the table to talk about them with the man. Instead of coming straight out and talking about the problems the couple decides to drink beer. The act of consuming alcohol is another way for them to run away from their problems. Later on, the man and the woman are talking and the woman says, “They look like white elephants.” He replies to her comment by saying, “I’ve never seen one.” Knowing what we know about white elephants (their meaning of valuable things that are hard to maintain) this shows that the man has never had to deal with a situation like this. Her retort is “No, you wouldn’t have.” This reveals that she thinks he’s a coward who has never faced a problem like this before.The couple continues to drink throughout the story. At one point the girl shows that she has some faith in what the man thinks by asking him what way they should drink their drinks, with or without water. The couple then orders two Anis del Toro. This is a new drink to the woman, so like any curious drinker she wonders what it will taste like. She hopes that the drink will taste different than others she has tried but finds that it tastes like licorice. The girl then says, “Everything tastes like licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.” When she says this it refers to how she thought that this relationship would be different than others, but once she got into it she realized that he is just like all the other guys she has dated in the past. Later in the story she adds to this feeling of repetition by saying, “That’s all we do, isn’t it- look at things and try new drinks.” She really seems to be bored with the same things this relationship continues to produce.Alcohol continues to be a factor in this story. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that Hemingway seemed to deal with a lot of his problems by drinking. T...
