Thesis: In Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" the narrator uses setting to represent the girl's disenchantment with the American which gives us a deeper understanding of her emotional state during this difficult period which she faces.
             The setting where the man and girl wait for a train is one of oppressive heat from
             the sun in a treeless, arid region where the only relief comes in the form of the shade provided by the train station bar. The man and the girl likewise find relief in the form of excessive alcohol consumption. This excess is initially evident in the choice by the man to order two "big" beers thereby setting up the subsequent preoccupation with drinking. They sit together but we feel a distance between them in the girl's constant distraction from the man to the surroundings. The narrator frames a picture of the girl's attention focused on sun-bleached, white hills which seem pristine and bright and alive compared to the surrounding country which is described as "brown and dry"(165). We can parallel the imagery of the hills with the girl's hope of a better life, and likewise the "brown and dry" with her present condition with the American. She moves from simply looking off and away when we are told she "stood up and walked to the end of the station" (167) putting physical distance and thus reinforcing her emotional distance from the American. There, at the end of the station, she sees once again a vision of life in the form of "fields of grain and trees" which contrast with her dry, treeless, dead current state and we feel the longing she has for a better life. This vision experiences a foreshadowed, darkening however as a cloud rolls in to cast its shadow on unrealized hope. The tension between them builds throughout the story as they drink and bicker. The girl withdraws from him through the use of sarcasm and communication bre
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