Hemingway Review

YuQi He

January, 2015

Hills Like White Elephants

Hills like White Elephants is a famous short story which is called short-short story. Because it is under 1500 words. The whole short story doesn’t have description of people’s thinking and description of environment. Most part of Hills like White Elephants is about conversation between the American and the girl, Jig. Hemingway is very good at using their daily conversation to describe the mental outlook of different characters. Their conversation is about one topic --- abortion. But during this whole story, there does not have one word about it. Author describes the emotion of the American and Jig, as vividly as possible. Ernest Hemingway written this story in 1927. At that time, abortion is an acute topic between husband and wife, or between couples. In the story, if the American does not ask Jig for operation, I think that Jig and the American will become a nice couples. For man and wife, child always is the key that helps maintain marital peace. So I don’t agree with the man repeats his own reasons for letting the girl to have an abortion, to restore their unhampered life that the girl doesn’t want to be.

The story is happening in a train station where is in Spain, between Barcelona and Madrid. There doesn’t have an explicit time about the story happened. I think it should be the same time that this story published --- 1927. This story can be summed by two sentences. A very hot day, an American and a girl are waiting for train in a train station. The American try to persuade the girl to have a simple operation. The story doesn’t tell what exactly the operation is. But we can guess it is an abortion operation. In some cultures such as India and China, white elephants symbolize pregnancy. And the whole white elephants look like the pregnant women. There is one reason that people think about it is abortion. And most readers agree with it.

In the first paragraph of the story, Hemingway uses a very sheer...