A Lecture Outline of
Hills Like White Elephants
By Ernest Hemingway
•
Objectives: after 6-7 class hours,
students are expected to
• Demonstrate a better understanding and
appreciation of H's strategy :short words,
lively dialogues and simple syntax,
especially the "iceberg principle."
• Sharpen their skills of analysis and
synthesis so as to explore the rich
interpretations of the author‘s ideas.
Methods:
•
•
•
•
•
Lecture
Class Discussion
Screening
Exercises
Staging the story
Procedure:
3-Session lecture
• Session 1: general coverage
• Session 2: staging the story and
discussion
• Session 3: further exploration and
exercises
Session 1: General Coverage
Warming up:
Activity I Group Discussion
Divide the students into groups to discuss
what they know about Hemingway's life
and work.
Hemingway's Life and
Work
Hemingway at the time of his
graduation from high school, 1917
Young Hemingway's account of a high school
football game

Hemingway received a
"D" in this writing
exercise for one of his
English classes at Oak
Park High School. As the
teacher's comment
indicates, however, it
was not content but
penmanship that earned
him the low grade.
Hemingway in his World War
I ambulance driver's uniform
Hemingway's first love, Agnes von
Kurowsky

Hemingway never
forgot his romance
with an American
nurse , and
Kurowsky later
became a primary
model for the
heroine in his novel
of World War I, A
Farewell to Arms
Literary Relationships



Gertrude Stein
Ezra Pound
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gertrude Stein


Gertrude Stein was an experimental
modernist writer.Hemingway respected her
professional expertise, and readily accepted
her as a mentor. From her he learned much
about the rhythm of words and the power of
repetition and unembellished direct
statement.
The term Lost Generation was coined by
Gertrude Stein to refer to a group of
American literary notables who lived in Paris.

Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound was a poet by profession, but he
was a generous adviser by instinct, and
many a writer, among them T. S. Eliot and
James Joyce, benefited from his artistic
counsel, encouragement, and editing. From
Pound, Hemingway learned "to distrust
adjectives" and received valuable guidance
in how to compress his words into precise
images.

Many years later,
Hemingway called
Pound "a sort of
saint" and said he
was "the man I
liked and trusted
the most as critic."

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Despite Hemingway's relative obscurity,
Fitzgerald had sent a favorable letter to his
editor in which he wrote:
"This is to tell you about a young man named
Ernest Hemmingway, who lives in Paris…I'd
look him up right away. He's the real thing.”


Hemingway trying his hand at
bullfighting in Pamplona, Spain
Here, he can be
seen (right of
center, in white
pants and dark
sweater)
confronting a
charging bull.
Hemingway showing off his marlin catch with his friend,
American bullfighter Sidney Franklin (in beret)

"for his mastery of the art of narrative,
most recently demonstrated in The Old
Man and the Sea, and for the influence
that he has exerted on contemporary
style"

Hemingway’s
Nobel Prize
Acceptance
speech
Quotes on his own style
“I always try to write on the principle of the
iceberg. There is seven-eights of it under
water for every part that shows. Anything
you know you can can eliminate and it only
strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that
doesn’t show.”

“There is seven-eights of it (iceberg)under
water for every part that shows…The
dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to
only one-eighth of it being above water."


“I sometimes think that my style is suggestive
rather than direct. The reader must often use his
imagination or lose the most subtle part of my
thoughts”
“If a writer of prose knows enough about what
he is writing about he may omit things that he
knows and the reader, if the writer is writing
truly enough, will have a feeling of those things
as strongly as though the writer had stated them.
The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to
only one-eighth of it being above water."
Activity II Pair Work
Ask the students to ask each other this
question:" Why Do You Read Fiction?"
“Why do we read fiction? The answer is simple. We
read it because we like it. And we like it because
fiction, as an image of life, stimulates and gratifies
our interest in life. …the special and immediate
interest that takes us to fiction is always our interest
in a story.”
“A story is… an image of life in motion--specifically,
the presentation of individual characters moving
through their particular experiences to some
end…And the experience that is characteristically
presented in a story is that of facing a problem, a
conflict.”
－Robert Penn Warren
Study Questions for comprehension
and consideration
• 1. What is a “white elephant ” according to
the dictionary definition? What does a
“white elephant” symbolize in the story?
• 2.list the evidence that tells what kind of
operation Jig is confronting. How risky is it
physically and emotionally?
• 3. Hemingway once suggested that his purpose
in such a story is to tell the reader as little as
possible directly. How does this principle operate
in this story?
• 4.“Subject, setting, point of view,
characterization, dialog, irony, compression and
the symbolism implicit in the title and developed
in the story all contribute to the powerful
impact.”Agree with any part of this statement in
detail, quoting relevant phrases from the story.