The Hills Like White Elephants is easy to read but hard to understand. When I read this first time I do not know what this story is about. I can just see that one couple is in the train station, drinks bear while they are waiting a train, and has some problem between them. There is not a special event and is background depictions and communication between main characters. The author, Ernest Hemingway, uses short, simple, and positive sentences. He also use implicated words, so he say what is their problem. In the Hills Like White Elephants, the woman is pregnant and want to bear fetus to settle down, but the man does not want her to bear fetus because he does not want to have responsibility to them. He looks like love and consider her but does not want to have responsibility to her and baby.
As I read visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema I can see woman was not an important character, comparing man in the traditional. Their mainly role was that they supported the man and followed what men did; moreover, woman was mostly sexual object. Woman’s appearance was a most important people concerned. I did not matter her personality, ability, and so on. Therefore, in the traditional film, woman was mostly object of sexual. Its author, Laura Mulvey, compared the female and male’s characters. Woman is passive, and man is active, so man has power to develop the story in the film, and woman is behind them and follow what they think.
In the Hill Like White Elephant, man and woman have communication. Man asks woman to do what she do not want to do. However, she follows what he wants her to do. In this woman is passive like traditional woman; she does not express her opinion well to man and take man’s opinion obediently.
Professor Kennamer's English 150 