poseur trying too hard to be masculine.   He is nearly always listed among top American novelists of the 20th century.     I think part of his continuing popularity may come from the fact that his works are easy to read and could readily be used as class room texts in places where Woolf, Joyce, Ford and Mansfield could not.    


  Hemingway skillfully throws us in the middle of a conversation of a man and a younger woman in a train station in Spain.    It is not explicitly said but the man and woman seem to be talking about whether or not the woman should get an abortion.   We do not learn the man's name but he calls the woman "Jig".    This is a degrading nickname with several slang meanings that were common knowledge in the 1920s.   "Jig" can mean a fast dance of the time and it also means sexual relations (You can verify this in Cassell's Dictionary of Slang) in the argot of the streets at the time.   I had the feeling the man in the story knew this but the woman did not.   Here is how their conversation starts out:

Well, let's try and have a fine time.'

'All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn't that bright?'

'That was bright.'

'I wanted to try this new drink. That's all we do, isn't it - look at things and try new drinks?'

'I guess so.'

The girl looked across at the hills.

'They're lovely hills,' she said. 'They don't really look like white elephants. I just meant the colouring of their skin through the trees.'

'Should we have another drink?'

The man is doing his best to emotionally manipulate Jig into going through with the abortion.


Maybe the man just wants to get rid of a problem or maybe he really thinks it is the right thing to do, we are not sure.

'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.'

'Then what will we do afterwards?'

'We'll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before.'

'What makes you think so?'

'That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's made us unhappy"

 We do not find out what happens.   


I also read his perhaps better known story "A Clean, Well Light Place".   Of the two stories I think I liked "Hills Like Elephants" best.   The style in both works is  the same-lean prose, no flowery images, no lush descriptions and don't use two words where one will do.   


I am glad I read these stories.   Some find his prose beautiful, some do not.   Both can be read online.   I have used the term "bookish boy book" before and for sure Hemingway is in this category.   


Mel u