The Analysis of Symbols in Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants

Abstract

This thesis provides an analysis of symbols in Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, a sort of short story within literary genre. The title of the short story has offered symbols. Symbol is understood as implication of definite meaning by representing something as its clue. The symbols found in the short story are represented in the form of nature, material, animals, figures, names and situation. The material is implied in technology such as train; nature in the hills and trees; animal is through elephant; situation is reflected in the atmosphere of night club and bar. Symbol is fundamentaaly recognized through sign that implies meaning according to its characteristic. This is based on theory of Jhon Peck and Martin Coyle as applied in this thesis. The method of analysing the data in this thesis is better known as descriptive method. By describing the symbols available, it is found that symbols are familiar with human’s mind pattern to portray things around them in a very specific way. The implementation of the symbols has been created real through the use of language that is literary language.