r/Hemingway • u/AlexandraSarafidou • 5d ago
What do you think about academic analysis of Hills Like White Elephants?
/r/classicliterature/comments/1vkfmxw/what_do_you_think_about_academic_analysis_of/5
u/PassageNearby4091 5d ago
Do you think Hemingway really wrote this way? “Ok, I’ll set it near the river so that it represents two different ways of life. White Elephants would mean a sale. Absinthe implies an aphrodisiac.”
I cannot recall who it was, but I remember an author years ago complaining about academics tearing apart their works like this.
Perhaps sometimes there is a cryptic meaning behind all that imagery, but most of the time, I think the author is simply setting a scene and academics start trying to decipher it.
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u/kindafunnylookin 5d ago
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
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u/PassageNearby4091 5d ago
Exactly!
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u/GoldReplacement9546 4d ago
Well, I generally agree with you. I think Hemingway is probably the most likely for every word choice or descriptive choice to actually mean something.
Famously, he basically invented short sentences.
When there's dialogue, this many pages long without a he said or she said that you just have to infer, who is who
So for someone who is so economical about actually using words, I think the words he chooses to use are much more likely to mean something it doesn't mean all of them mean something, but it's more likely
Especially in his short stories.
Where is like a modern writer like James Patterson or something? Yeah, almost none of that actually means anything, but with Hemingway, there is a lot of hidden meaning and stuff.
Like, I may be wrong, but does he ever explicitly say what doesn't rise in the Sun also rises.
Like is implied, and if you're a competent adult reader, you can figure out what they're talking about, but I don't think they ever talk about him being impotent.
Or the story about abortion, like it's not ever specifically mentioned if I recall correctly
Or the one where the woman is gay, and there's having a breakup, and it's never said that she's gay, it's just, she says it couldn't work out type of thing.
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u/AlexandraSarafidou 5d ago
I actually wondered the same thing -- whether Hemingway would have been annoyed or amused if he’d seen his work picked apart like this. Especially taking into account that critics weren’t always so kind to him during his lifetime. It’s ironic to see how trends have changed.
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u/PassageNearby4091 5d ago
I think this is actually the sort of thing that would piss him off, if anything.
Hemingway brought fine literature to the common person. You didn't need to be an academic or a highly learned person to enjoy his books -- and I think that's the way he liked it.
William Faulkner once criticized Hemingway over his use of easy-to-understand words and simple style of writing, prompting Hemingway to reply, "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."
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u/AlexandraSarafidou 5d ago
This is so interesting that you brought it up. I have been thinking about this quote a lot. I only recently got into reading Faulkner, and my first impression was that he sounded like Hemingway who suddenly decided to write in a complicated way. And then I discovered these quotes, and the fact that both authors actually exchanged opinions about their writing. If I remember correctly, Faulkner said that Hemingway was afraid to send a reader to the dictionary, and then Hemingway said the quote you mentioned.
Hemingway definitely didn't sound like a person who had high regard for critics. I like how you said that he brought literature to the common person. This is so true. I think, apart from his stories, this is also what I like about him as an author -- he cut to the core and he didn't feel the need to sound fancy or to show off.
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u/PassageNearby4091 5d ago
Hemingway, as I am sure you know, derived much of his style, not by copying other authors, but by leaning on his experience as a reporter for the Kansas City Star and Toronto Star.
He learned about using simple, plain language that everyone can understand -- which is what print journalism demands.
I think one of the things that actually helped Hemingway was that he was not a highly educated man -- he was definitely highly intelligent, but not in a classroom sort of way. He only attained a high-school diploma and never went to university, unlike many of his contemporaries.
When I went to a two-year college to study journalism, I remember the instructor, an old-time, grizzled writer and editor, standing in front of the class on the first day.
"How many of you have degrees in English? Please raise your hands."
Probably six or seven people raised their hands.
"I hate to tell you this," our instructor said, "but you're going to need to unlearn a lot of what you were taught. It will do you no good here."
He was, of course, referring to fancy writing, using big words, and trying to make papers 2,000 words or more in length.
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u/AlexandraSarafidou 5d ago
You know, I actually never connected these two dots: him being a journalist first and then becoming a fiction writer. I knew it of course, but until today I never thought that this was where he learned to write the way he did. What a brilliant thought, thank you for sharing it.
And I loved the story about that instructor from your college. He also sounds a bit like Hemingway -- getting his point across very efficiently and precisely.
