Understanding Hills Like White Elephants
A Quick How to for Understanding an Ernest Hemingway Classic
Dec 13, 2008
Ernest Hemingway often wrote stories using the allegory and had a desire to offer his readers a story with a deeper meaning. Below is an explanation of an earlier Hemingway short story.
Summary of “Hills Like White Elephants”
“Hills Like White Elephants” takes place at a train station in Spain, and is the focus of a conversation between an American man, and a presumably younger girl, while waiting for a train. They seem to travel regularly, always trying new drinks, new experiences, and living life to its fullest. Still, they seem to embody considerable emptiness and unhappiness. The conversation is seen through the eyes of a bartender who serves them their drinks. This is a highly literary story that possesses a much deeper meaning that can be uncovered when identifying important symbolism and cues given by the author.
Themes in “Hills Like White Elephants
A reader can determine that the girl might be considerably younger than the man when she says that her drink, “tastes like licorice,” and kicks up a fuss about how they only ever travel to different places and try new drinks. Essentially, it notes a tone of immaturity, and sets the stage for taboo in their relationship.
Literary scholars tend to agree that the major theme in this story surrounds abortion. While the speaker never comes out and says that the girl is having an abortion, the story contains considerable evidence that points to this. The man arguing, “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” and that it is “just to let the air in” would imply that an abortion is the procedure in question, and the girl seems apprehensive about it. The significance of this theme is partly due to the time in which the story is set. Hemingway published the story in the 1920s when the topic of abortion was extremely taboo (to a much greater extent than it is today).
Symbolism in “Hills Like White Elephants”
In the story’s opening paragraph, the narrator describes the hills across the valley of the Ebro (a River in Northern Spain) as being “long and white”. After, the narrator notes how barren and dry the land is at the train station. These two symbols are in stark contrast to each other and for good reason. The clouds, and the lush greenery, seem to represent fertility, which point to the girl’s pregnancy. The dry barrenness seems to be symbolic of either infertility or plain sterility. Again, this points to the theme of abortion in “Hills Like White Elephants,” because first, the reader is introduced to setting that it lush, rich and fertile, only to be dashed by barrenness and infertility.
For other articles on Hemingway's work, you might try this article by Janet Kay Blaylock.
Bibliography
Hemingway, Ernest “Hills Like White Elephants”, The Norton Introduction to Literature 8th ed. Ed. Beaty, Jerome, W.W. Norton & Co. New York pg 75-78.
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