Ernest Hemingway's Short Answers On Abortion

The narrator is very brief. In “Hills Like White Elephants”, a man and young girl are traveling together in Madrid, Spain. I can infer from their conversation through their words and through the embedded vocabulary that they are probably headed to an abortion center. The reason I think this is because they spend the entire short story contemplating the idea of an abortion. The decision they are making seems urgent and rushed. The girl looks out the window at the “hills like white elephants” as the man continues to be persistent, as if wanting an answer as soon as possible. This urgency allows me to infer that the only reason why the decision is so urgent is because they are actively heading to an abortion center in that moment.

As humans, we tend to rely on others to guide us in choosing “right” decisions. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway tells a story of an American man with a girl, named Jig, having a conversation about whether or not Jig should undergo this “operation,” which we could assume is abortion. Jig looks to the man to tell her what she should do and what would happen afterwards, basically looking for a “right” decision. The girl is torn between listening to the man, who pushes her to have an abortion, or separating from the man, to instead, keep the baby. Hemingway uses setting and symbolism to interpret the girl’s struggle with abortion.

Every time the man or the woman try to change the subject and avoid talking about the abortion, they end up saying something that refers to or alludes to the baby or the abortion. The woman suggests that the hills look like white elephants (324), which the man fails to acknowledge. The lack of clear communication between the two causes tension and arguments at every turn. When the woman agrees sarcastically that the man has never seen white elephants, he says, "Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything" (324). The woman is clearly annoyed at the insensitivity of the man's negative feelings toward her pregnancy. For her, the baby is a priceless treasure, but for him it is a worthless fetus.

A third group of people involved in the abortion debate are pro-choice for the first half of pregnancy, but

“Hills Like White Elephants” displays the differences in how a man and a woman may view pregnancy and abortion. Jig, a woman, sees pregnancy as a beautiful aspect in life. Hemingway uses symbolism in the couple’s conversation to imply the woman’s pregnancy. The woman refers to the nearby hills on the train platform as elephants; “They look like white elephants”. She compares the hills to her own situation, pregnancy; “They’re lovely hills. They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.”

Women and men have rarely ever been able to wholeheartedly agree upon something, especially something as significant as an unwanted pregnancy. “Hills Like White Elephants” centers around an unwanted pregnancy and how a young couple is talking about it and handing it. While the mention of pregnancy or abortion is never actually said, it can be inferred through their conversations and simple clues Hemingway includes such as, “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig” (Hemingway) (Link). The man in this relationship, the American, continues to reassure the woman, Jig, that the “operation” is simple and tons of people have it done. He also continues to repeat “how simple” it is. Jig

Hemingway uses many instances of symbolism in this short story to coincide with the themes and feelings of the characters, such as the description of the scenery surrounding the train station. On one side of the station there is vegetation and fields of grain, while the other side is dry and barren (Short Stories for Students 159). The fact that the station divides these contrasts of environments is a symbol for the couple’s decision. The choice to have the abortion symbolizes sterility, which coincides with

Abortion is a woman or teen pregnancy and end up making a choice of giving up on the baby, they go to the doctor and they perform a procedure that is going to kill the baby. People don´t realize how bad and horrible it is killing a baby they don´t know the exact representation of it. Meg Meeker a pediatrician had thought that having an abortion was acceptable because the woman can decide what they want for their body, until one day she seen a video of how exactly an abortion happens. She thought it was cruel on how they got rid of it. Obviously the women don´t see because they make them turn away. Meg described that ¨A woman laying down on her back, her face turned away. He talked to the sound of the vacuum used to extract the arms, the legs, and the shredded torso of the tiny child¨. People don´t feel bad because they don´t see exactly how the process is, they don´t know what´s going on or else they would feel bad. Yes 99% of the women don´t regret their

The ending of the story is rather ambiguous as it is not completely obvious what decision the two end up making. The man could have talked the girl into undergoing the procedure, or not. At one point toward the end, Jig tells him to “please please please please please please please stop talking”, and when he doesn’t she threatens to scream. This probably means that she had made up her mind, but it could be in either direction. In the end, she smiles at him, and he asks her if she feels better; she says that she feels fine. That could mean that she had made peace with the decision to abort their child or that she was proud of herself for finally standing up to him and making her choice not to abort final. Either way, making this choice is harder on her as she would be the one to undergo the operation, and she very well knows that he most likely will not stay with her if she decides to keep the child. No matter what she chooses, however, their relationship will never be the same.

