In-Depth: Hills Like White Elephants

First impressions are not always right. I thought that the story was about animals and wildlife because of the title, but I was so wrong. The first few times I read the story, I did not understand what it was about. I had to look it up to find out. At first, I thought it was an excerpt of a scene in the movie Pulp Fiction but then I noticed huge differences, like in the setting and the ending. The ending that I have expected as I was reading through the first page, and this is partly because the story reminded me of a scene in Pulp Fiction, is that the characters will rob the place but then after I have read the second page, I knew that it wasn’t going to end that way. Another conclusion that I have thought of before finishing the story is that they we’re criminals running from the cops because it was mentioned that their bags had a lot of tags on it because of their frequent travels but I think after I have read a few more lines that yet again I was wrong. But I did get one guess right, and that was, whatever the guy wants the girl to do was getting her very emotional and was very hard for her to do because the decision that she would make, if ever she will push through whatever they will do or even if she makes no decision at all, is life changing.

After reading the take of other people on the story, I have learned that the story is about abortion. The guy was convincing the girl to push through the operation. From there, it was obvious that the girl was the one carrying more emotional baggage than the guy because whatever decision she’ll make, she will lose someone. If she chooses not abort the baby, her lover will leave her and if she chooses to go through it, she’ll loose her baby.

As I was reading through the story, I got hints that the girl was having second thoughts about the whole thing based on the content of what she’s saying, but the guy insists that she do it, and constantly telling her that it will all be better once it was over with which...