"Hills Like White Elephants" Ernest Hemmingway

“Hills Like White Elephants” Ernest Hemmingway
In this story Hemmingway provides us with view of a couple discussing the possibilities of aborting the women’s newly conceived baby. Hemmingway does this through his use of scenery and setting totally never using a word even akin to abortion. Although he never refers to it directly it’s blatantly obvious that is what they are discussing. The train tracks represent the tack of life that they are living and the station represents a decision of which track to follow next. The American man is obviously in favor of aborting the unborn baby and tries to persuade her into the idea throughout the story. He is unwilling to give up their travelers lifestyle symbolized by his luggage bags stamped with all the different hotels that they have stayed at. The woman is more sympathetic to the idea of keeping the baby and Hemmingway gives us insight to what she actually thinking by the landscape around them that she is fixated with. The “Hills Like White Elephants” that she refers to symbolize here will to behold something unique (the White Elephants) like the baby she is carrying. The white also symbolizes the unborn baby’s purity. The grass fields can be seen as a fertile landscape much like her fertility but the cloud over them can represent the abortion casting a shade over her fertility. The dry barren landscape she looks at lastly in the distance symbolizes what she feels like her body would become after the abortion. Hemmingway leaves the story open ended in order to leave up to the reader exactly what the outcome might be. My personal opinion is that the dry barren landscape surrounded the tracks toward Midrid where the “simple operation” would take place. The American man in the end moves his bags to the other side of the track which I think is to symbolize that they have decided to go in another direction than previously was the plan. When he asks her how she feels towards the end and She replies that she is fine I feel that Hemmingway is trying to hint that she is finally solid and happy in her decision to go in the opposite direction from the abortion. This is only a conjecture because as I said Hemmingway purposely leaves the story without enough details to conclude to that the reader will attempt to end it for him almost with their own convictions.