Goes Far If You Want It
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How much longer can you play with fire before you turn into a liar?
Before he comes back out, he drinks Anis at the bar and looks at the other people waiting for the train to Madrid. It’s this hesitation in “Hills Like White Elephants”, which foreshadows the American’s abandonment of the girl to continue his carefree life.
‘And we could have all this,’ she said. ‘And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said we could have everything.’
‘We can have everything.’
‘No, we can’t.’
‘We can have the whole world.’
‘No, we can’t.’
‘We can go everywhere.’
‘No, we can’t. It isn’t ours any more.’
‘It’s ours.’
‘No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back.’
‘But they haven’t taken it away.’
‘We’ll wait and see.’
The world is no longer theirs as she stares at the hills across the valleys that were long and white, a world they’re separated from. Been a fool for weeks. They both have, based on their unconcern for the “white elephant”, the welfare of the baby never to be born. But it could still be theirs – the child, the whole world, all of this. Goes far if you want it.
The American returns to the girl and asks her if she feels better. “I feel fine”, the girl says twice. The story ends with their resistance to family life and the landscape around them is barren. She continues to stare across the hills on the dry side of the valley, while the American looks at the girl and at the table.
Tags: Beach House, Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants
March 13th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
they just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural
but they can’t go home again