Several years ago, I considered attempting to adapt Hemingway's "A Clean Well-lighted Place" to the stage. The author's reliance on dialogue struck me as perfect for such a project. Then, teaching a first-year English class one year, I realized that the Hemingway short story ("Hills Like White Elephants") in the anthology we were using at our university was also heavily dependent on dialogue, and I decided to try the "staging" of the story in class. Over the past 5 or 6 years, this approach has worked well for me, and here's why.

First, some comments on choice of text. At our institution, we use the same short story text in all sections of first-year English. There are several reasons for this, mostly reasons of convenience for different anthologies over the past 10 years. For the purposes of my particular approach to the story, an edition with no notes or revealing "study questions" works best. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, for example, does not work well because of the study question at the end which asks "[d]oes the man seriously try to understand the girl's feelings about an abortion?" Now, in a typical first-year class, some students would read the story and the discussion questions, some would read only the story - and some would read neither! Those who have read the study questions and seen #3 (the one quoted above) come to class with the feeling that they have the "secret key" to the story. For many of these students, that is what the whole exercise in reading literature is about - finding the secret key, the template, by which the entire work becomes clear. That's precisely one of the things I want to challenge in the classroom. I want students to sensitively and closely read the text, rather than to smugly assume they've found a secret about the story. And I want students to use their own knowledge of people to try to determine what the conversation in the story is all about.

The one anthology we have used which fits my requirements is Elements of Fiction, edited by Robert Scholes and Rosemary Sullivan. In this edition, there are no notes or questions surrounding the story which may guide the students' understanding of the story [1]. Students must pay careful attention to what is said between the 2 main characters. If the students figure out that the characters are discussing an abortion, fine, but that knowledge alone is not the object of the exercise.

So, starting with a "clean" copy of the story, here are the steps I follow.

1. The story is assigned to be read out of class, just like any other work in my course. Naturally, some students have not read it beforehand, but, rather than sit quietly at the back and take notes, this approach draws them into a close reading of the story.

2. When the students arrive at class, I begin by noting the high proportion of dialogue in the story. I then tell them they will be preparing the story as if it were a play. [Groans]. The class is then divided into pairs, male/female as far as possible, which almost always means some "same sex" pairs will be formed. I choose the partners; in doing so, I am trying to pair stronger readers (as far as I have been able to determine so far in the semester) with weaker ones, or shy with outgoing, and so on. Also, I tell them that I will "cover" the lines spoken by the woman in the bar when we get to a performance.

3. Then, the students are given 30-60 minutes of class time to prepare the "play". They are told to concentrate on the dialogue, although, since most of them have read the whole story already, any part of the story is "available" to them to understand the characters and their motivation. I circulate around the room so they can ask for clarification on certain points.

   This is where the action is - the students engage with the text, and they generate critical questions as they encounter problems in the dialogue, and must then overcome those problems if they want to perform successfully.

   Here are some typical points at which this interpretive energy must be expended:

   • a) Students almost immediately notice the third character of the woman serving the American and the girl. The students these days mostly know what "Dos cervezas" means, from ordering Corona or Dos Equis, I guess, but a few of them will have to ask.

   • b) The next point students might notice in their preparation is "Four reales". I usually have to tell them that "reales" are Spanish coins. This leads them to question who is speaking, and why the answer "Four reales". Students are forced to go over these few lines, to notice the man's "Listen" through the curtain, and to conclude that the server is assuming he is about to ask for the bill.

   • c) Almost immediately after, students are led to confusion over these lines: "'With water?' 'Do you want it with water?' 'I don't know,' the girl said. 'Is it good with water?"' Who is speaking? The more clever and perceptive readers realize who speaks each line, and, maybe with a bit of questioning or prompting from me, someone realizes that the man speaks Spanish (as does the woman in the bar), but the "girl" does not. I tell them to note this observation.

   • d) "'Yes, with water"' is followed by "'It tastes like licorice..."'. This usually goes unnoticed by students at this point, because they are concentrating on words, not actions. (Only later, in performance, do we realize some time has passed while the Anis has been served.)

   • e) Most students "get" the tone and delivery of the exchange between "the man" and "the girl" ("'Just because you say..."', "'That was bright"', etc.).

   • f) The next point requiring interpretation is usually "'Should we have another drink?"' 'All right.'... 'The beer's nice and cool..."' Again, the significance of the time lapse while the beer is got and served may be overlooked by some students, but, by the time they perform it, they realize there is quite a lot of action in here.

   • g) The man's introduction of the "operation" is noted, even if students do not know what kind of operation it is at this point. When students are practicing these lines, they realize he is talking for awhile while she does not answer (character note).

   • h) The line about the operation, "'They just let the air in..."', can cause some hilarious confusion as students try to figure out what kind of operation they are talking about. I've had sinus surgery suggested in the past! But occasionally a mature woman student will know what's being referred to. In fact, empirical evidence suggests that women in my classes read this text more closely than men; that is, they "clue in" earlier and more conclusively than the male readers in a "typical" first-year class.