Throughout the story, Hemingway incorporates various themes for the reader to take away from the reading. The relationship between the man and the girl exemplifies the theme of man and woman, as well as the theme of decision and indecision. Hemingway depicts this relationship and life together as the train that the couple is waiting for. According to the University of Michigan website, “Train symbolism is related to social life, destiny, journey, and fatalism (“Train”). In “Hills Like White Elephants,” the train represents the journey of life, with or without the unborn child. Together, the decisions of either choosing life for the child or

The man, however, is not the sole contributor to the communication breakdown. Right away the girl begins to show her weakness and inability to express herself. When the man initially directs the conversation to the operation (abortion), her reaction is described: "The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on [and] . . . did not say anything" (275). Failure to state her conviction is illustrated in this example, and is further indicated by frail hints of her desire to keep the baby: "Once they take it away, you never get it back" (276). An obvious hint, yet she never clearly voices her hunger to have the baby. She continues to desire his will over hers in lines such as this one: "Then I?ll do it [have an abortion]. Because I don?t care about me" (275).

In “Hills Like White Elephants”, symbolism is extremely essential to the theme and impact the story has. Symbolism in literature is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. This story in particular drips with rich symbols that relate fully to the many problems this issue the American man and his girlfriend are discussing. Using context clues, one can infer that topic the couple are discussing in the hot, Spanish train junction is abortion, as the man states, “‘It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig’” (192). This couple has been leading a reckless and adventurous life, traveling across Europe together without a care in the world and certainly not taking caution in anything they do. That’s why they are facing this issue. At the beginning of the story, when they first sit down in the cafe at the train junction, the man orders beer

This conversation is an argument between the couple over what they are about to go through together. This adds intensity to the story and it also conveys the message of death in an original way since it is a conversation between two people- a specific line that stood out was “and once they take it away, you never get it back”. This tells the reader that they are going through something quite difficult together. The reader can notice that the girl in this story is nervous and scared about this operation and that once they terminate the pregnancy it won’t be theirs anymore. There is a large difference here though between dialogue in “A Journey” and “Hills like White Elephants”. While in “A Journey” dialogue is used but not as used as heavily as the “Hills like White Elephants”. Since “A Journey” is mostly told by the wife of the story. There is one conversation on the train with the wife and another passenger that particularly stood out. The reader can tell how nervous the wife is about anyone finding out about her husband’s death on the train.

At first he talks to her with passion and love, but soon goes straight to talking about having sex. The speaker clearly just wants to have sex and nothing more and nothing less. And who knows? Maybe the woman wanted something serious, but all she got was a one-night hitter. The man should have been honest with the woman from the beginning. At the same time, “Hills Like White Elephants” exhibits dishonesty between a couple. For one thing, the American man said, “It’s really an awfully simple operation” (476), when in reality a person’s life is on the line. The American thinks the child would be a nuisance, and “It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy” (476). He is filling her thoughts with every negative thing that comes with giving birth to a child. As they were both talking the woman said, “And you think we’ll be all right and be happy” (476) as if questioning him in order for him to change his mind about the operation. Instead the man said, “I know we will” (476), and right there and then he could set things right by letting the child be born. And who knows? Maybe the child would be “’a possession of great value’” (DeFalco, gtd. in Hashmi 75) to strengthen their relationship, but he kept his focus on the task at

Ernest Hemmingway has a specific style of writing. Most of his short stories are terse, short, and objective. Not only does he like to use short, simple sentences, but he also repeats them over and over for effect. Hemmingway is also known being blunt. In his short story "Hills Like White Elephants," he is just the opposite. He dances around the truth and never reveals Jig’s final decision. Does Jig go through with this "simple operation"?(616). Just what is this operation that is so very simple? Though Hemmingway never tells, an insightful reader can conclude that the "simple operation" is an abortion. Whether she goes through with the abortion or not is up to us to decide.