Ernest Hemingway as a Soul Explorer (With References)

Galina NikolaevaResearch paper12.10.2006ENG Comp II, (141)

Ernest Hemingway as explorer of Human Conditions.Comparing stories

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and “Hills Like White Elephants”.

I asked my 75 year old male friend how he likes Hemingway’s short stories, and was

surprised to hear that he does not find them entertaining Those who expect a simple, superficial

enjoyment from reading, should not pick Hemingway’s writings. Hemingway’s short stories are

not for entertainment, they are serious works about human “precariousness of existence, the

evanescence of happiness, and the universality of suffering”.(6) In my opinion, Hemingway

carefully creates deep philosophical and ethical meanings under common social situations in his

stories and invites the reader to think, not just feel. William B. Bache in his essay says, “at first

glance, the story seems slight, but by the other standard, it has intrinsic value”. (1) He suggests that

the story is “valuable both as a comment on and as a representation of Hemingway’s craftsmanship

and insight.”

I would like to analyze two of Hemingway’s works, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and

“Hills Like White Elephants,” the stories about a lonely man and a man and a young girl. At first

glance, there are no similarities in these stories, but reading them carefully, readers could enjoy a

resemblance of Hemingway’s techniques, of placing the scenery and establishing the mood, as

well as analyzing and presenting the human conditions of the characters. Both stories are tragedies

based on a conflict of “a value system by opposing awareness with blindness, commitment with

Galina Nikolaeva Research paper

selfishness, courage with cowardice.”(3) Hemingway investigates and presents to his readers the

story characters as descriptions of the human conditions of personality, ethics, and spirituality. In

both stories, the readers are dropped in the middle of the conversation without knowing the context

and must gather what they can from the words the characters say. Both stories remind readers of a

play, where images of characters are so alive and situations are so real, it is easy to imagine.

Hemingway begins both stories by carefully arranging a place and a mood in each of them.

By naming the story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and placing an old man “in the shadow” the

author engages readers into contrasting melancholy. He starts the story by “It was late” and by

avoiding a word night, he creates more contrast description between “well-lighted” place and

shadow, he stresses the contrast by phrase “against the electric light.” He continues using opposites

like “daytime” and “night”, “dusty condition” and “dust settled by dew”, and completes the

recognition of the contrast by implying it, referring to the old man as a “good client” but when “he

became too drunk he would leave without paying.” This is the great master’s work. He squeezes

the establishment of a future story into eight and a half lines, doing it so gracefully. To fully enjoy

Hemingway, one should read his writings slowly and attentively.

Hemingway carefully chooses name of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, he does the same

with “Hills Like White Elephants”, implying that a pregnancy is expensive and difficult gift to

keep. In the creation of the scenery and mood of “Hills Like White Elephants,” Hemingway uses

the same amount of eight lines, as in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” Even though he uses the

same technique of contrasting words, by choice of words, he establishes a different mood, the

mood of separation. At the beginning, he contrasts “hills across the valley”, “no shade and no

trees” with “warm shadow.” He continues to create the mood of separation by using powerful

images of paralleled lines that will never cross each other, picturing them in “two lines of rails”

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and “strings of bamboo beads.” He gives pairs of images and uses words “across” and “against”

implying the mood of disconnection and confrontation. Referring to the main characters as “the

American and the girl with him”, Hemingway establishes the girl’s undoubted dependency.

Finally, he also places the girl “at the table in the shade.” Hemingway completes the setting by

using the description of the heat of the burning sun to imply the tension and exhaust of the mood of

future pressured arguments. In the last sentence, he increases the tension by applying the word

“junction” instead of station. Yet again; the author makes his beginning concise but very intense,

masterfully preparing his readers to be completely engaged in the situation. In some ways,

Hemingway’s talent to set up a future story in a few dramatically powerful sentences reminds me a

quality of poetry, or as Margaret Bauer pointed out in her article “Forget the legend and read the

work: teaching two stories by Ernest Hemingway” Hemingway’s iceberg technique.” (2) She has

the same impression from Hemingway’s technique that I have; he shows tiny part of the event but

constructs huge meaning by carefully arranging all small details laying under surface.

