So I’ve been working on a series of novels, and I recently got some feedback from one of my readers. He said that the transitions were a little rough when the characters moved from place to place, and he felt like more detailed descriptions of physical locations would help. He gave me some homework: read Hemingway’s “The Green Hills of Africa”, and pay particular attention to Hemingway’s descriptions when he moves to a new location.
I thought it would be fun to write down my thoughts as I worked through this exercise, and to start, I’d like to examine a passage from the first paragraph of Chapter 2. Let’s take a look.
We were out from under the shade of camp and along the sandy river of a road, driving into the western sun, the bush thick to the edge of the sand, solid as a thicket, the little hills rising above it, and all along the road we passed groups of people making their way to the westward.
So what do we have here? First, we have left a location (the camp) with which we had become familiar in the previous chapter. Hemingway now gives us roughly four major features of landscape to open this new scene: the road, the sun, the bush thickets, and the hills.
He starts with the road, providing a strong image to anchor the scene. It’s not paved but a sandy road. Comparing it to a river, you think of the road being a bit winding perhaps. The image I get is almost of something that looks like a wide, dried-up, creek bed.
In front of them is the sun. Moving towards the sun, we get something of destination and direction to the action of Hemingway driving along. And between the sandy road and the burning sun (which must be on its way down since we’re headed west), we get heat. We know it’s hot and probably humid too. I’m imagining a clear sky and a blinding afternoon sun.
Next Hemingway adds the bush. Thick bushes and scrub grass, which he tells us run right to the edge of the road. This isn’t the Amazon or deep Congolese forests, but it isn’t open plains either. The space is closed in. Finally, we get hills in the distance, rising above the walls of scrub grass along the road. This is our scene.
Looking at Hemingway’s construction of the scene, two things immediately stand out to me. First: direction. The description of the scene establishes and reinforces the direction and action of the plot. The road takes Hemingway and his car where they are going. The sun leads the way. And the scrub grass and hills block him in from the sides, keeping him from turning off course. Second: Hemingway builds the scene from the inside out. First we get the road which the car is on, then the sun, which though far away is immediately in his line of sight. Next we get the bush to the sides of the road and finally the hills beyond that. This is character-centric construction. The description revolves around the main character (Hemingway) and the action taking place (driving). Hemingway’s description here naturally creates a stage for him to populate, and he immediately fills it with people. He gives descriptions of the various people walking down the road, then he adds a bit of context for this mass migration he’s witnessing:
All were travelling away from the famine. And in the heat, my feet out over the side of the car to keep them away from the heat of the engine, hat low over the eyes against the sun, watching the road, the people, and all clearings in the bush for game, we drove to the westward.
So first he builds a landscape, then he puts people in it, then he tells us the story of the place through which we’re traveling. This in turn sets up a contrast between Hemingway’s story and that of the people around him. The people walking along the road are travelling away from a famine. Hemingway is hunting kudu. The people along the road are in a life or death situation and must toil physically to escape it; one might even say they are being pursued—or perhaps hunted?—by famine and death. Hemingway, however, has a car, so he doesn’t have to toil to get where he’s going. He’s on a safari, and he is at his leisure. And as a hunter, he is driving toward danger, while the walkers are fleeing it.
To sum it up then, Hemingway’s descriptions help establish and support the action and the plot. They are character-centric; the focus of the writing revolves around the characters, telling us what they are doing and feeling. And they give us context for action and plot: Hemingway’s hunting expedition contrasted with the refugees fleeing the famine.