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Hills Like White Elephants Analysis

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In the short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway, there is a relationship unfolding, a complex relationship difficult to understand. The relationship reveals itself by a conversation between a man and a woman, a topic of conversation that people rarely discussed in the period that the story takes place. After researching interpretations, most of my findings resemble “She is pregnant, and he wants her to have an abortion” (Weeks 76), to which I agree that this conversation is about abortion. With the man seemingly pushing the topic and the girl hesitant and questionable, it is unsure as to the result of their conversation. However, it is my belief that she chose to follow her heart and not get the abortion. Hemingway sets the story environment at a train station, with two very different sides of the tracks. This setting proves to be as a metaphor for the choice at hand, an interpretation of life or death. One side reflecting a dry, harsh area, with no trees, and devoid of life, on the other side of the tracks, some distance away “were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees” (Hemingway 125), which depicts a thriving, plush area, full of life. The issue seems underlined in the background throughout the entirety of this story. In being able to fully involve yourself in the scene, the conversation, and the

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