In a rare moment of calm in an otherwise extremely tense conversation between the man and the girl, Hemingway uses imagery to engage readers’ senses, as seen in the following passage:
“They’re lovely hills,” she said. “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.”
“Should we have another drink?”
“All right.”
The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.
“The beer’s nice and cool,” the man said.
“It’s lovely,” the girl said.
“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”
Because Hemingway’s writing style is so sparse, moments of subtle imagery like this are significant. Here, he encourages readers to visualize the “coloring of [the hills’] skin through the trees” and the bead curtain moving against the table, as well as to feel the “warm wind” and the “cool” beer.
These various descriptions bring readers closer into the scene and also communicate that this is a small moment of ease between the bickering partners. The sensations of “warm” and “cool” are inherently less extreme word choices than “hot” and “cold,” indicating that their conversation is less inflamed in this moment. This is likely why the man decides to seize this moment to introduce the topic of the abortion more directly, hoping that the girl will be better able to hear him after getting settled in the shade with her beer.
