Iceberg In Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Drifting through the sea, an iceberg aimlessly wanders. As big as a house, ships steer clear of being near it. However, they do not avoid the iceberg because of what they can see above the water, but what they know is below it. Icebergs then are judged not by what you can see but what you cannot. Hemingway’s story “Hills Like White Elephants” is no different. Although short, Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” has deep and conflicting issues and symbolism through the use of his theory of omission. While living in France, Ernest Hemingway created a unique theory for writing fiction. He called it his “theory of omission” in which he believed anything could be omitted as long as it met two conditions. First,

Upon first look, Hemingway drops the reader right into that conversation and leaves them to deciphering what the couple is talking about. It is not until the reader recognizes the couple is talking about having an abortion that they can truly understand the depth of the story. Starting with just the setting, the couple sits at more than just a train station. Instead, they sit at a juncture from which they will either have or not have the abortion. Even the sides are polar opposites, with one side covered in “fields of grain” and “mountains”, the other “dry” with a few hills (Schlib 299). Jig constantly admires the fertile side, leading toward a “settled family life” (Akers 168) and using the landscape to relate the truth of how she feels about her unborn child. During this, Jig acts as “her own chorus” by “standing outside herself and seeing the larger situation” (Akers 167) when she says “And we could have all this… And we could have everything and every day make it more impossible” (Schlib 299). However, Hemingway spares no imagery and symbolism as Jig sees “the shadow of a cloud” (Schlib 299) moving over the field foreshadowing “the death of her unborn child” (Akers 168). All the while, the American fights for Jig to have the abortion. The white elephants mentioned in the story is an analogy to the unborn child. While a white elephant is