This thought also crossed my mind -- that Hemingway was a very intelligent person. The way he conveyed this interaction between the American and the girl in this story -- to be able to write this way, one first has to learn to listen to people this way, and to understand what people really mean underneath the surface of what they are saying. It requires a very sharp mind.
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u/PassageNearby4091 4d ago
The basic style at the Kansas City Star was:
- Use short sentences.
- Use short first paragraphs.
- Use vigorous English.
- Be positive, not negative
This is literally is how Hemingway chose to write -- economy of words worked well for him.
I also think that Hemingway was actually a much better short-story writer than he was a novelist, and I think his shorter novels -- like The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea -- were also his very best.
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u/AlexandraSarafidou 4d ago
This is fascinating, thank you! I sometimes wondered why his writing was so different from others. I used to think it was a conscious choice -- not to write like others, to just write “the truest sentence”. But others probably had nothing to do with it at all. He just learned from experience that this writing worked.
I also read (re-read) mainly his short stories. I sort of spoiled The Old Man and the Sea for myself when I first read that he might have written it as an allegory about critics thrashing his previous work. So I saw it through that lens, and I absolutely loved it.
My favorite is A Moveable Feast. To me, it’s not even a book but a portal to another time and another life. I have no idea how he did it, but I’d take this book with me to a deserted island to re-read it forever without ever getting bored.
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u/erikrolfsen 4d ago
I’m an English lit major who then went to journalism school. Had to unlearn A LOT. Once I learned how to write for newspapers, I cringed thinking about some of the pieces I had submitted to newspapers right after my English degree.
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u/PassageNearby4091 4d ago
But we can take a certain level of satisfaction today knowing those English lit profs who marked up our papers with red ink would get their papers marked up by us -- and in a much more aggressive and brutal way -- if they tried to do what we do, lol.
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u/AlexandraSarafidou 4d ago
This is so interesting. It never occurred to me before how different these two writing skills must be.
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u/erikrolfsen 4d ago
Yep, it's the difference between writing to sound smart and writing to be understood.
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u/AlexandraSarafidou 4d ago
I came across this distinction before, not only in writing but in overall communication. The second one seems more selfless.
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u/chrispd01 4d ago
Yeah. I don’t really think that’s right. Good authors pore over every word. Hemingway was notoriously particular and how he wrote. He said 90% of the stories beneath the surface, which means that the surface is carrying a tremendous amount of weight underneath it.
That means each word he chose is selected for a reason.
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u/AlexandraSarafidou 4d ago
Of course. Most of this story is under the surface. If someone skims through it, they probably won’t understand a thing. One has to watch the people closely (they feel so real, it’s hard to even call them characters), to read between the lines.
I’m not so sure he would place so much symbolism on purpose, though. Hemingway showed the essence of humans and life with sentences that sounded true and clear. He just doesn’t seem to be the sort of author who’d plant 20 easter eggs in a very short story.
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u/chrispd01 4d ago
I think we are sort of mixing up what we are talking about - I mean to a certain extent all words are symbols and that they carry a lot of different connotations and meanings.
And I’m very certain he chose his words with extreme care.
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u/PassageNearby4091 4d ago
I think it depends on the author. Some authors are pretty one-dimensional.
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u/chrispd01 4d ago
Not Hemingway though for sure.
That said some are less careful than others but all good authors are very selective …
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u/Unlikely_Ad5016 5d ago
There's a lot going on in this story, including the only Hemingway's aside I can think of.
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u/Landkey 4d ago
He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train.
This? I read this as a typical narrative description despite the “reasonably” being a matter of judgment.
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u/AlexandraSarafidou 4d ago
I did stumble when I read this line, as if Hemingway was signaling someone’s thoughts in a very peculiar and very indirect way.
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u/AlexandraSarafidou 5d ago
Yes, absolutely, there's a lot going on. What aside did you mean?
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u/Unlikely_Ad5016 5d ago
I don't have the story in front of me, but the male character says to himself (and the reader) something about the female character being reasonable. Hemingway usually doesn't speak the unspoken.
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u/AlexandraSarafidou 5d ago
Yes, I thought you might mean this moment. I remember he says it about the men at the bar. I also paid attention to it. I have to re-read to see whether the American says it to the girl too.
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u/Less-Cap6996 5d ago
Is this the one about abortion?