After creating the setting for “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, Hemingway jumps into the

crux of the story – “despair” of “Nothing”. In the same way, after arranging the scenery for “Hills

Like White Elephants”, Hemingway uses “drink” as an image of liquid or water to show feminine

and masculine differences as fertility and seduction. At that point, technical similarities of the two

short stories transfers into dialogs, but the themes differ.

Later, when both stories progress into dialogs, Hemingway describes in detail all aspects of

the human conditions of his personages, their behavior, and their values. For better representation

and exploration of man’s loneliness in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Hemingway contrasts two

characters. First, he shows the difference between two lonely men, later he distinguishes

between an older waiter and a young waiter to contrast loneliness and confidence. As for

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“Hills Like White Elephants,” to show differences between masculinity and femininity, he

contrasts the American as a man and some girl of unknown nationality, as a woman.

By presenting the two lonely characters, an old lonely man as a “good client” and a lonely

older waiter, Hemingway presents his view on a very important image of loneliness. He explores

the connections of loneliness between the old man and the older waiter by illuminating their

preference for a clean, well-lighted place especially at night, where both of them can escape their

loneliness. Sharing with the readers his exploration of two different kinds of loneliness, weak and

suicidal in contrast to strong and stoic, Hemingway excludes the old man from conversation by

making the character deaf. This character drowns his weak loneliness in a flow of brandy, trying to

turn off his other senses, whereas another character spends his time in some places by drinking

coffee and waiting stoically for the presence of a first light. He is “the individual who survives best

by conducting oneself in a courageous, quiet, and dignified manner.”(6) The author contrasts those

two characters by comparing human conditions of commitment with selfishness. The older waiter

is not wealthy and does not have any relatives, (the writer does not mention any) but he does have

a commitment to his work. By contrast, the old man is rich and has a niece. However, he clearly

does not care about her feelings, allowing her to find him after hanging himself and then having to

cut him down.

During the introduction of two main characters, the waiters who will continue their dialog

along the entire story, Hemingway shows us in contrast a caring older waiter and an impatient

young waiter. The older waiter worries about a passing soldier and a girl. The writer stresses two

times that “The guard will pick him (soldier) up”. To show his readers an older waiter’s

compassion for others describes the young waiter as a real and normal young person who has a

wife waiting for him at home, and because of that, he is in a hurry to close the café. In his rush to

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leave the place, he shows all his young impatience and discourtesy of an inexperienced person,

unleashing a verbal assault while he serves the lonely old client: “What do you want?” “You’ll be

drunk,” “He’ll stay all night,” I’m sleepy now”, and finishing irritably, “You should have killed

yourself last week.” Hemingway shows that the older waiter has the gift to recognize and share the

loneliness with another person, as apposed to the young impatient waiter, who does not have any

concern for the old client or anyone else other than himself. Here riders see the older waiter’s

awareness and young waiter spiritual blindness.

An interesting discussion arises among Hemingway’s enthusiasts regarding who says which

line in the waiters’ dialogues. In his essay, Otto Reinert discusses the technicality of Hemingway’s

dialogs, and I was surprised to find that for some readers it is not clear. My main argument to Otto

Reinert is that the word “despair” definitely belongs to the old waiter. What would the young

waiter know about “despair” or “nada”? Just because some readers do not anticipate that the line,

“He has plenty of money” could belong to the old waiter, they assume a technical problem in

Hemingway’s dialog. In my opinion, this is not careful reading of the story, because later when the

waiters are talking about the old man’s suicide attempt, the line, “For his soul” could belong only

to the old waiter, and the following two lines support my opinion when the old waiter again says

about money, “He’s got plenty.” It is interesting and valuable to understand the writer’s technique,

but it is better, to not overstate the technicality to the meaning of the story. In “Short Stories for

Students”, it says that the “old waiter knows the old man’s history.” (7) It supports my

understanding of “A Clean, Well Lighted Place”.

