Considered by many to be the most iconic of American authors, Hemingway has left an indelible mark on American fiction. His style is sparse and clean, yet his stories, for all their surface clarity or simplicity, remain enigmatic, and while they are rooted in simple dialogue, they often occur in subtly emblematic settings. In all of his better stories, his settings speak. They stand as an analogy to the central theme or action of the story. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” a young couple is at cross purposes about whether to have an abortion or not. But the conversation between them takes place at a rail station, a place with no roots, an in-between place, or a place to pass through on the way to a more pleasant existence. In “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”—an ironic analogy for Heaven—a simple conversation in a quaint, comfortable café belies the loneliness and pain which is clearly evident. The refrain of “nada” (Spanish = “nothing”) in the Lord’s prayer reinforces a sense of the “nothingness” to life and gives a sharp, cutting edge to the contrast between the bar, “a clean well-lighted place,” and a heaven that may or may not exist. And in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” a luxurious safari provides the metaphorical backdrop for something brutal and animalistic in the hunters. The action of the hunt, of a hunter and prey, images a hidden violent impulse in men and women, more particularly in this story in a woman and in a marriage. Yet for all the changes in settings, Hemingway’s focus remains almost exclusively on the here and now of the American culture and more particularly on the American man, providing a bleak, often tragic insight into a barbarism lurking just beneath the surface. That is in many respects the point, for with Hemingway the story rests less in what is seen than what is not seen; the significance of each story lies in “the part that doesn’t show.” Heming-way’s method (a technical practice that can’t be separated from the action of each story) has been appropriately described in terms of “the tip of an iceberg,” where “seven-eighths of it is underwater for every part that shows.” His stories, then, take us to a reality both visible and invisible, or, more aptly, to that reality which we so often hide from ourselves. 

Hemingway’s Artistry: settings stay in place, but they symbolize a dynamic action going on in that place.  

In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, a bar (not a church) is an image of Heaven in a world conceived in terms of nothingness.  

In “Hills Like White Elephants,” the stop-over train station represents an in-between place, a place of cross-purposes, of a couple coming from nowhere, going nowhere, who see life purely in terms of having “fun” and drinking. The “white elephant” is an image of some-thing unwanted that places heavy burden on those who own it.   

The hunt in “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber” images a hidden violent action going on beneath the surface of a marriage. In a marriage in which man and woman are created in the image of God, they can become one. In other marriages, in their pride, they become rivals to one another. In this story, when the husband faces a cowardice in himself and so puts himself beyond the control of his wife, she does something that shows the dark side of woman.