Analyzing Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"
...ll we do isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks,” the author shows that she has tired of the stagnant routine she and her boyfriend are accustom to. She wants their relationship to evolve into something less superficial, but isn’t assertive enough to admit it. “And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible,” with these words the female character expresses the grim reality of their relationship as she sees it. In this future, she feels incomplete, as if anything they attained would be irrelevant. Even the possession of “everything” would be meaningless. The boyfriend puts the decision entirely on her shoulders, while at the same time, persuading her to have an abortion, “I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to if you don’t really want to.” The conflicting forces in this story are the deviating ideals of the woman and her boyfriend. Inside, she knows that choosing to abort their unborn child will alter their relationship. Though she tries to pretend otherwise, such a decision will forever impede her happiness. His happiness, on the other hand, will be disrupted by choosing to have a child. A child will end their self-indulgent, commitment-free lifestyle. By the end of the story, the woman has resolved to have an abortion in order to placate her lover’s wishes, and continue their affair, as unfulfilling as it sure to be. She would rather give up on her own values and standards than risk giving up on their commitment. Hemingway uses a narrative point of view in this story in order to make the reader assume the part of the observer. The reader is made to feel almost as if they are listening to the conversation between the couple. This point of view encourages the reader to rely on their own intuitions more assertively and derive their own conclusions from the somewhat indirect nature of his writing. The author’s moral is much more subjective to the reader’s personal belief system. The story takes place at a train station, between two sets of tracks and lines of rails, in Spain. On one side of the station, “The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white,” but on the couple’s side, “there was no shade and no trees.” On one side of the train station, the valley i...