First, the perennial question: What happens next?
From experience, when a girl says "I'm fine,"
she usually doesn't actually mean that she's fine,
but that she's decided on how to handle the problem.
So, to me the ending line indicates that she's decided to break up and have
the baby.
From a literary perspective, however, this question is unimportant:
Hemingway isn't constructing a page-turning narrative (not purposely, anyway),
but rather is just presenting a scene,
a slice out of these two people's lives.
Slice of life pieces are evaluated not by plot, but by description:
How much of what is happening does the author manage to convey?
This is why I love Hemingway so much.
He makes impeccable use of the Iceberg Principle,
bringing out the full scene (or plot) solely by presenting what a
non-omniscient observer would notice.
I personally believe that overlong monologues are the most glaring
imperfections of most of modern literature.
Yes, some things do require exposition,
but conveying ideas and plot themes through action or narrative
not only is faster, but the reader enjoys a more direct experience as well.
Case in point: Imagine how "Hills Like White Elephants" would appear if
written in omniscient narration.
Not very enticing, I presume.
Carried to the extreme, the novel would become theater.
Nonetheless, I still think that the novel is the more flexible of the two:
Exposition in theater is usually uninteresting,
and some scenes you just cannot act out.
The last topic I would like to discuss is whether or not the man loves Jig.
After realizing that the story is talking about abortion,
I went back and reread it.
After finishing, my first reaction to the man was, "You bastard!"
It's obvious that he doesn't want a baby,
but his efforts to conceal this fact are very perfunctory;
he even goes as far as to say, in the middle of the last page,
"But I don't want you to...I don't care anything about it."
It, of course, is the fetus.
A stronger case is made in Garth Stein's "How Evan Broke His Head,"
where Evan, more than a decade after the fact,
finally admits to himself that,
even though his girlfriend proposed the abortion,
he made no effort to change her mind,
and never tried to help or comfort in any way but to pay for the operation.
He said that he wanted what was best for her;
he himself believed so - but all that time,
his actions belied his subconscious.
If Jig had agreed readily to the operation,
then he would have had a defensible position,
but from the looks of things, Jig isn't acquiescing.
If he truly loved her, or if he loved her enough over himself
(according to Milan Kundera, the two are the same),
then he would have agreed not to do the abortion.
The labels, then, on their bags, showing the nights they spent together
in places across the world; if the man doesn't love her,
what object of his love do these represent?
Lust is, of course, an abvious answer,
yet I think that he also loves the idea of love;
he loves the romantic relationship between Jig and himself.
Being in love can be like drinking beer:
You love being drunk, but don't care too much for the beer itself.
Anyway, I love Hemingway!
I hope everyone passes mid-terms!
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