Dije que las montañas parecían elefantes blancos. The girl is staring at the distant hills, which are brightly lit in the sunlight, though otherwise barren in appearance. They were all waiting reasonably for the train. I feel that when the man went to check on the train and then to get yet another drink alone, that that was foreshadowing his future and of course his desire that his life continue on as it had before. When I first read this story as a very young man, I could never pick up what they were talking about. Has she accepted her fate or has she made up her mind to back out? A reale was a unit of Spanish currency in circulation during the 1920s, at the time this story was written. That´s the way with everything.
Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe. The American man and Jig are divided on the issue of abortion, their future, and the nature of happiness—in other words, something is hanging between the two of them. Jig says in return that she will get the operation because she does not care about herself, which guilt-trips her boyfriend into saying that he does not want her to get it if she feels that way. If by chance you come to a used book sale and you find it at a real cheap price, get it instead of The Complete Stories. It is often mixed simply with water, where it produces a milky white consistency. Because this person is not a ProZ.
As the story progresses, the power shifts back and forth in the verbal tug-of-war, and at the end, though it is a topic of fierce debate among Hemingway scholars, it seems that Jig has both gained the upper hand and made her decision. Son hermosas colinas -dijo ella-. The symbolism of the hills and the big can be thought of as the image of the swollen breasts and abdomen of a pregnant woman, and to the prenatal dream of the mother of the future in which a white elephant appears in her dream in this case, a symbol of prestigious leadership. That realization is why she suddenly feels fine. Me lo estaba pasando bien. Then she asks him to stop talking. It happens in the second section, where in the middle of their dialogue the girl gets up.
La mujer salió de la barra. Their conversation is mundane at first, but quickly drifts to the subject of an operation which the American is attempting to convince the girl to undergo. The woman appears from the bar to let the couple know that their train will be arriving in five minutes, which the man translates for the girl. There is more to the story than making the decision. And not only are we being kept on outside the bar curtain, but we're also being kept outside of figurative curtain that blocks communication between Jig and the American. I was having a fine time. The American, as scholars have noted, clearly wants Jig to say she wants the operation in order to absolve himself of blame, and Jig clearly refuses to give her partner that satisfaction.
This kind of dialogue is tough to decipher. I still have to load that darn bull. Torn Curtain It ain't all hills and elephants, folks: the bamboo curtain also acts as a pretty heady symbol. The woman who has been serving their drinks tells them that the train will soon arrive, and the man gets up and takes their luggage over to the train stop. At this point the girl asks the man to do her a favor, to which he instantly agrees. La muchacha tenía la mirada perdida en la línea de colinas.
If you enjoy reading short stories, get yourself , which is the most comprehensive collection. Of course, we're not the only ones having trouble deciphering the communication of the not-so-loving couple: The girl looked at the bead curtain. Today, the official currency of Spain, like many European countries, is the Euro. She wants to know if this will solve their problems, and get their relationship back on track. A very white liquid denotes that a good anisette has been used. The man excuses himself from the table, explaining that he should move their bags to the other side of the station. With surprising intensity, she begs him to stop talking.
Hills Like White Elephants Summary How It All Goes Down The story opens with a description of the view of the river Ebro, and the white hills mountains beyond it, from a train station in Spain. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees. She becomes anxious and asks him to stop talking. This ambiguity leaves a good deal of room for interpretation; while most critics have espoused relatively straightforward interpretations of the dialogue with the girl as the dynamic character, traveling reluctantly from rejection to acceptance of the idea of an abortion , a few have argued for alternate scenarios based upon the same dialogue. The girl actually has the most insightful moment of anyone.
Whether an inner struggle will produce a different attitude later on remains unclear. Before I get to the analysis, there are three questions I think the reader must try to answer in order to come to a conclusion on what this story is about. It is the anisette of choice in Malcolm Lowry's. Jig is a sympathetic character, ultimately more sympathetic, scholars have argued, than the American. Jig remarks that the hills look like white elephants, and the remark is not well received by the American. La muchacha miró a la parte del suelo donde las patas de la mesa descansaban. Sobre todo las cosas por las que has estado esperando mucho, como la absenta.
The man insists that everything will go back to the way it was and the two will be happy together again. The most traditional style of anisette is that produced by means of distilling aniseed, and is differentiated from those produced by simple by the inclusion of the word distilled on the label. We have the dualism of the male and female, the dualism of the hot day and the cool drinks, the sun and the shade, the flat plain before them and the hills in the distance, inside the station and outside, the youth of the girl and the age of the woman that is the waitress, the fertility on one side of the station and the brown and dry sterility of the other side, the two sides of the river which divides into opposite banks. En realidad no parecen elefantes blancos. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights. With Reverso you can find the Spanish translation, definition or synonym for toro and thousands of other words.
Throughout the story, the girl is distant; the American is rational. Hacía mucho calor y el expreso procedente de Barcelona llegaría en cuarenta minutos. Perhaps it suggests a future separation. Will it be the dry and sere side of the tracks, or one that is lush with life? They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry. Estaban blancas por el sol y la tierra estaba marrón y seca. To the man the pregnancy is something they can leave behind them, like a piece of extra baggage in their many travels.