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Jennifer Schenk
Professor Jacqueline Smith
English 1102
February 8, 2019
Ernest Hemingway’s; Elephant in the Room
What better way to show women in an unforgiving light than Hemingway’s “Hills Like
White Elephants,” basing the story in an era of male domination and women were, in no
uncertain terms, property. The male character is domineering, contradictive, and smug to say
the least. The male uses persuasion as a tool to get Jig to have an “operation” (abortion). Set in
Northern Spain at a train station almost seems too convenient. This setting shows that one of
the two characters can get on a train and run from their situation. Hemingway’s views of men
in life and some of his writings, are portrayed as weak and helpless without their female
counterparts. Pay close attention to the body language Jig is sending her male; it is very vague
but meaningful. The male is offsetting and argumentative at some points, but then still says he
cares. She seems shy at first, but Jig has some thinking to do. By the way the narrator describes
just the train station, maybe there is a hint there. It is going to be a cold conversation.
In this story, Hemingway uses a third person, objective narration. Which so readers can
see the scene unfold for the characters, but he does not give away the plot. Hemingway makes
sure the reader works hard for the under-lining plot. Like Scott Donaldson said, “To fathom the
emotional undercurrents of a Hemingway’s story, one must seek below the surface”
(Donaldson). The story does not define what type of operation is needed to make them happy
again. ‘It’s really an awful simple operation, Jig,’ the man said, ‘It’s really not an operation at all’
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(Hemingway). It leaves the reader to guess what kind of operation the man is talking about. But
when he refers to “let the air in” (Hemingway), the man is referring to an abortion. Well, postWorld War 1, when the story was written, the term,” abortion”, was not to be said out loud. It
would make both parties involved look like degenerates, but more so the female. During the
1930’s abortion was legal in most of Europe but far dangerous. Many women suffered severe
hemorrhaging, and not only the loss of life she carried but loss of the woman herself. Some
women took herbal “remedies,” to try and abort the baby, but all that did was make them sick.
However, many men after the war had mental issues with coping of a loss, so for the
man to lose the baby sooner than later might have seemed like a good idea. There was no such
word for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and men were supposed to stick to the stigma that
everything is fine. For a woman there were not too many options especially for an unmarried,
pregnant, single female. Jig in this story is trying to find her place in this relationship: lover,
friend, or just someone to “look at things and try new drinks?” (Hemingway). Jig pushes the
man to understand her perspective of loving more than one person, the other person being the
one they had conceived. Jig refers to the mountains as white elephants, a rare sacred animal in
some religions, but also a reference for an unwanted gift.
At this point Jig also brings up the drink absinthe. Absinthe was an anise -flavored liquor
with detrimental side effects, it was said to drive people to do irrational things they normally
would not do. This reference seems to touch a nerve with the man as he snaps at Jig. Now Jig
starts getting sarcastic a little, asserting her authority until he brings up the operation again.
Most of the dialogue in this story is ambiguous. The man is on a one-sided persuasion of trying
to get his girlfriend to have an abortion, while his girlfriend is trying to figure out if the
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relationship is worth saving. The third person narrative gives the reader an objective view of
the relationship and what is transpiring at that train station in Spain. It allows the reader to
drawl their own conclusion of each character’s opinions and actions throughout the story.
Also watching the body language of the couple is contradictory to a loving couple. The
male is being domineering and brash with subtle undertones, where the female is starting to
suffer from scopophobiai , avoiding looking directly at the man. Jig is in the train station and
they are having a drink, and all she can do is scuff her feet and, fidgeting with the beaded
curtain, look off into the hills. Jig walks away from the man after telling him, “Would you please,
please, please, please, please, please, please stop talking.” Indicative of their whole time
waiting for the train has been a wakeup call for her that the relationship will not ever be the
same, and he may not be the man she will spend the rest of her life with and bear children
with. Every little girl’s dream of having a man to fall in love and settle down with and have a
family is not in the man’s or her reality. That can be surmised by the way he looks at the
stickers on the luggage and rekindles the sleepless nights at different places and different
hotels. The man walks back into the station to have another drink not a very concerned man.
But he does go back to her and probably with a sarcastic tone she answers him, “I feel fine,
There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m Fine.”
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Works Cited
Bauer, Margaret Donovan. "Forget the Legend and Read the Work: Teaching Two Stories by
Ernest Hemingway." College Literature, vol. 30 no. 3, 2003, pp. 124-137. Project
MUSE, doi:10.1353/lit.2003.0038
Danaldson, Scott. Fitzgerald & Hemingway { Work and Days}. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2009.
Harold Bloom, editor. Ernest Hemingway. Philsdelphia, Pa: Chelsea House, 2008.
Hemingway, Ernest. Hills like white Elephants. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927; 1955.
Mays, Kelly J. Norton Introduction to Literature { Shorter Twelfth Edition}. New York, London:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.
i
Scopophobia; fear or being look at or stared upon, an anxiety order. In the age of social
media, it has become more prevalent. Instead of online, this type of fear is in person.