What do you think about academic analysis of Hills Like White Elephants?
I’ve just re-read this story by Hemingway, and I love how cryptic it is. Nothing is spelled out, and one has to slow down, re-read, and think to reach their own conclusion on what’s really going on.
I was curious about what others said about it, so I read the Wikipedia article on it. Now I’m puzzled.
It looks like this very short piece was dismantled comma by comma and analyzed under a microscope.
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.”, etc.
I write too. Needless to say, I’m not Hemingway, but I can’t imagine anyone being so mechanical in their writing and getting such a natural piece as a result.
Can it be that because Hemingway is famous, every word got overanalyzed into oblivion, and while he definitely had the atmosphere and the aim in mind, he didn’t really calculate the placement of each detail the way critics see it?