Summary: On a hot day at a train station in Zaragoza, Spain, a man and woman sit at a table on the shady side of the building while they prepare to order drinks. The train for Madrid will arrive from Barcelona in forty minutes on the sunny side of the building. In front of them, the land is dry. There are no trees. Distant hills appear white in the sun, and the woman says they look like white elephants. While they sip their drinks, their conversation reveals that the woman, Jig, and the man, identified only as an American, are at odds over her pregnancy. She wants the child and hints that she would like to settle down. He wants her to abort the child, saying the procedure “is awfully simple” and “not really anything.” Afterward, he says, life for them can continue as before. Jig observes that the liqueur tastes like licorice. In fact, she says, everything tastes like licorice. Her remark, apparently made out of boredom, irks the man. “Oh, cut it out,” he says. They go back and forth on the question of the child. Jig finally says, perhaps with a taint of sarcasm, that she will have the procedure “because I don’t care about me.” The man says he does not want her to have it “if you feel that way.” Jig gets up and walks to the end of the building. There, she looks around to the land on the other side. Then says, “And we could have all this.” When the man tells her that they can have whatever they want—“We can have the whole world”—Jig says, “It isn’t ours any more...And once they take it away, you never get it back.” A woman brings them two more beers and alerts them that their train will arrive in five minutes. The man then carries their two suitcases. When he returns, he asks how she feels. She replies, “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”
Vocabulary: curtain 窗簾 junction 聯軌站 licorice 甘草
Questions: 1.What are the White Elephants symbolizing?
Unborn baby
2.Everything tastes like licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.” Why she talk this conversation?
She remarks that her drink tastes like licorice and then tries to subtly broach the subject of her pregnancy again, because the American had ignored her earlier comment that the nearby hills look like white elephants.
Summary:
ReplyDeleteOn a hot day at a train station in Zaragoza, Spain, a man and woman sit at a table on the shady side of the building while they prepare to order drinks. The train for Madrid will arrive from Barcelona in forty minutes on the sunny side of the building.
In front of them, the land is dry. There are no trees. Distant hills appear white in the sun, and the woman says they look like white elephants.
While they sip their drinks, their conversation reveals that the woman, Jig, and the man, identified only as an American, are at odds over her pregnancy. She wants the child and hints that she would like to settle down. He wants her to abort the child, saying the procedure “is awfully simple” and “not really anything.” Afterward, he says, life for them can continue as before.
Jig observes that the liqueur tastes like licorice. In fact, she says, everything tastes like licorice. Her remark, apparently made out of boredom, irks the man.
“Oh, cut it out,” he says.
They go back and forth on the question of the child. Jig finally says, perhaps with a taint of sarcasm, that she will have the procedure “because I don’t care about me.” The man says he does not want her to have it “if you feel that way.”
Jig gets up and walks to the end of the building. There, she looks around to the land on the other side. Then says, “And we could have all this.” When the man tells her that they can have whatever they want—“We can have the whole world”—Jig says, “It isn’t ours any more...And once they take it away, you never get it back.”
A woman brings them two more beers and alerts them that their train will arrive in five minutes. The man then carries their two suitcases. When he returns, he asks how she feels. She replies, “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”
Vocabulary:
curtain 窗簾
junction 聯軌站
licorice 甘草
Questions:
1.What are the White Elephants symbolizing?
Unborn baby
2.Everything tastes like licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.” Why she talk this conversation?
She remarks that her drink tastes like licorice and then tries to subtly broach the subject of her pregnancy again, because the American had ignored her earlier comment that the nearby hills look like white elephants.