Hills like White Elephants - Symbolism

1. The story is narrated in the third person point of view. Aside from dialogue, the story does not use “I.” Instead, it uses his name, or refers to the character as “him” or “he.”

2. The story starts off as third person objective. It’s first told as how someone would observe from afar. The narrator makes assumptions, such as in the first paragraph of part one, “It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring….” In the third paragraph, the narrator is describing the main character, but he makes it sound more as assumptions than fact.

In paragraph four, the point of view changes from being objective to third person omniscient limited. “He looked a moment…” indicates that the narrator now knows what the character is thinking, what the character is looking at, etc. It continues to focuses on the thoughts of Peyton Farquhar; what he thought of as he looked at the water, how he thought of his family, and planned his escape.

The point of view changes again in part two to third person omniscient neutral. The narrator knows quite a bit about each character, and knows certain things that the average observer would not be able to observe. For example, the narrator knows how Peyton was feeling towards the war, and knew why he had not fought in the war. He also knew that the soldier that stopped for the water was a soldier from the north.

Then, in part three, the point of view reverts back to third person omniscient limited. And again, it is limited to the thoughts and feelings of Peyton. This section expressed what Peyton was doing, and thinking, as he freed himself from the noose, and how he felt as he dodged the bullets being fired at him.

The final paragraph of the entire story, the point of view changes again, back