Ernest Hemingway was one of the greatest writers of the last 150 years, if not all time. Born in 1899 in Cicero, Illinois, Hemingway began writing at an early age about sports for his school newspaper. Upon graduating high school, Hemingway went and worked for Kansas City Star. It was here that he has said once or twice that he learned his profoundly vague, yet beautifully descriptive (and legendary) writing style. In 1918, Hemingway was transplanted to Europe where he did his part during World War 1 driving ambulances for the Italian army.
He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery but sustained an injury that would hospitalize him toward the end of the war. It was in the hospital that he met a nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky. They dated for a bit until Hemingway proposed to her at the age of 20. The engagement didn’t last long however because Agnes left him for another man. When this happened, Hemingway was left crushed, but inspired him to begin work on one of his most famous works to date (and one of my personal favorites) A Farewell to Arms.
After his stint in Europe during and after World War 1, Hemingway found himself back in the United States in Northern Michigan working for the Toronto Star. Eventually, Hemingway met his first wife Hadley Richardson in Chicago. After they married, the young couple moved to Paris where Hemingway began work as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and it was here that he would begin his legendary legacy.
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In Paris, Ernest met Gertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein took Ernest Hemingway under her wing and introduced him other iconic prose writers such as Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This group, including Hemingway, would come to be referred to as “The Lost Generation”. In 1925, Hemingway and his wife Hadley attended a festival with some friends that provided him with the inspiration to construct his first novel The Sun Also Rises.
Soon after The Sun Also Rises was published, Hemingway and Hadley divorced, due partly to the fact that Hemingway was having an affair with his soon to be second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. All throughout the divorce, Hemingway kept his focus on his next publication, a collection of short stories called Men Without Women. While many of the stories from that collection have stood the test of time and have earned fame individually over time, none have earned fame quite like “Hills Like White Elephants”.
In the beginning of the story, the setting is painted as a man and a girl sitting at a train station set in the picturesque north of Spain waiting for the next train to Madrid that, overlooking the lush, green valley of the Ebro river with its stark white hills, from the other side which had “no shade and no trees” (Hemingway 229) and would seem to be essentially barren.
As the man (referred to as the American in the story) and the girl (referred to as Jig in the story) sit in the train station, they order drinks that are brought to them by the waitress who is only referred to as “the woman”. They are having a conversation full of short and abrupt lines that give the reader a sense of somberness and seriousness. The American is talking to Jig about her operation, seemingly to selfishly coax or convince her to go through with it. While sitting and having this conversation, Jig begins to get defiant and very emotional while the American stays calm and even seems to be back on his heels during some dialogue due to Jig’s retaliation.
Eventually, the train comes and the American brings Jig her bags as if to send her off. The story seems simple enough and surely very emotionally charged on the surface, but what if I told you that the entire story is a metaphor for a choice? If you dig a little bit deeper, you can begin to uncover the real story that Hemingway so masterfully hid within that profoundly vague prose that he is so famous for. Allow me to explain.
Let’s start somewhere around the middle of the story where the American says to Jig ‘’It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,’ the man said. ‘It’s not really an operation at all.’ The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on. ‘I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.’ The girl did not say anything. ‘I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.’’ (Hemingway 230).
What the American is referring to when he says “operation” is really an abortion. What he describes when talking about the abortion is the procedure for the operation itself, which is to allow air into the uterus and effectively kill the embryo/fetus. Knowing this, one can make the assumption that the American and Jig are sitting at the train station waiting for the train that will take Jig to Madrid to have the abortion.
This explains the story’s serious, somber, and awkward dialogue, as well as Jig’s emotional outbursts through the middle of the story. If you delve just slightly deeper and return to the beginning of the story, you will notice that the positioning of the station, as well as the couple, are symbolic of the choice to have the abortion versus the alternative of not having the procedure. The white hills are situated in the valley of the Ebro, and the couple is sitting in the train station between the valley and the other side where there is “…no shade and no trees…” (Hemingway 229), but is mostly on the barren side.
If you pay close attention and apply the knowledge of the couple’s choice to have an abortion, then you may realize that the valley with white hills is no longer just a valley with white hills, but a symbol for life and its purity and innocence. Inversely, the barren area where Jig and the American are sitting is no longer just that, but a symbol for death and the emptiness it will leave within the American and Jig’s relationship. Then there is the matter of the train itself, “…the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went on to Madrid” (Hemingway 229).
The train is very important here as it symbolizes both Jig’s pregnancy (40 minutes, one for each week in the average pregnancy) and the decision to have the abortion versus to not have it (represented by the “junction” the two are sitting at). Later on in the story, the American and Jig are ordering drinks and the American orders for her and translates the bartender’s words as Jig does not speak Spanish. This to me is clearly indicative of the couple’s inability to communicate effectively.
Immediately after, the bartender asks if they would like their drinks with water as if to suggest that the drinks are meant to water down the meaningful conversation they are supposed to be having and the beer is merely a distraction from their impending decision. With each interaction between the two regarding the abortion, it would seem that the American wants Jig to have the operation so that their relationship may go back to the way it once was (beautiful and full of life as suggested by the valley of the Ebro) and Jig is willing to go through with it but only to keep her relationship with the American alive.
Otherwise she would be risking their relationship becoming like the barren landscape they are currently sitting in on the other side of the tracks if she chooses to keep the baby and raise it like she has been longing to do for some time now, as is made evident by the part of the story where Jig says, “’It tastes like licorice,’ the girl said and put the glass down. ‘That’s the way with everything.’ ‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.’” (Hemingway 230).
What starts as a story about a man and a girl sitting at a train station having a tense conversation about an ambiguous topic that you are in essence a fly on the wall for the duration of, quickly morphs into a deep and very real metaphor for the burden of a choice between an old life and a current one that depicts a real life dilemma complete with the beautiful and the ugly parts that all aspects of life have. Moreover, it is a choice between life and death metaphorized not just by words, but by the pictures they help to paint as well, and all it takes is for the reader to look for it and fully invest and immerse themselves into the story.
Sources
- Hemingway, Ernest. Men without Women. Yilin Press, 2015.
- Hemingway, Ernest. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: the Finca Vigía Edition. Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1998.
