The Audacity...

Greetings.

So I re-wrote some Hemingway today. Okay, before you start thinking about what a giant egomaniac I am (which may be true) let me first explain that I had to do so for my Intro to Fiction class. We are discussing point of view, and our professor gave us the assignment to re-write a passage from a story of our choosing using a different point of view than the original. Ok, so I guess my ego deserves the credit (blame) for picking Hemingway, though. At least I didn't decide to re-write Hawthorne.

Anyway, I chose to rewrite the beginning of Hills Like White Elephants. If you've read the original, then you will notice that the story does indeed lose some of its luster the way I've written it - and not just because I'm not Hemingway. In the original, we as readers have to do a lot of work to determine what the couple in the story are talking about, and because of Hemingway's choice of the objective point of view, we are also left to determine the tone of the conversation for ourselves. In this version, which I've written in the first-person from the point of view of the American man, the reader is directed a lot more toward a specific interpretation of the conversation, rather than just seeing it as it would appear to the proverbial fly on the wall. Here, then, without further delay, is my version of the beginning of Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants:

The heat was getting to me, and I was glad that we’d found a place outside to sit. Maybe out here we could get a bit of a breeze from the desert side of the valley. The train station sat between one set of tracks headed for Madrid and another set heading back toward Barcelona. I’d ordered us two large beers to help us cool off. Jig stared off at the hills in the distance and said something about white elephants.

“I’ve never seen one.” I said, taking a sip of beer.

“No, you wouldn’t have,” she remarked.

“I might have,” I told her with a smile. “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.” As we drank down our beers, she noticed a sign that said “Anis del Toro.” She asked me what it meant and I told her that it was a drink. Of course she wanted one.

That’s what we did, after all. We traveled around and we tried drinks. I didn’t mind this life a bit. In fact, I’d been having a wonderful time of it until she told me. I knew that in Madrid we had a shot to set things right again, but I could tell she was hesitant. I’d best not bring it up, though. For now, we were at the station and everything was going to be back to normal once we got it over with in Madrid.

I called to the waitress and ordered a pair of the Anis del Toro drinks. When they arrived, she immediately declared that it tasted like licorice. There it was.

“That’s the way with everything.” I said with a sigh that came out before I could think better of it.

“Yes” she said, obviously perturbed. “Everything tastes like licorice. Especially all of the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.”

“Oh cut it out.” I said sharply.

“You started it,” she sulked. “I was being amused. I was having a fine time.”

I sighed again. “Well, let’s try to have a fine time.”

“Alright.” She paused. “I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?”

“That was bright.” I reassured her. It was bright. It was incredibly clever. It was whatever she needed it to be, so long as she didn’t change her mind.

“I wanted to try this new drink.” She was still sulking a bit. Apparently “bright” wasn’t going to be good enough. “That’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks.”

This was going south fast.

“I guess so.” I said in the most non-confrontational tone I could muster. It seemed to put her at ease for a moment. She stared across the barren side of the valley at the white hills.

“They’re lovely hills,” she said. Her somewhat distracted tone warned that her mind was entertaining more thoughts than was good for it. “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.”

I had to bring her back to the surface.

“Should we have another drink?” I asked.

“Alright.”

“The beer’s nice and cool.”

“It’s lovely.” She was still thinking about it.

There was no more use dancing around it.

“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig.” I said, hoping to ease her fears. “It’s not really an operation at all.”

She wasn’t buying it.

“I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.” She still wasn’t buying it. I knew right then that all of my persuasive tricks weren’t going to do me any good – even though I would still try every one of them. She wasn’t going to go through with it and my whole life was going to change.


So, there you have it. I personally like Hemingway's work, so I hope that reading this might make you want to go and check out the original from the library. By the way, if you don't have a library card, shame on you. Go out right away and get yourself one, you'll not be sorry.

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