From 1973 through 2011, 53 million legal abortions occurred in the United States. “Hills Like White Elephants” is a short story about a man and woman with an unwanted pregnancy.
Abortion is a major concern in the US and Hemingway gives us an in depth, 3rd person view into it. He also provides us with the internal effects on thousands of couples everyday. The story starts out with a man and woman waiting for a train at a station in the desert and they order beers as they wait. We don’t know about the pregnancy until the man mentions an “awfully simple operation.” At this point we know that the man is referring to an abortion and wants the woman to have it. The man keeps saying that if she doesn’t want to get the operation then she doesn’t have too. …show more content…
Throughout the story there is symbolism all over the story. Within the first couple of paragraphs we get our first true symbol. It’s more of an abstract symbol rather a concrete one. “The man called through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.” The curtain provides us with the division between the American man and the woman. The woman is Spanish and the man American. The man is likely on vacation and just met this woman some weeks ago. They are from different worlds but are together to deal with the situation they have. The curtain can also provides us with the difference between the worlds that they came from. Another big symbol comes from the main characters. The man and woman aren’t given actual names. They are just referred to by “man” and “woman”. This was on purpose. This story had zero plot it was just a conversation between a man and a woman. Nothing more. This story didn’t give us much details about the characters just the man is American. We don’t know a lot about them: no backstories, no names and no details about their relationship. We just fill the voids with our own ideas and try to make sense of a story that doesn’t make a whole lot of
Abortion is a major concern in the US and Hemingway gives us an in depth, 3rd person view into it. He also provides us with the internal effects on thousands of couples everyday. The story starts out with a man and woman waiting for a train at a station in the desert and they order beers as they wait. We don’t know about the pregnancy until the man mentions an “awfully simple operation.” At this point we know that the man is referring to an abortion and wants the woman to have it. The man keeps saying that if she doesn’t want to get the operation then she doesn’t have too. …show more content…
Throughout the story there is symbolism all over the story. Within the first couple of paragraphs we get our first true symbol. It’s more of an abstract symbol rather a concrete one. “The man called through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.” The curtain provides us with the division between the American man and the woman. The woman is Spanish and the man American. The man is likely on vacation and just met this woman some weeks ago. They are from different worlds but are together to deal with the situation they have. The curtain can also provides us with the difference between the worlds that they came from. Another big symbol comes from the main characters. The man and woman aren’t given actual names. They are just referred to by “man” and “woman”. This was on purpose. This story had zero plot it was just a conversation between a man and a woman. Nothing more. This story didn’t give us much details about the characters just the man is American. We don’t know a lot about them: no backstories, no names and no details about their relationship. We just fill the voids with our own ideas and try to make sense of a story that doesn’t make a whole lot of