“They look like white elephants,” she said. “I’ve never seen one,” the man drank his beer. “No, you wouldn’t have.” In this statement, the girl is describing the landscape around the train station bar where she and her boyfriend are drinking. The landscape is described as hot, barren, and dry, and from the girl's observation that the hills "look like white elephants" comes the title to the piece. This is an important observation because it means so much more than it appears to. As the story continues, we learn that the girl is pregnant and the man is pressuring her to have an abortion. The girl's declaration that the hills look like white elephants, then, is her coded acknowledgement that there is a problem between them that the two of them cannot speak of openly. The man's response, that he has never seen a white elephant, reveals his wish that this problem would just disappear, and the girl's rebuttal that, "no, you wouldn't have," lets us understand that this kind of manipulation and denial is typical of him.

Significantly, the girl only seems comfortable asserting herself in a coded manner. Unlock explanations and citation info for this and every other Hills Like White Elephants quote. Plus so much more... Already a LitCharts A+ member? “I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks?” In this statement, the girl expresses a major dissatisfaction with their relationship and with their life. While the man seems to enjoy their life of traveling and drinking, the girl seems to want something more—perhaps to start a family and have the stability of a home. Obviously, though, because of the splintered communication between the two of them, she can only allude to this disconnect. This statement, however, is a marked departure from their previous chattering and bickering, in that it comes closest to expressing a concrete problem and the corresponding desire that this problem implies. When the man simply responds, "I guess so," the girl seems frightened or regretful, since she walks back her statement by denying that the hills look like white elephants after all.

Again, this is an example of the girl's desires being at odds with the man's desires, and the mismatched power between the two of them.buy periodic table of elements shower curtain Unlock with LitCharts A+guff curtains He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. toile de jouy purple curtainsThey were all waiting reasonably for the train.curtain factory outlet lancashire Throughout this story, the man and the girl drink copious amounts of alcohol as a means of escaping their reality. thermal lined curtains dublin

So much of this story is about finding ways to avoid confronting their difficult choice: their refusal to speak about it literally, their symbolic preference of the shade over the light, and their relentless drinking, for instance. shower curtain rails canberraThis moment represents a whole new level of evasiveness, as the man stops at the bar to drink apart from the girl, even though he has a beer waiting at their table. significance of the bead curtain in hills like white elephantsHis observation that everyone else is "waiting reasonably for the train" seems to imply that he believes that the girl is out of line, or that she is the only person who is not facing a significant choice with dignity and reason. This condescending and unempathetic observation is emblematic of the sexism that the man displays toward the girl, and the uneven power in their relationship.

Even as the man does everything he can not to listen to the girl's perspective and confront their choice head on, he still judges her for not approaching the situation rationally, as he presumably believes he has done. Unlock with LitCharts A+Teaching is often a balancing act. We’re constantly balancing, sometimes battling, the seemingly opposing forces of lesson planning vs. grading, eating the cake in the workroom vs. not eating the cake in the workroom, literature study vs. writing study. But why can’t we have our cake and eat it, too? And by cake, I mean writing. As an AP Literature teacher, I feel the weight of the heavy-duty curriculum and the ticking of the exam clock, no matter how hard I try to balance the scales of the classroom. When it comes to writing and mentor text study in a literature intensive course, I rely on a few tricks of the mentor-text trade that encourage students to deliberately craft their writing, not just get words on the page in the allotted time.

The best way I know how to do that is to the use the literature itself as our mentor texts. Take for example the following excerpts from short stories and literary nonfiction my students recently studied: – from “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway “There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.“ – from “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin I have seen that dream all my life. It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is tree houses and the Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies. And knowing this, knowing that the Dream persists by warring with the known world…

I was sad for those families, I was sad for my country, but above all, in that moment, I was sad for you. – from Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates Allow  students to read and react to the mentors as readers first. My students’ gut reaction to these mini mentor texts can go a couple of different ways. If they are not yet familiar with the text, they will want  to piece together the context or discuss potential symbolism, rather than examining how the writing is put together, which is what they’re trained to do. So, let them do that. If students are familiar with the text or we’ve already tackled the piece in our literature study, students tend to first discuss the passage in context, which sounds something like, “Oh that’s where he…” or “Remember, that’s after they…” or “I love/can’t stand how this character…” Allow students to experience the joy and surprise and emotion of reading beautiful passages in literature. After that, one simple question will do the rest: What do you notice?

(Or I sometimes ask, what do you notice about how this is put together?) With this question, students begin to see the mentors with new eyes. For our classroom discussion and share out, I typically have students talk about their “noticings” first with their small groups, as I work the room and coach. After four or five minutes of small group discussion, we bring it back to the whole class. I ask one person from each group to share something they noticed, and I build a list of their noticings on the board — or what Allison and Rebekah call “writer’s moves.” From there, the students riff off one another. I’ve found that even if some students don’t have the language for language, they are still willing to offer up what they see as important about the construction of the passage. I believe if we create opportunities for these conversations about the writing itself, students will be well on their way to Reading Like Writers and employing a few writerly tricks of their own.

Allison recently published a great post on this subject as well — on reading like readers, reading like writers, and identifying writers’ moves. You should definitely check it out. Here’s what my students had to say about the second Hemingway passages in class: If this seems like an exercise in invention or creative writing, it is! This is so much of what I love about the mentor text approach. Mentors allow my literature students to live in both worlds — to study great and powerful Literature-with-a-capital-L, and through simple writing exercises, to continue to explore their creativity, their depth of thought, and most importantly, themselves as unique and valuable individuals. I tell students that after we practice and practice and practice with these mentors – these rich and evocative passages – that the deep structures of what we notice about the construction of  writing will transfer to their own writing as long as they are making intentional choices in their craft.

I’ve found that getting students to consider they’re constructing their writing is half the battle. As soon as students are open to the idea that repetition, detail, diction, dialogue, and syntax are than unwieldy words we sometimes throw into a literary analysis, and that by taking control of their own voice and being aware and cognizant of how they, too, can craft their language like the pros – well, we’re getting somewhere. Below are a few examples of some lovely student writing as a result of these methods. The mentors we studied come from “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway; “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin; and an excerpt from “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates — all of which are found at the beginning of this post. How do you incorporate mentor texts into your literature classes? What stories or passages from literature might be fit for mini-mentor text study? I would love to hear from you! Leave a comment below, find me on Twitter @karlahilliard, or connect with us on Facebook!