Hills Like White Elephants

Last year in my AP Lit class, we were forced to do a research paper, powerpoint/speech, poster, and another secondary advertisement for our year end research project. All I can say is that it was better that our first semester project (mine ended up being a 24 page research paper over F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise. Not fun.) I can also say that I swept the competition and scored extra credit with my superb choice of short story (style and symbolism wise), artistically original poster, and scrumptious white elephant shaped sugar cookies. I killed it.

My short story was "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway. I originally picked it because Mr. Jankowski, my previous English teacher, said something about how short it was. If you know anything about me, I'm all about doing less work than I need, so I obviously pounced on the 3 page short story. It was perfection.

During the course of the researching, I read the short story maybe a 100 times. I don't know, that's probably an exaggeration, but just go with it. Anyway, I've become very emotionally attached to it. It is truly an amazing story; symbolic, metaphorical, deep, and interesting. I highly, highly recommend everyone to read it and figure out what it means to them.

Why am I writing about this now? you may ask. Well, let's just say the story isn't exactly about hills or white elephants. It's about abortion and with all that's going on recently with Richard Mourdock and all the other politicians, I thought it would be an interesting topic to post about. A link will be posted below. Read it, get from it what you want or let yourself. Read with an open mind because it's truly a fantastic story. If you don't like the controversy, read it for the style and symbolism. Hemingway has a writing style that could knock anyone's socks off. (Iceberg Theory anyone? Anyone? Bueller? No? There's my research paper persona coming out. Oh boy.)

"Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway