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Analysis of "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway

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Published: Mar 1, 2019

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In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants," a couple engages in a cryptic conversation at a train station, addressing the topic of abortion without explicitly mentioning it. The man is pushing for an abortion, while the woman, known as Jig, leans towards keeping the baby.

The story's subtext reveals that they are discussing an abortion, with the man insisting it's a common "operation." He desires to maintain the status quo in their relationship, which suggests that a baby would disrupt their current dynamic.

Jig's behavior throughout the story reflects her growing frustration with the man. She belittles him early on when discussing white elephants, implying he lacks depth. Jig's sarcasm and condescension highlight her disdain for the man's narrow-mindedness. She recognizes that he avoids dealing with unwanted things, much like their unborn child.

As the story unfolds, Jig's attitude becomes more assertive. She becomes exasperated by the man's insincere statements and attempts to silence him. This shift suggests that she has made her decision.

The story's conclusion, with the man going to the bar and Jig smiling, implies that the abortion has occurred in her mind, and she knows what she must do. The relationship is terminated, and she seems resolved to move forward with her choice.

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A Summary and Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Hills Like White Elephants’ (1927) is one of Ernest Hemingway’s best-known and most critically acclaimed short stories. In just five pages, Hemingway uses his trademark style – plain dialogue and description offered in short, clipped sentences – to expose an unspoken subject that a man and a young woman are discussing.

You can read ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of the story.

Plot summary

A man (an American expatriate) and a young girl (or ‘girl’) are drinking in the bar of a railway station in Spain, while waiting for their train. As it’s hot, they order some beers to drink, and then try an aniseed drink. The girl looks at the line of hills in the valley of the Ebro and remarks that they look like white elephants.

Her male companion, with whom we deduce she is in some sort of relationship, says he has never seen a white elephant and then gets defensive and annoyed when she remarks that he wouldn’t have, presumably because they’re so rare.

Their small talk then takes in the curtains of the bar, but gradually their conversation turns to an ‘operation’ (of sorts) which the man is trying to persuade the girl to undertake.

This procedure, which is referred to as ‘it’ throughout the story, is almost certainly an abortion, the girl having fallen pregnant by the man. However, it becomes clear that he wishes her to get rid of the baby, although she remains undecided. Eventually, growing tired of the man’s attempts to sway her, she demands that he stop talking.

They hear that their train is arriving, but when the man goes outside there is no sign of it. When he goes back inside and asks the girl how she is feeling, she replies curtly that she’s ‘fine’.

The title of Hemingway’s story, ‘Hills Like White Elephants’, is fitting for a number of reasons. First and perhaps most obviously, the title of the story denotes not the main and most pressing topic of the two main characters’ conversation – the unspoken ‘it’, the girl’s ‘operation’, which the man is trying to encourage her to have – but one aspect of their small talk as they skirt around that topic.

The girl’s comment about the Spanish hills looking like white elephants is mere filler, an example of ‘treading water’ as she and her male companion drink enough alcohol to make broaching the dread topic of their conversation – without actually directly mentioning it – palatable or even possible.

‘White elephants’ itself has two potential meanings here. There is a rare albino elephant known as the white elephant, whose presence at the royal court, in countries like Burma and Thailand, was considered a sign that the monarch reigned justly, and that the kingdom would be blessed with peace and prosperity.

But the second meaning is implied in Hemingway’s story. A ‘white elephant’ is a Western cultural term describing a possession which its owner cannot dispose of. The maintenance cost of such a possession is out of proportion to its usefulness or desirability.

Given the (implied) topic of the man and girl’s conversation – the girl’s reluctant decision to abort the baby she has conceived by the man – this meaning of ‘white elephant’ comes into view with a tragic force. The (unwanted) baby the girl has conceived with the man is like the proverbial white elephant, something that would cost a great deal for her to keep and maintain.

But by the same token, she finds it hard to ‘get rid of’ her white elephant, presumably because of the finality of such an act, though it is also implied that she worries over the safety of the procedure. (We should remember that medical procedures in 1927 were often not as relatively clean or as advanced as they now are.)

So the very title of Hemingway’s short story, ‘Hills Like White Elephants’, subtly and obliquely references the very thing which the two of them cannot bring themselves to mention or name openly: the title, then, both reveals and conceals the real subject of the story.

‘Hills Like White Elephants’ contains many of the most representative elements of Hemingway’s fiction: the spare style, the plain and direct dialogue, and the Spanish landscape which he often wrote about. And yet all three of these things can be said to work against, or be in tension with, the story’s subject-matter.

The spare style exposes the uncomfortable nature of the couple’s relationship (despite his repeated exhortations that she shouldn’t go through with ‘it’ unless she wants to, he is clearly trying to persuade her to have the abortion for his sake); the directness of the dialogue masks the failure of the two characters to have a frank conversation about ‘it’; and the Spanish landscape is not mere backdrop but a detail that is brought into the story only because the girl is finding it hard to address the momentous subject she knows she must eventually face.

And that leads us to wonder whether there might not be another meaning playing around that title, ‘Hills Like White Elephants’: the so-called ‘elephant in the room’, the idiom (prominent in the United States by the early twentieth century) denoting a conspicuous and important issue which nobody wants to discuss.

One also wonders whether, somewhere in his prodigious mind, Hemingway was recalling Mark Twain’s 1882 detective story, ‘ The Stolen White Elephant ’, in which the elephant turns out to have been in the original spot all along. Like the proverbial elephant in the room, Hemingway’s ‘hills like white elephants’ are there, prominent and immovable, and even getting on a train is not going to allow one to escape their true meaning.

Because so much of the characters’ dialogue works by subtext and through small talk, we are encouraged to deduce the nature of their relationship through observing how they interact, even more than by paying attention to what they talk about.

The man’s response to the girl’s dismissive comment that he wouldn’t have ever seen an actual white elephant is a case in point, since it suggests a controlling aspect to his personality, whereby an offhand and largely meaningless remark is taken up by him and responded to in a manner that is as defensive as it is petty.

Similarly, it is worth pointing out that the girl goes back on her initial statement that the hills resemble white elephants, saying shortly after this that the hills don’t actually look that much like white elephants after all, and only remind her of their colour. (This is interesting because many so-called white elephants are ‘white’ only in name: many of them are actually grey or pinkish in colour.)

This similarly reflects her vacillation over ‘it’, the termination of her pregnancy which she is evidently reluctant to undertake. As so often in a Hemingway story, how he reveals things through characters’ dialogue is as significant – and perhaps in this case even more so – than what is (not) being said.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants

Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 25, 2021

The frequently anthologized Hills Like White Elephants  first printed in transition magazine in 1927 is often read and taught as a perfect illustration of Ernest Hemingway’s minimalist, self-proclaimed “iceberg” style of writing: In much of Hemingway’s fiction what is said in the story often is less important than what has not been said. Like the iceberg—only one-eighth of which is visible above the surface—Hemingway’s fiction is much richer than its spare language suggests. Hemingway has great faith in his readers and leaves them to discern what is truly happening from the scant facts he presents on the surface of his story. On a superficial level, Hills is merely about a man, a woman, and an “awfully simple operation” (275). What the narrator never actually tells the reader, however, is that “awfully simple operation” is an abortion, a taboo subject in 1925. Underneath the surface of this story are THEMEs and motifs that are characteristic of many of Hemingway’s other works as well. As do many of those works, “Hills” tells the story of an American abroad and depicts the strained relationships between men and women that clearly intrigued the author. As with many of the relationships Hemingway portrays, this man and woman apparently have nothing in common but sex and the heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Ernest Hemingway/Goodreads

Hills  is also a story of avoidance. Instead of having a significant, rational conversation about the issue at hand, the “girl,” Jig, says only that the hills of Spain look like white elephants. “Wasn’t that clever?” she asks the unnamed man (274). This rather inconsiderate male companion agrees, but he actually wants to talk about the procedure. Jig would rather not discuss it. When he pressures her, she replies, “Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.” Jig is the typical Hemingway female, selfless and sacrificial. She is prepared to have the abortion, but the reader is left with the distinct impression that any previous magic between the couple is gone. “It isn’t ours anymore,” Jig tells the American (276). The unfortunate accident of pregnancy has ruined the relationship; it will never be the same. Hemingway explores many of the same themes in his important war novel A Farewell to Arms and in The Sun Also Rises.

Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s Novels

BIBLIOGRAPHY Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.” 1927. Reprinted in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition. New York: Scribner, 1987. Johnston, Kenneth. “ ‘Hills Like White Elephants’: Lean, Vintage Hemingway.” Studies in American Fiction (1982). Renner, Stanley. “Moving to the Girl’s Side of Hills.” The Hemingway Review (1995).

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"Hills Like White Elephants" By Ernest Hemingway

Editorial statements.

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact [email protected].

Original spelling and capitalization is retained.

Hyphenation is retained.

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Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section.

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The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went on to Madrid.

“What should we drink?” the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.

“It’s pretty hot,” the man said.

“Let’s drink beer.”

“Dos cervezas,” the man said into the curtain.

“Big ones?” a woman asked from the doorway.

“Yes. Two big ones.”

The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

“They look like white elephants,” she said.

“I’ve never seen one,” the man drank his beer.

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

“I might have,” the man said. “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.”

The girl looked at the bead curtain. “They’ve painted something on it,” she said. “What does it say?”

“Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.”

“Could we try it?”

The man called “Listen” through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.

“Four reales.”

“We want two Anis del Toro.”

“With water?”

“Do you want it with water?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “Is it good with water?”

“It’s all right.”

“You want them with water?” asked the woman.

“Yes, with water.”

“It tastes like licorice,” the girl said and put the glass down.

“That’s the way with everything.”

“Yes,” said the girl. “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.”

“Oh, cut it out.”

“You started it,” the girl said. “I was being amused. I was having a fine time.”

“Well, let’s try and have a fine time.”

“All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?”

“That was bright.”

“I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks?”

“I guess so.”

The girl looked across at the hills.

“They’re lovely hills,” she said. “They don’t really 11 look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.”

“Should we have another drink?”

“All right.”

The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.

“The beer’s nice and cool,” the man said.

“It’s lovely,” the girl said.

“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.

“I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.”

The girl did not say anything.

“I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.”

“Then what will we do afterward?”

“We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before.”

“What makes you think so?”

“That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.”

The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.

“And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.”

“I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it.”

“So have I,” said the girl. “And afterward they were all so happy.”

“Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”

“And you really want to?”

“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.”

“And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”

“I love you now. You know I love you.”

“I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?”

“I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.”

“If I do it you won’t ever worry?”

“I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”

“Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t care about me.”

“Well, I care about you.”

“Oh, yes. But I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine.”

“I don’t want you to do it if you feel that way.”

The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.

“And we could have all this,” she said. “And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.”

“What did you say?”

“I said we could have everything.”

“We can have everything.”

“No, we can’t.”

“We can have the whole world.”

“We can go everywhere.”

“No, we can’t. It isn’t ours any more.”

“It’s ours.”

“No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back.”

“But they haven’t taken it away.”

“We’ll wait and see.”

“Come on back in the shade,” he said. “You mustn’t feel that way.”

“I don’t feel any way,” the girl said. “I just know things.”

“I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do——”

“Nor that isn’t good for me,” she said. “I know. Could we have another beer?”

“All right. But you’ve got to realize——”

“I realize,” the girl said. “Can’t we maybe stop talking?”

They sat down at the table and the girl looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table.

“You’ve got to realize,” he said, “that I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to. I’m perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you.”

“Doesn’t it mean anything to you? We could get along.”

“Of course it does. But I don’t want anybody but you. I don’t want any one else. And I know it’s perfectly simple.”

“Yes, you know it’s perfectly simple.”

“It’s all right for you to say that, but I do know it.”

“Would you do something for me now?”

“I’d do anything for you.”

“Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?”

He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of the station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights.

“But I don’t want you to,” he said, “I don’t care anything about it.”

“I’ll scream,” the girl said.

The woman came out through the curtains with two glasses of beer and put them down on the damp felt pads. “The train comes in five minutes,” she said.

“What did she say?” asked the girl.

“That the train is coming in five minutes.”

The girl smiled brightly at the woman, to thank her.

“I’d better take the bags over to the other side of the station,” the man said. She smiled at him.

“All right. Then come back and we’ll finish the beer.”

He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station to the other tracks. He looked up the tracks but could not see the train. Coming back, he walked through the barroom, where people waiting for the train were drinking. He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train. He went out through the bead curtain. She was sitting at the table and smiled at him.

“Do you feel better?” he asked.

“I feel fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”

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Hills Like White Elephants

Ernest hemingway, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

The Limits of Language

As in most of his fiction, Hemingway is interested in where language breaks down between individuals and how what is unsaid or what is unspeakable can define and divide individuals. At a purely stylistic level, Hemingway exposes the inadequacy of language through his use of unnamed characters and minimalist, stripped down sentences. Without using details to describe how “ the man ” or “ the girl ” look or sound, Hemingway instead chooses to focus…

Significantly, this story unfolds as the man and the girl wait at a station for a train to Madrid. The heat is oppressive and the two are forced to wait, drinking away the afternoon till the train arrives. This sense of agonizing waiting permeates the story from the setting itself—a hot, dry river valley at a literal crossroads—to the crucial decision the couple is trying to make: whether or not to have an abortion.

Freedom vs Family

As the story makes clear from the beginning, both the man and the girl are accustomed to a free, uncommitted lifestyle. When the man looks at their combined luggage, it is covered with “labels…from all the hotels where they had spent nights.” The two of them have spent a long time traveling together, going wherever they wanted without restriction. The decision to carry through with the girl’s pregnancy and create a family would completely alter…

Men, Women, and Relationships

At the heart of “Hills Like White Elephants” is Hemingway’s examination of the man and girl ’s deeply flawed relationship, a relationship that champions “freedom” at the cost of honesty, respect, and commitment. In this sense, the man and girl represent stereotypes of male and female roles: the male as active and the female as passive. In this gender framework, the man makes the decisions and the female complies. However, as the story illustrates, such…

Landscape Symbolism in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” Essay

Authors frequently use elements of nature in their works to underline conflicts, illustrate an idea, reflect the feelings of characters or amplify the drama. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Swift, Maugham, and many others often intertwine individuals with surroundings. In his short story, “Hills Like White Elephants,” Hemingway also uses landscape features in a meaningful way. The author’s depiction of Ebro valley in this literary work is symbolic of a choice to have a child, and the dry, treeless land on the opposite side is representative of the life after abortion.

Jig’s indecision about birthgiving is reflected through the change in the metaphorical perception of the valley and hills. Through the power of the character’s observation and imagination, these natural sights become a symbol of life, something that is pleasant and full of energy and force as opposed to a flat country that is “brown and dry” (Hemingway 475) Yet, in some instances, brief moments of doubt about the decision to have a child, she stops recognizing elephants in hills and fails to believe that she could reside among those lively green spaces.

Consequently, hills cease being a symbol of life and become lifeless terrain elements again that serve solely as beautiful natural decor. This change in the role of a natural element is representative of a difficult choice of whether to give birth. The disbelief in the reality of the valley echoes the same fear. There are also other landscape features that are connected with this dilemma.

The barren land on the other side of the railroad is juxtaposed to the greenery and hills in the aspect of harmonious and loving family relationship versus abortion and relationship stalemate. If river banks represent the positive outcomes of a maternity decision, then that which is beyond their eyesight are the notions they dread. Jig, looking at the valley, says, “We could have all this,” which seems to be life, pleasure, love, and harmony (Hemingway 477).

