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Symbolism Used in “Hills like White Elephants”
Hills like white elephants symbolism
Symbolism in hills like white elephants
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All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy, is set in Texas right outside of the Mexico border. The book opens with John Grady, a sixteen year old boy, attending his grandfather’s funeral. John Grady has grown up on his grandfather’s ranch, and now that he has died the mother is going to sell the unprofitable ranch. John’s parents are separated at this time, his mother longs for a better life off of the ranch while his father is a professional gambler. His father seems to have lung cancer, but this is not directly stated.
So he sketched out a scene titled "Hills Like White Elephants." Throughout the story, the American behaves according to Hemingway’s rigid conception of masculinity. Hemingway portrays the American as a rugged man’s man—knowledgeable, worldly, and always in control of himself and the situation at hand. Even when vexed or confused, he maintains his cool and feigns indifference, such as when he tells the girl he doesn’t care whether she has the operation. He initially avoids discussion of their problems, but when pressured, he tackles them head on by oversimplifying the operation and relentlessly pushing her to have it.
Besides the literal similarities meanings of the stories, both also have a symbolic meaning. Throughout “Hills like White Elephants” Jig have some moments where she expresses symbolic objects that influence her attitudes. Jig’s imagination is key for the story, for example in the beginning of the story she states, “They look like white elephants” (Hemingway 475). According to the dictionary, a white elephant is “a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of.” After this definition it is important to bring the response the American man about jig reference he says, “I’ve never seen one” to which Jig responses with, “No, you wouldn’t have” (Hemingway 475).
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.
One of the most important symbol in this story is the hill or the white elephant. When she said they look like white elephants. The readers can see how the white elephants represent her pregnancy and life .This symbolizes their lives or their relationship and the choices they must now made. The white elephant is something that is both rare and sacred, as it is also essentially useless.
By definition a “White Elephant” in literature is a possession which its owner cannot dispose of and whose cost is out of proportion to its usefulness. In the following short story, the situation that the couple is in can be described as a “White Elephant”. Throughout the story a couple, a Spanish woman and an American man, are sitting at a train station waiting for their train. While there, they decide to talk about the issue at hand, a pregnancy. Jig, the Spanish woman, is eager to keep the unborn child as the American man who is the father is not.
Hemmingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” takes place at a train station between two cities, accentuating the indecisiveness of the girl. While the station represents a physical crossroad, the girl is at a decisional crossroad. Fields of grain and trees sharply contrast the depiction of a dry, barren valley, both settings correlate with her decision. The story “Young Goodman Brown” symbolizes the journey away from faith.
The two main characters in the story are the “American Man” and the “Girl”. The author uses the number “two” ten times in this story. The continuous use of the number symbolizes the couple’s relationship. The man is attempting to convince the girl to get an abortion.
Meanwhile, Jig is prepared to go to great lengths to make this man happy, even if it means sacrificing not only her own happiness and morals, but her own child. The sheer amount of love Jig has for this man is made clear when she states “Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me” and later “But I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine” (Hemingway 337). All that matters to altruistic Jig, is the happiness of American man, and unfortunately that is all he cares about as
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.
If analyzed in a more generic view, the short story can be used to show how a male and female stereotypically understand a subject. The American speaks more literal and materialistic as Jig is seen to speak in a more figurative and abstract manner. Ernest Hemingway’s use of symbolism gives the reader a more visual effect to the conflict between the man and the girl as well as the idea of their inner thoughts. The white rounded hills, the beads on the curtain hanging from the bar’s doorframe, and the cool shade and blazing light all represent different aspects of the two choices that the American and the girl have to decide on, just like the railroad tracks on either side of the
They begin to not understand what it is that they both want to do. During that part of the conversation it is very clear that the American man wants the girl to have this operation, which is an abortion “’I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to’” (Hemingway p.402). The man clearly wants to do what is in his best interest and not the girl’s and the life forming inside of
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.
According to Smiley, “The dialogue contains the essence of the story's power; for to read Jig's and the American conversation is to recognize the powerless frustration of parallel interchanges” (2). The girl's character passes changes throughout the story. It appears that “Hemingway works out the story's conflict, which revolves around the development of his female character” (Renner 28). The girl gains power and frees herself from the following the American man. In the beginning of the story, the girl take the initiative to speak which leads to the discussion: “'what should we drink?'
“Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway: The Morality Within The Operation Ernest Hemingway created the iceberg theory, by which he expects the reader to know a great deal of information from the little he expresses. This style is evident in his short story, “Hills Like White Elephants,” because the information the reader must obtain is hidden underneath the surface. This writing style confuses the reader for the most part, but when the short story is given a chance, the reader connects to Hemingway’s use of a variety of essential elements to engage and understand the story. This connection formed is strengthened by the important combination of allusion and symbolism expressed within this great short story. Most of the short story focuses on the dialogue between a young couple of an American man and the girl, Jig, who remains nameless for most of the short story.
