Baker

Baker

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On Hills Like White Elephants

A "Hills" Forum

Baker, Carlos. "The Mountain and the Plain." In Monteiro, George, ed.
Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. New
York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1994: 97-103.

	Before writing his biography of Hemingway, which stood as the definitive biography for almost two decades, Prof. Baker analyzed the pattern of references to lowlands and highlands in the novel (for the Virginia Quarterly Review 27 [Summer 1951]:410-418). Baker notes the overture-like opening sets the tone of doom in the autumn setting for the novel, establishes the point of view, and hints at symbolic motifs for the plain, the mountains, the river, the trees, the dust, and the leaves. The mountains are associated with clear, dry, white, and sunny living. The plain is associated in the opening with the unnatural war that dusts the trees, causing the leaves to fall early, and a distant, impersonal look at the troops, who will be falling soon themselves, starting the rains that bring cholera. Overlaid on the mountain and plain symbolism is a set of associations contrasting home with not-home. Places that are "home" are linked with "the mountains, with dry, cold weather; with peace and quiet; with love, dignity, health, happiness, and the good life; and with worship, or at least the consciousness of God." Places that are not home are linked "with low-lying plains; with rain and fog; with obscenity, indignity, suffering, nervousness, war, and death; and of course with irreligion" (99).
Gorizia, Italy Click the photo, above, for a brief history of the town.

Lake Maggiore with the white peaks of the Alps
The Abruzzi Region

Click images above for full-size views.

Pictures of the Abruzzi of central Italy as high and cold and clear places, including the Abruzzi National Park, above, and Capracotta, below.
Click the image to see the two-story snow drift in a larger image.

Leaving Gorizia, Frederic sees "the Julian and Carnic Alps" both "white and lovely in the sun." Catherine later makes a home of any room they are in, so she becomes associated with the mountains and they with love, both because of the priest and Catherine. The symbolism persists in Switzerland when Catherine and Frederic abandon their chalet in the mountains above Montreaux for the lower, rainy hospital in Lausanne, where she dies, completing the symbolism of doom in the rain. The lowland rain starts as Henry returns to the war and continues until Frederic and Catherine have reached Switzerland, where the morning after their arduous escape they awaken to see Lake Maggiore and the white mountains beyond. Unfortunately, the March [1918] spring approaches with rain, which has been prefigured in the Milan hotel as associated with Marvell's "Time's winged chariot hurrying near." When the baby hurries them, it is into their onrushing doom.

If the priest is associated with the mountains and love, Major Rinaldi is associated with the lusty plains that Lt. Henry visited while on leave before he returns to get wounded. In Milan, the hospital and the hotel room with Catherine felt homey; returning to Gorizia, Rinaldi and the commander have both changed, so it doesn't feel like much of a homecoming. Oddly, the priest has gotten a bit stronger. This priest-doctor opposition plays itself out when the couple removes themselves from the mountains to the Lausanne hospital and its doctors.

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