She changes her mind again and contradicts this remark. The positive symbolic elements that the valley and hills represent will lose their relevance if she decides against having a child. Thus, the landscape on which nothing can grow, such as the wasteland on the other side of the railroad, represents abortion. The elements of this barren terrain vividly illustrate the outcomes of it. The two types of scenery are also intricately connected to symbols in other ways.

The valley, as opposed to flat, treeless plains, can be symbols of happiness and infertility, respectively, that represent a family and the end of the relationship. The valley is the dream of a happy life that abortion will make impossible. Jig understands that once the abortion is made and the life is taken, “you never get it back,” which might mean that she may lose the potential to give birth again (Hemingway 477). Nature illustrates this decision when she looks at the barren side of the landscape. It appears that nature as a whole, including hills and dry land, forms a strong connection to the protagonists’ dilemma.

In conclusion, the valley and treeless wasteland are symbolic of the consequences of the protagonists’ life choices. Rich with vegetation, Ebro valley represents new life which becomes evident from Jig’s desire to animate the hills and concentrate on observing the beauty of trees and rivers. On the other hand, the dry land is the symbol of death and infertility which is seen through the dialogue with the American.

Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills like White Elephants.” The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction , edited by Ann Charters, 6th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003, pp. 475-478.

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IvyPanda. (2023, November 2). Landscape Symbolism in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants". https://ivypanda.com/essays/landscape-symbolism-in-hemingways-hills-like-white-elephants/

"Landscape Symbolism in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"." IvyPanda , 2 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/landscape-symbolism-in-hemingways-hills-like-white-elephants/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Landscape Symbolism in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"'. 2 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Landscape Symbolism in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"." November 2, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/landscape-symbolism-in-hemingways-hills-like-white-elephants/.

1. IvyPanda . "Landscape Symbolism in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"." November 2, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/landscape-symbolism-in-hemingways-hills-like-white-elephants/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Landscape Symbolism in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"." November 2, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/landscape-symbolism-in-hemingways-hills-like-white-elephants/.

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Hills Like White Elephants Title Meaning

This essay will analyze the title of Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” exploring its metaphorical significance to the story’s theme of communication breakdown and the complexities of human relationships. At PapersOwl, you’ll also come across free essay samples that pertain to Hills Like White Elephants.

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“Hills Like White Elephants,” written by Ernest Hemingway in 1927, is a short story that describes a seemingly casual, but slightly tense, conversation between a couple at a train station in the Ebro Valley in Spain. These two characters are the only two introduced in the story (besides a bartender), and not by name – only “the American” (“the man”) and “the girl.” The girl is later nicknamed “Jig” by the man (2). Throughout the story, the two are seated outside the train station, in the heat, drinking beers.

The girl makes a comment that the nearby hills look like white elephants, to which the American responds dismissively that he has never seen a white elephant. The two continue on with their conversation about drinks and their life of travelling together, and then the girl takes back her previous statement about the looks of the hills. The conversation then turns to an unnamed operation that the girl is about to have, the American simply stating that “it’s just to let the air in” (2). The story closes with Jig telling the man that she “feels fine” and leaves readers wondering what her decision will ultimately be about the unnamed operation and how the relationship between the two characters will still be together in the end (4).

The conversation has a deeper meaning than the literal words that the characters are saying. It can be inferred as the as the story progresses that the operation that Jig is supposed to be going to have is an abortion. It seems like the girl is unsure about having the procedure at all, while the man is not. The man states: “it’s not really an operation at all” (2). Through symbolism, setting, and tone, Hemingway is able to portray the tension between the couple because of the uncertain abortion. Hemingway raises an important question about where the relationship is headed. The couple’s relationship seems to stand at a crossroads of sorts due to the fact that Jig and the American are not on the same page about the baby or settling down.

