The concept of "play" in literature can manifest in various forms, from overt games and revelry to subtler psychological maneuvers. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "Babylon Revisited" and Ernest Hemingway’s "Hills Like White Elephants" both explore characters grappling with past decisions and present anxieties, and in both stories, play serves as a crucial lens through which their internal struggles and interpersonal dynamics are revealed. While Fitzgerald portrays play as a desperate, often destructive attempt to escape reality and reclaim lost glory, Hemingway depicts it as a tense, evasive dialogue, a linguistic dance masking profound unspoken conflict.
In "Babylon Revisited," Charlie Wales’s return to Paris is ostensibly an effort to reconcile with his estranged wife, Helen, and regain custody of his daughter, Honoria. However, his interactions are steeped in a form of performative play. He attempts to "play" the role of the responsible, reformed father and businessman, meticulously scripting his apologies and actions. His visit to the Ritz bar, a site of his former excesses, becomes a stage for this performance. He orders a drink, a seemingly simple act, but it’s loaded with the weight of his past. His reminiscing with the bartenders, particularly Lorraine and Tony, is a form of nostalgic play-acting, a way of conjuring the ghosts of his wilder self while simultaneously trying to present a new, sober persona. This is not innocent fun; it's a high-stakes performance designed to manipulate perception and secure his future. The arrival of Marion and Lincoln Peters, Helen’s sister and brother-in-law, shatters this illusion. Their presence forces Charlie to confront the genuine consequences of his past, and his attempts to "play" his way out of their judgment fail. The "joke" about the suicide of his friend, which he attempts to lighten the mood with, falls flat, highlighting how his performative play is out of sync with the gravity of the situation. Ultimately, Charlie’s "play" is a losing game, a desperate grasp at a past that cannot be recaptured and a future that remains uncertain.
Hemingway’s "Hills Like White Elephants" presents a starkly different kind of play. The story centers on an unnamed American man and a girl named Jig, waiting for a train in Spain. Their conversation, ostensibly about "an awfully simple operation," is a masterclass in indirect communication, where play takes the form of evasion and manipulation through language. The title itself hints at this: the "hills like white elephants" are a visual metaphor, something exotic and perhaps burdensome, and Jig’s observation is met with the man’s dismissive pragmatism. His repeated assertion that the procedure is "perfectly simple" and that he wants her to be "awfully happy" is a form of verbal play. He is not engaging in genuine dialogue but rather performing a role of reassurance and control, attempting to steer Jig towards his desired outcome. Jig, in turn, engages in her own form of play, testing his resolve and subtly pushing back against his agenda. Her questions, her observations about the landscape, and her eventual outburst – "And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy," she said. "I know we will be if you do it. Because I don’t want anything but that." – are all part of this intricate verbal game. She is playing for time, for understanding, and perhaps for a different kind of commitment than the man is offering. The "play" here is the constant back-and-forth, the subtext loaded into every seemingly innocuous phrase. Unlike Charlie’s boisterous, self-destructive revelry, the play in Hemingway’s story is a quiet, tense negotiation, a psychological duel fought with words. The stakes are no less significant, but the arena is entirely internal and interpersonal, a fragile dance around a life-altering decision.
In essence, both Fitzgerald and Hemingway utilize the idea of play to illuminate their characters’ struggles, but with distinct outcomes and implications. Charlie Wales’s play is a flamboyant, ultimately futile attempt to rewrite his history, a desperate performance that crumbles under scrutiny. The play in "Hills Like White Elephants," conversely, is a more subtle, insidious form of emotional and verbal maneuvering, a desperate attempt to navigate an unnavigable emotional chasm. Fitzgerald's play is about the past and the illusion of control, while Hemingway's is about the present and the painful reality of choice and consequence, masked by a delicate, dangerous game of words.