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Abortion In Hills Like White Elephants

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Hills like White Elephants is a short story about an American man and a girl who are in a predicament about something in that is very hard to decide. Hills like White Elephants is a story that focuses on this couple whose relationship seem to be a success until she got pregnant. This story not only focuses on their relationship, but it specifically focuses on their situation and how both go about it. The story Hills like White Elephants is set up between a man and a girl, in which the man is trying to convince the girl to do something she is hesitant about doing, which is having an abortion. Throughout the story, the girl appears confused and indecisive; she doesn’t want to go through with the abortion; and the man appears to try to push her to have the operation .In the story Hills like White Elephants I will discussed the emotional strain that girl is going through, the carelessness of the man, and their situation. Hills like White Elephants is a story about the different values that both the man and girl share about having the abortion. As the man and the girl talk about …show more content…

The man is constantly pushing her into having the abortion and it seems he does not care about how she feels. But, in his mind if she has the operation he thinks that everything will go back to normal. Her happiness seems not to be important to him; it seems he does not care about what she wants. But, why have an abortion? He has so many other options to choose from, but he’s telling her to have an abortion. The man and girl has been together for a while; this is supposed to be the girl that he loves, so why wouldn’t he be happy that they are about to have a baby. Or, he could have simply told her he will support the baby and her, or he doesn’t want to be involved. So, the man is telling her to have an abortion is cruel, especially if she doesn’t want to go through with the

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The short story "Hills Like White Elephants," is about a couple that is really young and the is having a issue about abortion. The author uses a lot of rhetorical devices to convey his message but mostly use imagery and symbolism. The way that the story is told by the author the reader can see the story told in their head. The way that the author describe the hills and the town that they was in it shows a lot of imagery. The story also picture the couple waiting for the train that they had been waiting for.

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528 Words | 3 Pages

White elephants are rare animals and a small amount of people have ever seen a white elephant. The elephant symbolizes that the operation that the woman is going to get is an operation that not everyone gets, only the privileged people. She also makes statements about not caring about herself in attempt to get the American to change his mind about the operation. The American states that this pregnancy is what is causing turmoil in their relationship and causing the couple unhappiness.

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758 Words | 4 Pages

Which is why he starts laughing. Hills like white elephants is a story based on man vs self since the topic of this story would be jig, the girl. She refers to the hills like “white elephants”, she is referring the elephants to her unborn baby. You can also recall the expression,”There’s an elephant in the room” because of something painfully obviously no ones wants to

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456 Words | 2 Pages

Expository Essay #2 Question The Synar Amendment With the aim of reducing the number of tobacco-related premature deaths per year, numerous laws restricting the underage access to tobacco products were enacted by the United States government in the 1990s. The most significant one was the Synar Amendment, which was adopted in June 1992 and afterwards changed the basis of anti-tobacco regulations at both the state and local level. In this essay, I will provide a clear definition of the term as well as state the reasons for choosing it as a source for my research paper.

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739 Words | 3 Pages

In the short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway, there is a relationship unfolding, a complex relationship difficult to understand. The relationship is revealed by a conversation between a man and a woman, a topic of conversation that people rarely discussed in the period that the story was set. After researching interpretations, it is consistently said “She is pregnant, and he wants her to have an abortion” (Weeks 76), to which I agree that this conversation is about abortion. With the man seemingly pushing the topic and the girl hesitant and questionable, it is unsure as to the result of their conversation. However, it is my belief that she chose to follow her heart and not get the abortion.

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225 Words | 1 Pages

The main character within the story “ Hills Like White Elephants” is Jig. Jig is bothered with her own thoughts because she is trying to ease her conscience. She struggles to accomplish this so she is unknowingly using her conscious and subconscious to process the difficult decision of whether she should go through with abortion. She is constantly debating the thought of abortion throughout the story When in reality, she knows that she is going to have the abortion, but she expresses the complete opposite feeling externally.