Hemingway uses symbolism of “white elephants” to represent a few different ideas. Jig says that the nearby hills look like white elephants, seemingly a random comment. However, when she uses the term, the idea of the white elephants is pure and innocent, like the child. In the case of a white elephant party, though, the meaning of this phrase is typically to gift something that is of little importance and unwanted. This representation could be the man’s view of the child. The choice to use elephants is also conscious by Hemingway in that it can relate to the phrase “the elephant in the room,” which symbolizes that the pregnancy is kind of an awkward topic of discussion standing in the way of their relationship.

Hemingway uses the setting to represent the relationship between the American and the girl. It is clear through their conversation alluding to the operation that they are not exactly on the same page, and the setting supports that. Jig and the man are at a train station in the middle of the desert valley, between the hills. The hills “were white in the sun” and, in contrast, “the country was brown and dry” (1). This contrast symbolizes the possibilities of the relationship’s future. The brown desert may represent the death of the child and the relationship while, the white hills represent the life of the baby and success of the relationship. The train station in this story but a point “between two lines of rails in the sun” – two possibilities (1). This further enforces the question of where the relationship is headed. The American makes it clear that he wants to keep doing things the way they have been, saying “we’ll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before” (2). However, Jig does not seem to want that. Earlier on she says, somewhat sarcastically, “that’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?” implying that she is not necessarily happy with their lifestyle and wants to settle down (2).

The tone of this conversation between these two is clear through the manipulative language used by the man and the response Jig has to the conversation. The serious and tense tone of the conversation contributes further to the overall question of the relationship and its future success. The conversation topic is clearly of seriousness, and the fact that the characters are drinking in the shade shows that they are trying to ease the tension of their situation. There is small talk at first, and awkward silences, and then finally the man tells Jig that he thinks the baby “is the only thing that’s made [them] unhappy” (2). Jig asks the man if he would “please stop talking” (3). The fact that they cannot more easily communicate and work through the tension is further evidence that there are problems within their relationship. As the story comes to an end, there is the sense that Jig has shut down to having a conversation about the operation, just stating she “feels fine” (4). This indicates that she does not want to talk anymore.

Through these elements of symbolism, setting, and tone, it is easy for Hemingway’s audience to see that there are problems within the relationship between Jig and the American. This story calls into question whether or not the American and Jig will stay together as a couple, regardless of if the abortion takes place or not. David Wyche from North Carolina State University expresses a common view, stating that “critics who foresee abortion, and those who do not, tend to agree that Jig and the American will not long remain a couple” (57). Jig clearly wants to settle down and is considering having the baby, while the American seems to like the nomadic way of life and would like it to continue in that way. A key piece of evidence for this theme of questioning the relationship within the story comes when Jig asks, “then what will we do afterwards?” (2). Wyche is very sure: “whatever the outcome of the negotiations we have witnessed, the relationship is terminated, and the allegorical abortion has taken place not in an operating room,” but between Jig and the American (63).

Works Cited

• Hemingway, Ernest. Hills Like White Elephants. www.gvsd.org/cms/lib/PA01001045/Centricity/ Domain/765/HillsPDFText.pdf.
• Wyche, David. “”Letting the Air into a Relationship: Metaphorical Abortion in ‘Hills Like White Elephants’.”” The Hemingway Review, vol. 22, no. 1, 2002, pp. 56-71. ProQuest, https://login.proxy055.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/218944415?accountid=10616.”

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Hills Like White Elephants Title Meaning. (2021, May 10). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/hills-like-white-elephants-title-meaning/

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PapersOwl.com. (2021). Hills Like White Elephants Title Meaning . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/hills-like-white-elephants-title-meaning/ [Accessed: 1 May. 2024]

"Hills Like White Elephants Title Meaning." PapersOwl.com, May 10, 2021. Accessed May 1, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/hills-like-white-elephants-title-meaning/

"Hills Like White Elephants Title Meaning," PapersOwl.com , 10-May-2021. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/hills-like-white-elephants-title-meaning/. [Accessed: 1-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2021). Hills Like White Elephants Title Meaning . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/hills-like-white-elephants-title-meaning/ [Accessed: 1-May-2024]

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