Where a more traditional author may approach dialogue and discourse as a means of connecting plot elements, Hemingway disregards regards plot for discourse, preferring to examine the dynamic of a relationship conflict rather than its circumstantial context. His dismissal of description emphasizes his choice of included details, implying that each of these rare glimpses into the narration's setting and scenery contains a signifier that relates the author's thesis: Hemingway's purpose in recording the conversation of a couple over drinks.

The waitress' character most lucidly exemplifies my statement on the Hemingway style: a relational examination of 'the surface,' of circumstance.

Though the waitress is only a brief presence, an analysis of her portrayal will serve as a template for my examination of Hemingway's style. Without any political, moralizing, or sentimental statement about the 'subservient disposition of the working class,' Hemingway chooses to portray the character of 'the woman' as she is referred. 'The woman' receives no description. Her role within the action of the story is merely to serve the drinks that induce the two central character's dialogue. However, without consciously constructing her character, readers are left with a distinct impression of her demeanor.

Here 'the man' addresses the waitress, then he digresses to ask 'the girl':

"The woman came out from the bar.

'Four reales.' 'We want two Anis del Toro.'

'With water?'

'Do you want it with water?'

'I don't know,' the girl said. 'Is it good with water?'

'It's all right.'

'You want them with water?' asked the woman.

'Yes, with water.'

The waitress' presumption when she ask her question a second time, 'You want water with them?' interrupting 'the girl's' slow indecisive dialogue, reveals the entire mode of the waitress' routine. Hemingway's portrayal of this interaction with customers, not snappy but to the point, evokes a premier impression of 'the woman,' a portrait of a character that transcends the imagery of dispassionate description or a sentimental inquiry. She is not cute and perky; she is not new to the job and taciturn; she is not wise and patient; she is middle aged, not particularly attractive, not particularly unattractive -perhaps slightly over weight, but only slightly- she's worked in restaurant's before, but not this particular one long enough elicit sense of proprietorship, and she probably has a few kids and thick eye brows.

This I imagine when I read the text. I infer it as a reader. I construct this fluent visage of a character despite the author's decline to describe her. It is my interpretation of an excerpt from Hemingway's 'Hills like White Elephants,' and as the author Hemingway delegates his readers with a unique capacity to maintain their own interpretation of the text. He does this with paratactic prose, but through emphasis on specific details, Hemingway manipulates the ostensibly paratactic language into a hypotactic, linear structure that reveals plot.

Perhaps here lies the great secret of Hemingway prose; that each reader maintains their own personal, fabricated impression of the naked plot elements that Hemingway lays in print before them.