I enjoy two philosophical discussions in the story, the sort about time, and the long one about

nothing. For lonely people, time and nothing are very important points of interest. The older waiter

asks, “What is an hour?” meaning that he has plenty of time especially during the night. He cannot

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sleep at night; therefore, there is no hurry to close the café. He prefers work and shares solidarity

with the old man. For the young waiter, at almost half-past two, it is late enough to rush home,

because he is sleepy, so his reply to the older waiter is “More to me than to him”. The sense of

time is major difference between lonely and confident people. Lonely people do not know how to

fill that empty space named time, while for confident people, sometimes twenty-four hours are not

enough to fulfill all their needs during a day. Here emerges a need in “a clean well-lighted place,”

where one could stay as long as he needs in his leisurely relaxed pace. This theme stirred another

discussion about the difference among places for having a drink, as a home, a bar, or a clean, well-

lighted place like a café. Even the young waiter agreed that having a drink at home or at their café

is not the same, but presented in his confident rush he avoids being engaged in other comparison

between places like bars and cafés. The older waiter, as a truly lonely person, continues the

unfinished conversation to himself about those places. Continuing this conversation, the older

waiter states there is no need for music in a clean, well-lighted place, that quietness is preferable. It

connects his thoughts to the old deaf man and his desire for his special loneliness of a nothing that

transfers a man into nothing. The followed monolog about nothing sounds to me like preaching.

His sermon awoke the feeling that it is a shorter distance to fall from confidence to loneliness than

to reach confidence from loneliness, that having inside a valuable amount of loneliness will

prevent a person from a drastic fall, therefore the difference almost disappears.

At the end of the old waiter’s monolog about nothing, he smiled. His thoughts became more

humorous than melancholy. He uses it in conversation with the barman, while he drank a cup of

coffee at the bar and “without thinking further, he would go home to his room,” referring his

loneliness to “insomnia,” which “many must have …”

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Returning to “Hills like White Elephant”, Hemingway continues stirring the liquid image by

using glasses of beer six times, concluding the image by “The woman brought two glasses of beer

and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and

girl.” I think that beside the liquid image, by mentioning curtain and contrasting the hills that were

white in the sun and look like white elephants to the brown and dry country, Hemingway implies a

feminine meaning of the liquid as fertility and presenting the curtain as abortion. The first lines of

meaningful conversation between characters, brings the feeling that the man and girl are speaking

in different languages, and the girl acknowledges it by using sarcasm, “No, you wouldn’t have.”

The man feels her sarcasm, but does not understand the nature of it, or pretends he does not.

Anyway, he shields himself with confrontation: “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t

prove anything.” It gives an impression that they are playing a “misunderstanding game” for a

while, especially when in the next line, the girl changes her sarcasm and tries to fix the pieces

between them by asking the man a question about a painting on the curtain. She does not just

retreat into her cleverness; she also dependently places him onto pedestal by diminishing herself.

In following another meaningless conversation about different drinks, Hemingway mentions

the same liquid image again nine more times and concludes that passage by bringing a taste of

licorice and drink of absinthe into the readers’ sight. This author’s new approach to the liquid

image is shown from a male side as seduction. That image rouses uncovered assault from the

young girl, “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like

absinthe.” Her remark unleashes irritation from the man, “Oh, cut it out.” This is not the

misunderstanding anymore, it is without any doubt a strong confrontation between the young girl

and the man, and it has its roots somewhere in their past. It is possible that the name of the drink,

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absinthe triggers a long boiled argument between two main characters. Now, the author shows

conflict of values between man and girl.

In many criticisms I read, the girl made a positive impression on readers. Critic Kenneth G.

Johnston in his work, “’Hills like White Elephants’: Lean, Vintage Hemingway” says about girl:

“She is the man’s superior in imagination, sensitivity, and capacity for love.” (8) My impression is

different. She first was sarcastic about him has never seen a white elephant; later, her remark

“Especially all things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe,” provoked anger in the man; and

finally, she is dishonest saying that she was trying to have fun when she compared hills with white

elephant. Is she saying that sarcasm is her idea of having a fun? She is pushing the man to

recognize his responsibility for her pregnancy at any time she chooses. It looks to me far from

having the fun.

