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How Does Hemingway Create Tension In Hills Like White Elephant

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The Elephant in The Room Lack of communication can often be detrimental to a relationship, especially when a major life change is introduced. In Hemingway’s short story, “Hills Like White Elephants”, he portrays the issue through the two characters, the man and the girl’s, dialog and how he formats his writing. “Hills Like White Elephants” is a short story that takes place in Spain where a man and a girl wait at a train station. During their wait, the man and the girl partake of drinks, beer, and discuss an operation, presumably an abortion, that the man wants the girl to have. While abortion and having a child are two very serious topics, the man does not appear to be taking the situation sincerely, whereas the girl is more concerned. The man clearly does not want the girl to carry through the pregnancy, “we’ll be fine afterward, just like we were before” (Hemingway 361). The girl is silent at first and does …show more content…

After Hemingway sets up the scene for the short story in the beginning paragraph, he proceeds with statements from the characters that end with “the girl asked, the man said,” (Hemingway 359) and so on. After Hemingway’s initial introduction of the few characters, indication of who is speaking is very sparse throughout the rest of the story. This is because Hemingway wanted to transfer the couples lack of communication onto the reader. Also, Hemingway developed a short and simplistic dialog for the man and the girl. Most responses between the couple were only a few words to a sentence long, for instance, the girl made statements such as “all right” and “I guess so” (Hemingway 360), but would not elaborate much further on the matter. The format of “Hills Like White Elephants’ is choppy and lacking in detail, which serves a good purpose as far as getting Hemingway’s point

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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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Throughout their conversation, you can decipher a tone where the conversation sheds light on his feelings towards the procedure and her feelings. He says “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig. It’s not really an operation at all” (Hemingway 124), in an effort to persuade her to in fact have the abortion. She, on the other hand, seems silent at first, but then questions how their life will be better after this procedure. Her uncertainty shows in her responses, and in other findings “… the sensuous beauty of a love relation that is quickly deteriorating, now that she has become conscious of her lover’s selfishness” (Maynard 273).

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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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