You Must Have an Abortion in Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway

558 Words2 Pages

The short story “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, is about a man trying to convince his girlfriend to have an abortion. The couple sits in a train station waiting for their trip to Barcelona, and are staring outside at the scenery—the line of hills “like white elephants”, as the girl, Jig, remarks. They sit and drink and they try to keep conversation light and to enjoy themselves. As the story progresses, however, cause for their underlying tenseness boils to the surface. From the beginning of the story, the female protagonist, Jig, seems to be the type of woman to allow a man to make her decisions for her. The first line of conversation in the story is the girl asking “What should we drink?” and the man orders for the both of them. Later, she sees another drink and asks his permission to try it. She then wonders whether or not the drink would be good with water, and the two go back and forth briefly until he decides for her saying, “Yes, with water.” These things begin to show her submissive nature and a regular pattern in which the man makes decisions for...

Open Document