Jig And The American In 'Hills Like White Elephants'

From reading “ Hills like White Elephants” there wasn 't a lot of explanation to the characters and what their conversation is about. Even without a lot of explanation there is a lot of hints, that help with interpreting what the story is about and who the characters are. The way that Jig and the American interact to each other as if they are a couple as they talk around about Jig having an operation to either abort a child . Many articles have said that Jig and the American are a couple. From reading the story it is very easy to see why they are seen as a couple. The way that they talk to each other you can see that they are very close to each other. The American is kind of like the stereotypical man. he has few words, he always has an answer, …show more content…
When the American and Jig were vaguely talking about the operation the American said something very interesting. It was on page 201 the American says “ That 's the only thing that bothers us. It 's the only thing that 's made us unhappy.” This sentence helps with Maynard talking about why it could be that they are dancing around talking about aborting a baby when he says “When the man callously tells the girl that her pregnancy is the only thing which has made them unhappy,” The American could be just very selfish and only think about what would make him happy. By saying that it makes them both unhappy he is trying to make Jig see the situation the way that he does. That in order to once again be happy like they were they needed to get rid of the …show more content…
After all she asked about a drink and then said if they should try it. It was once she saw the hills across the valley of Ebro that she started to have second thoughts. It 's kind of like the saying “ It 's always greener on the other side.” She is starting to question if aborting the baby really will make her and the American happy again. That maybe keeping the baby will actually do that. It is once she tries to talk to the American about this he tries to convince her that it 's the right thing to do in order to be happy. The women starts to shut down and close up when the American doesn 't understand what she is trying to say. This goes well with the idea that they are speaking English but they just don 't understand each other. The reason that they are not able to truly talk is because they speak a different language. In Smiley article she said “ The male 's speaker is precise and to the point.” and “ The female 's speaker language is profoundly imprecise.”(2) Knowing this it makes it easy why that the American wasn 't able to really understand what Jig was trying to tell him. It also didn 't help that when he was trying to understand she just shut down and stopped talking