White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway

Running head: ENGLISH
English
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ENGLISH
The aim of the following paper is to discuss on the short story Hills Like White Elephants
by Ernest Hemingway. This short story has aimed at the emotional conversation on the
perspective of abortion (Hemingway: 275). This story has been build up on a man and woman
who have been drinking beer and the costly anise liqueur while they in train at Spain and waiting
for the station (Jiahong: 27). The tensions in the story have developed from the various dialogues
as the man was trying to convince the woman to get the abortion done but the woman showed
her ambivalence to this proposal.
Many symbols have been presented in this short story. The implementation of the iceberg
theory by Ernest Hemingway is one of the main parts of this issue. In this story, the symbol of
the white elephant has been used to show an issue that nobody wants in this world. The white
elephant in this story is the unborn child of that girl in the story (Hemingway: 275). In the
beginning of the short story, the girl commented that all the surrounding hills were looking like
the white elephants but the actual meaning of this phrase could be found in the later incidents.
The actual meaning turns out to be the possibility of the abortion that could happen by the
insisting of the man in the story. In the later times while discussing about the abortion with the
man, the girl goes out to comment that the hills did not actually look to be like the white
elephants (Avitzour: 55). This suggests the fact she was hinting about keeping the baby alive and
not going through the abortion.
The American in his story has missed that subtle hint given by the girl. She went on to
say that the hills looked like the white elephants when she saw that for the first time. Later, she
believed that the hills were actually quite beautiful indeed. The hills have been used as a
metaphor for the baby and the elephants also (Hemingway: 275). The white elephant becomes