Anticharacter

This is an essay I wrote for English. It's not the best, but it has some neat components. :-D

Anticharacter

Symbols are a way of expressing thoughts, transposing our feelings and emotions that otherwise could not be expressed in plain words. Some stories express their characters explicitly, while others only implicitly through the use of symbols. Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants is such a story that is driven mainly by its metaphoric imagery. It is by this language that we gain considerable deep insight into the characters in the story and we connect with them in meaningful ways.

Often when I read a story I find myself loving a character, whether it has noble qualities, or is wiser than most, or maybe it is just simply lovable. That feeling, that interest, draws me into the story and I feel with the character and react with its reactions. It is a rarer instance that the main character is actually un-lovable, contrastingly lacking in virtue. An author in this way is effective, not by getting me to connect with his characters, but to react against them.
Hemingway accomplishes this in his story. It is about a man and a girl in a train station near the river Ebro in Spain. Our short glimpse of them takes place over just forty minutes, before their train arrives. It is never explicitly stated, but it is implied that they are talking about the girl, Jig, getting an abortion. We get hints of this, not mainly from the dialogue, as all that’s talked about is an “operation” (pg.323, ln.42), but from the imagery surrounding it. The hills represent pregnancy, and the dictionary defines a white elephant as “a valuable possession whose upkeep is excessively expensive.” The two parallel pairs of train tracks suggest a great decision with only two, opposite alternatives. They also suggest the distance between the two character's views of the matter, that they’re walking side by side, going opposite directions.

The man, described only as “the American,” (322.1) is selfish, thinking really only of himself, although he says that he only cares for Jig. In the end, Jig is faced with two decisions, abort the living baby within her and continue her life with the man, or be left in a very Catholic Spain, facing shame and ridicule alone, very alone. We get the sense that the man fears responsibility, in fact he actively flees it. He treats the abortion as “perfectly simple” (324.93), “really not anything, just to let the air in” (323.44), saying that he cares for her, but really thinks just for his own ease and care-free lifestyle.

The train tracks symbolize a decision, a way of life. The man chose to follow his own passions and inclinations, as opposed to the harder course, but the best. In contrast to the familiar words of Robert Frost, “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference,” the man chose the oft traveled, but worse, direction.
The luggage seems to signify how the man treats Jig, it has stickers from many hotels, suggesting they’ve traveled often, and at the end, when Jig seems to give up arguing, just asking him to “please please please please please please please stop talking” (224.98), he moves the luggage to the other side of the train station, preparing to move ahead with his plan, dragging her decision along with his, powerfully, like a locomotive.

This man goes against everything I hold and live by. He is the antithesis of my character. He’s un-lovable. He’s a cad. A man should guard not only himself in a relationship, but also a woman, both emotionally and physically. If he fails to do so, as the man in this story has done, he should take responsibility for his actions in front of God. The virtuous and right response would be for him to marry Jig, and settle down with her, to think of her before himself, as a noble character would do, but he clearly has no intention of doing so. The situation was not unavoidable, and the American is not incapable of changing his situation, as Jig is at this point (although she is partly responsible for getting there.) He is morally responsible. Or should I say, immorally irresponsible?

Ernest Hemingway, by stark contrast to what I know is right, is effective in getting me to look at not only the characters he puts forth, but also to examine myself. What I despise shows all the clearer what I hold dear. The man is a negative metaphor, an opposite image of myself, a thought expertly expressed in such brilliant symbols.

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernst. “Hills Like White Elephants.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2007.


"white elephant." WordNet® 3.0. Princeton University. 29 Sep. 2008. .

Frost, Robert. Mountain Interval. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/119/. [1 Oct. 2008].