Hills Like White Elephants

Improved Essays
The story “Hills like White elephant, ’” by Ernest Hemingway is about a couple deciding whether or not to have an abortion. The abortion is never mentioned, but it is implied. The story is short and starts with a woman named Jig. The other character is a man to represent man in America. The Relationship between the two is awkward and not definitive. The story represents a relationship. she is not sure whether to keep the child or have the abortion. And the man wants her to have the abortion. They both want to travel place to place, but he doesn’t want the responsibilities. Jig on the other side wants to have the child and still travel.

The book “Hills like white elephants is about a conversation between a pregnant woman’s name Jig and an American man. The funny thing is that neither of them actually speaks to each other. This is what keeps the reader intrigued. At first, the story is confusing, but as you read you notice that was created for that exact purpose.
…show more content…
The man replies “I’ve never seen one”. He immediately dismisses her of having a normal conversation. He does not agree with having a child. He believes that it will just get in the way of him loving and not allow them to have any freedom. The man believes that having a child will stop him from traveling and with Jig and will come with a lot of responsibilities and he won’t have time to do what he wants, for example, drinking, going bar to bar and traveling place to

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills like White Elephants” He talks about two people, a couple who are in an argument and are passing back and forth the control of the argument. The argument at hand is about the abortion the American wants Jig (the girl) to have. Jig is on the fence about the abortion while the American is pushing her to have the “simple operation” so that the relationship with go back to how it was before the pregnancy, while Jig is not exactly sure she wants the procedure she tries to say that they can be happy even with the baby at which point she tries to turn the tables on the American by being passive so that she would get the answer she wanted out him; the American then says that he wants her to do whatever it is that she wants to and he will…

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the short story “Hills like White Elephants,” the author Ernest Hemingway creates a very complex relationship between an American man and woman. The majority of the passage involves the two having a deep conversation about an abortion that seems rather confusing at first to the reader. The couple bickers back and forth with each other about a certain “operation” that the woman is supposed to be having. At the end of the story, the author has one last paragraph that describes the man walking away from his female companion and observing the other people waiting at the train station they are at. This scene displays a better understanding of the kind of relationship the man and woman have while expressing in dialogue what both of their thoughts are concerning the operation.…

    • 812 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Spain, women could rightfully receive an abortion if she was raped, or if the pregnancy caused severe mental or physical health issues to either mother or child. Consequently, abortion was not permitted for social or economic reasons and any women who pursued an abortion that was not performed in a health care establishment would be penalized (United Nations 101). Given that in “Hills like White Elephants” the word abortion is not uttered only implied, one could infer that the abortion the young women and the American man are contemplating is not legal. Published in 1927, the short story captures the role of women and general view of abortion in Spain. While we do not know the culture of the girl in the story, we do know that she is currently situated in Spain.…

    • 1344 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The dialogue functions significantly to introduce the conflicts and advances the action through the climax and resolution in “Hills Like White Elephants”; however, Hemingway does not directly tell what the characters want but show their stakes through the subtexts. The man says to Jig that “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig… It’s not really an operation at all”; the man tries to convince Jig to abort by impressing an abortion is not risky as Jig thinks (Hemingway 591). However, Jig does not say anything after the man brings the topic of abortion; her silence implies that she does not want to talk about it. However, the man keeps talking about the abortion because he cannot postpone their issue. If she is too late to decide, she has…

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    After reading Hills Like White Elephants to be honest I was greatly confused. Looking up literary commentary I found a wide stretch of articles from abortion to gender arguments. To me while there is plenty of evidence for both and pages of arguments to draw from I cannot do it. Reading over the paper again three or four times I have come to a sad conclusion.…

    • 1844 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The two stories I chose in this comparison are “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In both stories the female characters are pressured to listen to their significant other, triggering the end of their relationship by the end of the stories. In “Hills Like White Elephants”, the American man pretends to care for her (Jig) and is trying to manipulate her into having an abortion by sweet talking her, but Jig is still on the fence about it. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” however lets her significant other make the decisions for her like forbidding her from doing any kind of activities like writing, all because she is suffering from a nervous disorder. In the following paragraphs,…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ernest Hemingway’s story “Hills Like White Elephants” is a perfectly simple story on the outside, but when you delve into the depths you uncover hidden meanings, symbols, and a tense situation. As Alex Link, a student from York University, explained, from an onlookers’ point of view there is very little that occurs between the two protagonists. Link describes the encounter as: “a couple has drinks at a train station in Spain and argues about something rather vague” (Link 66). To the untrained eye, this is exactly what happens. But when you take a closer look, we see a couple with a strained relationship discussing a complicated procedure and the outcome of their relationship in the long run.…

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ernest Hemingway’s short story, ''Hills like White Elephants'', is about a couple traveling throughout Spain. The couple known as Jig, the woman and The American man, are set in a train station waiting upon the next train to Madrid. The story then transitions settings as they enter a bar where they drink beer and small talk while they wait. In this story, there is a form of communication being utilized by the couple, virtually through the use of codes, endeavoring not to speak on a certain subject. They continue this ongoing discussion about some sort of operation, as a reader discovers by analyzing the story, this operation is an abortion.…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “Hills Like White Elephants”, the American is pressuring Jig to have the abortion. He keeps mentioning how awfully simple the operation is, how they will be fine after, and how much he loves her. The American is not considering Jig’s feelings and wants; he is only worrying about maintaining his old lifestyle. She wants to consider a new lifestyle; saying their old life style is to “look at things and try new drinks (Pg.2).” This is pressuring Jig to have the abortion; it does not give Jig much of a chance to express her own thoughts and feelings about the abortion.…

    • 962 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The American is selfish and clearly wants nothing to do with a baby in his near future when he says “I only want you.” Jig appears to consider the pregnancy more seriously “And once they take it away, you never get it back” by speaking with hints that the man always misses. “In place of a concrete object of desire, Jig contemplates only the prospect of having everything—that is presumably, continuing to live the life they have led before in perpetuity. Both have Europe dangled before them, only to have it snatched away by time’s progress” (Grant 270). They are always talking but never fully communicating because they dance around the subject and neither seem to understand each others point of…

    • 994 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    This is apparent throughout Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants.” Hemingways uses the social hardship of deciding to abort a child to prove several different things. First, the reader witnesses how the fear of abortion forever alters the life of Jig. Next, one will notice how the abortion puts Jig’s decision making skills to the ultimate test. The most important thing that Hemingway shows throughout the story is that the abortion has both a positive and negative affect on the society.…

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As a writer of the Lost Generation, Ernest Hemingway wrote about many difficult human realities. In fact, throughout Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, the author illustrates the theme of abortion despite its setting in 1927. Although it does not blatantly say what exactly the circumstance is that the two characters face, the use of a sense of vagueness, symbolism, characterization, and uncertain mood helps to explain the looming issue and their indecisiveness towards it. Noting that this short story was written in 1927, the sense of vagueness toward the topic of abortion would seem proper as it was rarely ever discussed amongst people and definitely never discussed in public. Due to this common etiquette the issue at hand, which is assumed to be an unwanted pregnancy, would have never been blatantly discussed in the train station.…

    • 994 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The decision of having the abortion or not decides if the couple can live their nice and fancy lifestyle in traveling and exploring the world or giving up the lifestyle for a new one that has the couple and the baby included. An author named Lewis Weeks Jr. states, “A number of images and emotional reactions floods the reader’s mind as the dialog swiftly makes clear that the girl wants the baby, not the abortion.” (Weeks Jr. 76). There were many references and symbols such as the title that Jig wants the baby and the relationship between the American man and Jig would be over at any situation possible due to the conflict of having the baby or…

    • 1241 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    White Elephants can be seen as a blessing and a curse considering that since the color is rare, it is a burden since it can’t work and always has to get fed just like a newborn. Unplanned pregnancy is the theme that sets up the drive for the author Ernest Hemingway in his short story “Hills like white elephants”. The type of writing that Hemingway uses in order to accomplish his work is the iceberg theory, where the information that is given is used to seek the hidden meaning. Hemingway uses literary elements such as: allegory, diction, motif, and plot to unfold the decisions of a young woman when handling the pressures of an unborn child. The presence of the white elephant doesn’t prompt itself throughout the story, nor does the words unborn…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernst Hemingway by very confusing. I had no idea what it was about. Annotating it didn’t help either. I had to ask a friend what the man and woman were talking about. Once she told me that the man was trying to get woman to have an abortion, I had to reread the story and having the idea of abortion in my head.…

    • 364 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays