In literature work, tone refers to the attitude or emotion that the author is conveying in their work through his words. It is very hard to separate tone from the mood in any literary work. While the tone is the attitude of the narrator as seen in the story, the mood is the emotion that is set in the entire story. Hemingway, in his work "Hills Like White Elephants," indicates the tone of the story through his vivid description of the scene. In this piece of work, Hemingway uses sympathetic grief or sorrowful tone. This is evident in the way he describes the scenes. For example, he says, "They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry" (pg. 76). Through this description, the narrator indicates his attitude by sympathizing with the two characters. By selective use of words such as dry, brown, sun, and white, the narrator is trying to show the reader a horrible environment in which the characters were in.
Another way that the author indicates sympathetic tone in the story is how he describes the two bags carried by the man on the station. He says, “He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station to the other tracks” (pg. 79). By using the word “heavy,” the author creates a sorrowful picture of a man who is carrying two heavy bags moving towards waiting places for a train.
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The relationship of the characters appears to have very many problems and the author has used this to indicate sympathy tone. The two characters are emotionally distant since they appear to live in two different worlds. For instance, the lady said, “They look like white elephants,” and the man replied, “I’ve never seen one” (pg. 76). The author is sympathetic to the kind of life the two are living.
Reference
Rankin, P. (2005). Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants. The Explicator, 63(4), 234-237. doi: 10.1080/00144940509596952
