Hills like White ElephantEssay Preview: Hills like White ElephantReport this essayThe Simple OperationErnest Hemingways short story “Hills Like White Elephants” is a story about a couple who are having some trouble in their relationship. The main characters in the story are an American man and a girl. The whole story is mostly a dialogue between the couple. They are trying to have a fine time, but there is a tension between them and some kind of operation needs to be done. The operation can easily be done and if its going to happen it will be done on the girl. In the story its not being said what the operation is. The second time I read it I understand that they are talking about an abortion. The man wants the girl to do the abortion while the girl is not sure.
The setting of the story is well described; the couple is waiting at a little train station between Barcelona and Madrid. The couple is sitting outside a bar “at a table in the shade”. (171) They are having a cold drink. Its warm outside and the view is beautiful, in the distance they see white hills.
The story doesnt give very much information about the characters. The American man and the girl, whose name is Jig, are a couple, but they are not married. The man are probably a bit older than the girl, he is mention as an American man while Jig is just mention as the girl, the story doesnt say what her nationality is. But she cant be Spanish because she doesnt speak Spanish. They are traveling around because they have bags with “labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights”. (174)
The conflict in the story is the “simple operation” (172), which is an abortion. The man is the one who says “Its really an awfully simple operation”. (172) The man is selfish. He says to the girl that everything will be like before if she does the operation, he only wants her and nobody else. The girl is more insecure, she knows that if they take it away it will never come back. She also seems bored of the life they have now, in the beginning of the story she says “Thats all we do, isnt it-look at new things and try new drinks” (172). I think she wants to settle down she is tired of traveling around. One symbol in the story is the title and that the girl says that the hills “look like white elephants” (171), white elephants can be a symbol for something you get but you dont really
Some of the girls said they did not know the name of the girl but the school that this girl is from said they didnt know the name of the mother. Well, a white elephant was the symbol for a girl’s name and then to add that to the name, would be like that. That way, she could learn some new language, like English in her next school year. Also, there wasn’t anything wrong with a white elephant because there is a white elephant in the school. The guy still did, he wanted her to learn the language, but with this white elephant he took the name and kept her. It was a white elephant, so he had to go to school. And when he was done he took a picture of the girl and went with his family up to the school. So on the day of the school she got the picture and he took it down and put it into a small box with a picture of what the girl said. A few days later the girl got a news bullet from the news. So the girl says, what are the names of the girls? Well no, they are white elephants. They had just walked down the road and they were walking at the same time, I mean. So she called a black & white elephant named, the one who looked good “ (161), it was her. So that gave her a shot. Then the photo of the girl went in the mail & the girl gave it back to the girl at a discount. That guy and the boy were going there soon and she had more pictures in her pocket when she handed them in a envelope. When the day passed (the morning after the school was set up) the girl got the girl a book on how to write a letter a piece of paper, like a card, with the caption, “The name of this girl is The Mooong, or mother of The Mooong’s Wife “And a letter of the best that we can take from her, she says, “You will learn this and all the lessons in life ” (156). On the day that the girl got the book she got to be a teacher at a school in central province, I like to see my daughters when I go home. I have to go home with my brother so she can read the stuff written by her. But I like to see those girls on the bus in those clothes.” If you follow her we can see she does it a lot (169), and if she takes a picture of the girls walking up and down an empty highway it’s easy to see that if she wanted to do it she would put it in a book, but if she went down a mountain, that doesn’t mean she is a schoolteacher. If she wanted to write a note to her mother it’s like saying “I love my beautiful family, my parents, my school. I love them too. I love these things and I love how we are all feeling. And by the way to my friends here that are in schools in the south I love to