   • i) Students note the interchange discussing "happiness" and the characters' relationship, the "girl"' s knowledge of other women who have had the same operation and are "so happy". Again, even if they do not know if it is an abortion, they understand the tone of the conversation and can interpret the feelings, and they begin to question the relationship.

   • j) The conversation then turns to the man's insistence that she "won't have to if [she doesn't] want to". Students spend a great deal of time preparing this part of the dialogue because they know it is crucial, leading up to the break in action, speech, and story at the "fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro" paragraph. My students realize that there is some action required here, but they often skip right over the narrative paragraph.

   • k) The next place students usually pause is when Jig says, "'Can't we maybe stop talking?"'. "The man" repeats some of his pledges of devotion to her, and then the students must figure out how to deliver the "'please please please please please please stop talking."' The "conversation" effectively ends (did it ever begin?) when she threatens to scream.

   • l) Near the end of the story, the woman who works the bar has another line. As she brings them another beer, she mentions that "'The train comes in five minutes"'. Once again, and the students should be attuned to this fact by this point in the exercise, Jig has to ask the man "'What did she say?"'.

   • m) The preparation stage comes to an end with the students working out the delivery of the last lines of the story after the man returns from taking the bags across to the other side of the station.

     These are the usual points of struggle for the students. Obviously, it varies from class to class, but these are typical.

4. Next, I ask a pair of students to perform what they have prepared. The rest of the class, having gone through a similar process of preparation, observes in the role of "directors" or "stage managers". We let our performers get through the story/play, then we discuss different ways of saying a line, different possibilities for movement, pauses, and so on. Often, another couple of students want to perform to show how they have done it. As a class, then, we work on a "model performance". Some of the things which come out in performance that may have been overlooked in the preparation:

   • The time lapses, as when the bar server goes to get the Anis del Toro or the beer.

   • The actions as the girl walks to the end of the platform to look across the Ebro. As we act out this part and move bodies around, we realize that when he says, "'What did you say?"', she may be both speaking softly and too far away to hear. And, of course, I want students now to notice the man's reaction to her: "Come on back in the shade..."

   • We also will work through the ending, as the man walks through the bar, gets himself another drink, then returns.

   • I always time the performances, too. Never has it taken a pair of students more than 6 minutes the first time through. I then ask how long the events of the "play" take (according to internal indicators of the time). With a bit of math, students now realize that, what took 5-6 minutes to say in class, took 35 minutes of time in the story.

   • Someone always comments on how much they drink in such a short time!

5. The issue of "the operation" must be dealt with, too. By now, someone usually has figured out that they might be talking about an abortion. The idea is well-received by this point in the exercise, because all students have been paying attention to the tone and nature of the speech by both parties, and now they realize how much time may be spent with no speech - staring into space, staring at each other, staring at beads, staring at table legs, or whatever.

   At this point, let me reflect on some of the "problems" which arise when discussing this story. The two issues mentioned just above, the drinking and the abortion, loom large in the 18-year-old consciousness of many of my students. Some students, naive and obviously wholly convinced (they think) by a decade of Saturday morning anti-drinking and driving commercials, cannot get past an initial condemnation of the couple. Other students, of any age, have strongly-held beliefs pro- or anti-choice when it comes to abortion. Usually, then, some time must be spent defusing and diffusing the discussion, and re-focusing the class on the story. In fact, some useful observations on the very act of interpretation can follow, as we discuss the place of the individual, modern-day reader engaging with a text constructed by an author at a time in the past.

6. If all has gone well, other things I want to talk about in relation to the story are well set up now. We discuss the simple notion of communication/non-communication which is so evident after watching the performances. I will raise questions of character and theme: is the male character admirable? what does he want? is the female character admirable? what does she have going for her? what is the nature of their relationship? why does she look with fascination at the fields and trees across the plain? Is her comment about the hills being like white elephants silly or profound? The discussion of their relationship brings back the observation that the man can speak Spanish but the "girl" cannot, which leads to further conclusions about the nature of the relationship. We often get into a discussion of gender, too, speculating on whether males sympathize more with the male character, and females with Jig. And so it goes, depending on the class.

   Those are the things that happen when I use this approach in the classroom. The students gain a better sense of how character and action work together in a dramatic piece. The students read this story probably more closely than any other they have ever read. The focus is on the actual dialogue in the story, and on the direct engagement of reader/text, and not on the immediate impulse to summarize in interpreting (that idea of finding the "secret key"). It achieves all these goals, and more - and it's fun!

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   Notes

   1. There is a short headnote in the Scholes and Sullivan which briefly describes Hemingway's life. This sometimes causes students to approach the story as a piece which will reveal why he married four times, or why he shot himself! Back to the Text

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   Back to Steve Lane's c.v.

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   copyright 1992 S. M. Lane