Nature often controls the fate of fictional character in stories. In "Hills Like White Elephants," nature reveals the dysfunctional relationship between the girl and her boyfriend, in which neither life nor her imagination can grow. Also, in serving as a force against which men must struggle, nature plays an important part in "The Open Boat." In addition, in "The Egg," the father's miserable fate is both mirrored by nature and controlled by its cruel cycle. .
Hemingway in "Hills Like White Elephants" effectively uses nature to signify the unhealthy relationship between the man and the girl. Instead of green trees and colorful flowers that are growing on the hill, the girl views the hills as a white elephant's skin, which is gray and rough. Her referral of lifeless hills to the white elephant reveals that nothing could grow between her and the man. Neither her child could be raise nor could their relationship be developed. In addition, the white elephant also associate to the traditional "white elephant sale", where people resale expensive products that they cannot effort to take care of. It foreshadows the girl's destiny to give up the child because her inability to raise the child by her own. Not only the child would be taken away from the girl, but also the girl's own way of seeing the world would be restricted by her dominant boyfriend. While she enjoy her imagination of seeing the hills as an white elephant, her boyfriend tend to adjust her back into the reality by telling her to drink some more beers. The nature of the dead hills is the mirror of their unhealthy and dysfunctional relationship.
Moreover, nature plays a crucial part in the "Open Boat" of determinate the fate of the man in the boat. The man's reaction towards nature changes through out the story. First, they not only see the nature as a beauty, also the source of lifting their spirit and given them hopes.