The man initiated their relationship, but she respond with reciprocity, she recognizes it by

saying that she “was being amused” and “having fine time” with him. Now, the relationship has

consequences, a pregnancy and man undoubtedly and honestly wants her do an abortion. In my

opinion, having different values and expectations in relationship between man and woman is a

very common situation and it is nobody’s fault. The recognition of the differences is very painful

for both sides and it does not make anybody’s expectations superior. Therefore, I disagree with

readers who endow the girl with superiority in imagination, sensitivity, and capacity for love just

for grows in her expectations from having a fine time to having a family.

When the girl recognizes that she “was having a fine time” sometime earlier of their

relationship, the man replies, “Well, let’s try and have a fine time,” honestly saying that this is his

only expectation; it was before, it is now. When she complains, “That’s all we do, look at things

and try new drinks,” and he replies, “I guess so,” means that he recognizes her present

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dissatisfaction, but he is not ready for the changes. She also understands that he is not ready and

she cannot do anything about it, so she takes her remark about hills look like white elephants back,

saying, “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through

the trees.” To me it sound like the girl is saying, excuse me.

Another drink, a short break, a sight of agreement from girl’s side, “It’s lovely,” and here

comes the man’s, “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig. It’s not really an operation at all,”

and so on, until it became completely ridiculous, “They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly

natural.” I agree with citation from Margaret D. Bauer’s article, “The man is either oblivious to its

magnitude or willing to pretend it is simple for his own peace of mind,” but his behavior definitely

immature and he is too wordy. (2) He is selfish, “You know how I get when I worry,” says he

without a doubt. All his suggestions and persuasions about them as a couple represent only his

feelings. Is he able to recognize someone’s feelings? He says, “if you don’t want to you don’t have

to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”. He is playing

his game, pretending he concerns about her being scare of abortion, but when he says, “I won’t

worry about that because it’s perfectly simple,” he means because that (abortion) will be done, so,

there is nothing to worry about. He is hypocritical.

In Margaret D. Bauer’s article, she says, “They (students) recognize that the woman is much

more mature than the man and that her character develops while his remind static”. (2) I doubt in

her maturity. I think she is same dependable girl as she was at the beginning of the story. When he

says, that he is “perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything” to her, she should stop

playing in “his responsibility” by answering to his question with contra question: “Doesn’t it mean

anything to you? We could get along”. Mature woman would take all responsibilities and say, that

yes, it means her a lot; that she wants to have his baby, and she willing to take their relationship

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further. I also think, that she would not initiate the next level of their relationship, if she was not

pregnant. It feels to me, that just reality of pregnancy brought the idea to move their relationship to

the next level and form a family by generating a visibly good result from a critical situation. They

are both immature and manipulative, he in his persuasion by any means to force her to make the

abortion and not just that, he wants her to take his responsibility away from him by accepting the

abortion, while she tries to make him be responsible for her new expectations without openly

discussing them. The only things she does, it makes hints and speaks sarcastically and

metaphorically. She started that way at the beginning of the story, she continues doing it through

the whole story, and her last expression is in the same manner, “I feel fine,” Does she? I do not see

any progress in either one of them. What really progresses is either person willingness to push each

other in a self-favorable way. Even though Hemingway gives the girl a name, showing his

sympathy toward her, he ends his story almost identically to his beginning, “The woman came out

through the curtains with two glasses of beer and put them down on the damp felt pads”. I think

the author implies that there is no progress at all, not in characters, not in whole situation. The only

word “damp” is new in the sentence, means that those two characters had many drinks during

almost forty minutes.