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1683 Words | 7 Pages

“Hills Like White Elephants” demonstrates how in the situation of an unplanned pregnancy, the man takes on the selfish role of a bystander while the woman takes on a stronger more aggressive role in deciding how to approach the idea of an abortion.

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893 Words | 4 Pages

In the short story, “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway from the start makes us draw out our own conclusions and does not give us a great deal of information. For example, we are only told about two characters, an American man and a girl who are waiting for their train to arrive. Other than this, we are not told what relationship the characters share together or where their final destination is. The protagonist who is referred to as “the girl” is in the middle of a tragic situation which can take a turn for the best or the worst and her partner, the “American man” is not helping but making the situation more heated.

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1629 Words | 7 Pages

The dialogue in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” reveals a man’s and a woman’s incongruent conflict on abortion, and the author’s fundamentally feminist position is visible in the portrayal of the woman’s independent choice of whether or not to keep the baby she is carrying. The plot is very simple in the story which is less than 1500 words long. A woman and a man spend less than an hour on a hot summers day at a Spanish train station in the valley of Ebro as they are waiting for a train heading for Madrid. Their dialogue takes up most of the space and only few major actions take place.

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771 Words | 4 Pages

Hemmingway portrays various scenery’s, objects, characters and actions as having a symbolic meaning in this short story. As a matter of fact, one of the first symbolic phrases in Hills Like White Elephants occurs when Jig tells the man that the hills look like white elephants (McGraw 563). White elephants represent something nobody wants, in essence it symbolizes neglect. For this story, the hills symbolize the woman’s unborn baby. Further along in the story, the woman retracts her statement about the hills looking like white elephants and says they are quite lovely.

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1013 Words | 5 Pages

One main theme in Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” is the idea of disconnection. In this story, we eavesdrop on a conversation held between both characters. In their dialogue, conflict is created as the characters face what most readers believe to be the obstacle of unexpected pregnancy. This is assumed through symbolism and the titles meaning. The term “white elephant” was used for an unwanted gift.

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663 Words | 3 Pages

A white elephant symbolizes something no one wants---in this case, the woman’s unborn child. The woman’s comment in the beginning of the story that the surrounding hills look like white elephants initially seems to be a casual, offhand remark, but it actually serves as a transition for her and the American man to discuss their baby and the possibility of having an abortion. The woman later in the story hints that the hill don’t really look like white elephants, a very subtle hint that perhaps means that she wants to keep the baby after all. The man misses this hint and the situation doesn’t get solved. “They’re lovely hills,” she said.

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1128 Words | 5 Pages

However, when she later makes the remark that the hills “don’t really look like white elephants”; that they looked like white elephants only at first, but actually, “They’re lovely hills.” (Mays, 2014, p.116). This change in views could be a subtle indication to the man that she does not want to terminate her pregnancy, while he ignores it and continues to encourage her for undergoing the medical procedure, making it even more difficult for making a decision. The contrasting landscapes described in the story also suggest that the girl is torn between both landscapes, which represents two contradictory choices. Half-way through the story, the girl stands up and walks to the end of the station, where she sees from afar the “fields of grain

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786 Words | 4 Pages

During the course of the story “Hills Like White Elephants” the author Ernest Hemingway uses symbolism to describe the the main idea of the girl having the “operation.” Hemingway uses the landscape, the white elephant, and the term “elephant in the room” to represent different aspects of the pregnancy and abortion. The landscape in the story represents choosing the abortion or choosing to keep the baby. The setting of the story is at a train station.

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1044 Words | 5 Pages

In his story “Hills Like White Elephants”, Ernest Hemingway points out the couple's inability to make the decision: whether to abort the unborn child or not. The reader finds that the story deals with couple's miscommunication through the conversation and the emotions that they express. One can observe that no descriptions are given to the characters, thus, Hemingway creates universal dilemma to focus on the crucial issue. In this way, Hemingway leads the reader to identify with his female character that undergoes a struggle.

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