E-Portfolio #3

Donald E. Handy and Heather K. Hardy, in their article “Love, Death and War: Metaphorical Interaction in Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’”, interpret the dialogue between the two unnamed characters, “The American” and “The Girl”, in  Hemingway short story “Hills Like White Elephants”. They argue, that the dialogue is based upon the “cultural metaphor…called ARGUMENT IS WAR” (E. Hardy and K Hardy). They set the scene, in more metaphorical terms, the battlefield, and explain characters battle plan.

Prussian General and military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “Der Krieg ist also ein Akt der Gewalt, um den Gegner zur Erfüllung unseres Willens zu zwingen” (4).  In English, it can be translated as “War is thus an act of violence to force the opponent to the fulfillment of our will.” The same way war is an act of violence (Akt der Gewalt) to get what one wants, argumentation is an  act of speech (Akt der Sprache) to get what one wants. When we speak of argument,we tend to talk about it in terms of war. For example: she attacked my position, he defended his position, she has a strong argument, she has a weak argument, he lost the argument, he won the argument. 

Continuing the metaphor of warfare will bring us to the metaphor of duality. Warfare is, in the words of Clausewitz,  “Der Krieg ist nichts als ein erweiterter Zweikampf.” (3). In English, it can be translated as “War is nothing but an extended deul”. Emphasis on the word Zweikampf, literally “two-struggle”. In Hemingway’s short story, there are two wills, each one wanting the other to fulfill the will. They are traveling from one city, Barcelona (which speaks Catalan) to another city Madrid (which speaks Castilian), even the name of the river has two names: A Castilian speaker would say “I crossed the Ebro”, but a Catalan would say I crossed the Ebre”. The dialogue in “Hills like white Elephants” is the story of two wills, trying to force the other to theirs.After reading the article I became more cognizant of how we argue, and how the “Argument is War” metaphor can lead to conflict, which made me go back to an old military book, Vom Kriege, and made me aware of how duality is found throughout the short story. 

Works Cited

Hardy, Donald E., and Heather K. Hardy. “Love, Death and War: Metaphorical Interaction in Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’.” Short Story Criticism, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 168, Gale, 2012. Literature Resource Center,          https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420110528/GLS?u=durham_tccl&sid=GLS&xid=0becb036. Accessed 18 Sept. 2019. Originally published in Language and Literature, vol. 15, 1990, pp. 1-56.

Clausewitz, Carl von. Vom Kriege. Berlin, 1832. Google Books,                          https://books.google.com/books?id=vQpUAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0    #v=onepage&q&f=false. Accessed 19 August 2019.