For his two short stories, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and “Hills Like White Elephants,”

Hemingway creates five different characters. Even though he uses same techniques in both stories,

his five characters have very variable personalities which not overlapping one another. There are

no similarities in them or their conducts, because they are masterfully presented by author in a

broad spectrum of human conditions manifesting through personality, ethics, and spirituality. The

selfishness, as a very common human characteristic, explored by Hemingway very carefully and

presented to the readers in three different characters. The most obvious and distractive selfishness

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shows by author in American, from “Hills Like White Elephants.” The force of his selfishness is

annoying because it recognized by the character and frankly demonstrates to others without any

concern that it is not the best human characteristic to be openly displayed. Another selfishness

realized by writer in the character of the old man, who is a usual late-night client of “A Clean,

Well-Lighted Place.” He is so deep sank in his selfish loneliness that no money, no close relatives

counted when he tried to commit suicide and his nice, who takes care of him in everyday life, cut

the rope. It is not personally acknowledged selfishness, anyway, his selfishness deeply hurts his

nice. There is a young person selfishness shown by Hemingway in the character of the young

waiter from the same story. His selfishness did not make the deep roots yet in the young

personality; it just manifests his impatience and lack of life experience.

As the opposite of selfishness, the commitment presented by Hemingway in two characters,

the older waiter from “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and the young girl from “Hills Like White

Elephants.” His commitment is conscious obligation to his work and to his life, while her

commitment is an unconscious movement in the same direction with the following life’s events.

She is ready to bind herself to the very selfish man just because she is pregnant with his baby; her

commitment is very close to sacrifice.

Hemingway explored spiritual awareness and blindness in people and presented the essence

of his discovery by two pairs of characters: the old man and the old waiter from “A Clean, Well-

Lighted Place,” and the young girl and American from “Hills Like White Elephants.” In contrast to

acknowledged and stoically held older waiter’s awareness, suicidal unconscious loneliness of the

old man devours him. It is a well pictured an active spirituality in the contrast to the passive one.

When Hemingway compares the young girl’s spiritual awareness and American’s blindness, he

shows the girl’s understanding of new responsibilities for growing inside her new life in contrast

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with American’s unalterable desire of having a fine time. The girl finds psychologically healthy

realization of unexpected pregnancy, by transforming it into the family, while American freezes in

psychologically weak and unethical behavior. Even though the girl and American are different,

they are both short of active spirituality. Hemingway favorably shows Jig more courageous, but in

such small quantity, that it does not make the difference. On the other side, her lover is so

spiritually weak, that his cowardice looks very naturally and suitable to his personality

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1. Bache, William B. “Essay”. Ed. ed. David Segal, Short story Criticism, Vol.40. Gale

Research Inc. Detroit, MI 1992. 157.

2. Bauer, Margaret D. “Forget the legend and read the work: teaching two stories by Ernest

Hemingway”. College Literature. West Chester: Summer 2003. Vol.30, Iss.3. 124. ProQuest.

Criticism & Reference: Full Text. Literature Online. 08 Dec. 2006

<http://literature.warre.edu.>

3. Benson, Jackson J. Short story Criticism, ed. David Segal,Vol.1. Gale Research Inc.

Detroit, MI 1992. 237

4. Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants”. The Complete Short Stories of

Ernest Hemingway. Finca Vigia Edition. Book-Of-The-Month Club. New York:

Macmillan, Inc. 1993. 211.

5. Hemingway, Ernest. “A Clean, Well Lighted Place”. eds. Kennedy and Gioia. Literature An

Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 4th comp. ed. New York: Longman, 2005. 154 –

158.

6. Hemingway, Ernest. Short story Criticism, ed. David Segal,Vol.1. Gale Research Inc.

Detroit, MI 1992. 205

7. Hemingway, Ernest. “A Clean, Well Lighted Place”. Short stories for Students. ed. Tim

Akers. Vol.9. Gale Group. Farmington Hills, MI, 1999. 20

8. Johnston, Kenneth G. “’Hills like White Elephants’: Lean, Vintage Hemingway”. Studies in

American Fiction, Vol.10, No.2 Autumn, 1982. 233-238. Literature Resource Center. Vale –

Warren County College. 08 Dec.2006 <http://galanet.galegroup.com>

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Galina Nikolaeva Research paper 14

Ernest Hemingway as a Soul Explorer (With References)

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