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Hills Like White Elephants, By Ernest Hemingway

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“Hills Like White Elephants,” written by Ernest Hemingway is a story that must be read between the lines to understand. I had to read this story a few times before truly understanding the meaning. One thing that I noticed about this story that made it very unique was point of views of each characters. As a reader, I could understand that both characters had their different point of views, yet neither of them took the time to understand each others. The things these two characters are not openly discussing is abortion. The narrator of this story hints at this hidden message in a few ways. I only caught on to these messages the second or third time reading this story. The narrator hints at it by including dialogue such as, “absinthe” (182),
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Ernest Hemingway uses repetition and ambiguity in his story, “Hills like White Elephants'' to exhibit the idea that in order to maintain a healthy long-term relationship, communication and consideration of one another’s values are needed. Throughout this story, a couple, Jig and the American, are having an intense and emotional conversation about whether Jig should have an abortion. She displays very sensitive feelings about the procedure, and the American takes advantage of this by trying to manipulate her, repeatedly stating it is her choice: “if [she doesn’t] want to [she doesn’t] have to. [He] wouldn’t have [her] do it if [she] didn’t want to” (477). By doing this he falsely implies he has no opinion, but later contradicts himself by

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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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Lane Jr. who's struggling with his faith will support and stand by Sheri and her decision concerning the pregnancy. Ernest Hemingway's" Hills Like White Elephants” allows his readers to come to the conclusion as to whether the couple in question will terminate or keep the unborn child. As Jig, and the American are

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Literature and the arts are similar, they require us to tap into a deeper level of understand in what we read and see. The words are often an author’s experiences, thoughts, feeling, ideas or convictions. As readers we can sometimes connect with the author, having an emotional reaction to their works. In Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, the young couple is making a life decision about going through an abortion. I too was faced this decision in my own life at a young age.

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Throughout the short story (1), “Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway is speaking about a seemingly unwanted pregnancy and a woman’s uneasiness with going through an abortion. However, Hemingway never explicitly says in this work of fiction (2) that it is about abortion or that the woman, Jig, is uncomfortable with it, but uses symbolism (3) to present this to the audience. At the time “Hills like White Elephants” was published, in 1927, abortion was illegal in most places and a very taboo subject that wasn’t to be openly discussed in public. Thus, Hemingway relied greatly upon the use of symbolism to get his message across for this reason as well as the third person narrator (4) that did not give insight into the character’s thoughts within this piece of literature (5) . He uses symbols such as the train station, white hills, the baggage, and the drinks to point towards the underlying internal conflict (6) of Jig’s decision that is being heavily influenced by the American man, who wants Jig to get the abortion.

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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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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

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Ernest Hemingway was an influential American novelist and short story writer in the 20th-century. Best known for his works such as The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway used his past experiences in the war and his influential status to become a well renowned writer who emphasized what Gertrude Stein would later coin “The Lost Generation”. In his short story, “Hills Like White Elephants”, Hemingway uses a young couple to address the issue of abortion in the late 1920’s. Through his use of setting and symbolism, Hemmingway is able to indirectly speak of the conflicts surrounding the topic of abortion in the late 1920’s.

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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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Ernest Hemingway’s style of writing is minimalistic. One story in particular, “Hills Like White Elephants”, shows this type of writing. Hemingway’s stories make the reader follow along by not labeling the dialog of the characters. His stories are often short and require the reader to determine the motivations of the characters. These characteristics are what define Hemingway’s writing style as minimalistic.

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Hills Like White Elephant is a short story by Earnest Hemingway from 1927. The story is talking about a failing relationship between an American man and his girlfriend. This couple is at a critical point on their lives. At the bar in a train station in Spain, the girl, Jig, does not want to end up her pregnancy, but she is going to sacrifice the baby to satisfied him. Because he is critical of the exploitation of his girl’s feelings concerning the continuation of unbalanced relationship.

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The alcohol, the train and the scenery are all symbols of the difficulties the couple is currently facing. Ernest Hemingway does an excellent job at using symbols to help tell the story. He chose symbols that helped enhance the plot as well as the conflict which is the pregnancy. “Hills Like White Elephants” has many symbolic meanings that help explain how a couple struggles with communicating, the journey ahead and the options they have when making an important

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Neglecting to acknowledge something one finds unwanted in a relationship, can cause previous issues to remain unsolved, thus linger underneath the surface like an iceberg in the ocean, as it is shown in “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway. With the lack of descriptions in general, the description of the train station and the hills that are seen from there catches the attention of the reader. This creates the question; what importance can there be found in the metaphor white elephants and the setting? The first conversation between the American and the woman is when the woman gives an off-hand remark on some hills nearby.

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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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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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