Hills Like White Elephants

Although the story’s historical setting is indeterminate, it appears contemporary with the story’s 1927 publication. During this period, Hemingway was preoccupied with the lives of expatriate Americans living in post-World War I Europe, the so-called Lost Generation—a term coined by Gertrude Stein but made famous by Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. The idea of lostness relates to the psychological aimlessness of this generation, who came of age during a war of such unprecedented inhumanity and destructiveness that it seemed to invalidate traditional beliefs about faith, meaning, or even inherent human goodness. To many, the American Dream now smacked of parochialism and vapidity, and expatriation to Europe was increasingly common. Partly because it forsook the traditional American work ethic and the “back to normal” postwar mindset, an indulgent and even superficial lifestyle became a leitmotif of Lost Generation literature. Nevertheless, while these writers might have honored postwar disillusionment, they sometimes critiqued their generation’s lifestyle as potentially hollow or disoriented.

The couple in this story bear the earmarks of the Lost Generation. Though the story is a minimalist vignette that offers few explicit details about the characters, indirect characterization and symbolism suggest their lives’ impermanent, purposeless quality. For example, they are traveling across Europe, and while this hints at the historical American expatriation, it also symbolizes transience, especially with the description of their bags covered with labels from all the hotels at which they have stayed. There is then Jig’s comment, “That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks?” (71). Her remark signals a deeper discontent with the era’s frivolous hedonism.

A purposelessness and superficiality are also reflected in the couple’s personal relationship. The man believes that the pregnancy is a problem to be solved so they can continue with their lifestyle. During this historical period, abortion was illegal and highly dangerous, yet he glosses over the potential danger to Jig. She, on the other hand, seems aware of the danger and of the implications for their relationship. When the man says that he knows many people who have had abortions, Jig responds, “And afterwards they were all so happy” (73); the sarcastic response illustrates her understanding of the weight of their decision, but it also conveys the rational insight that an easy life is not necessarily a happy one.

As the man continues to pressure her, Jig in some ways appears increasingly detached with such statements as “I don’t care about me” (74). She seems concerned only with whether, if she has the operation, the man will be nice to her again, and she says she will have the operation so that “everything will be fine” (74). Nevertheless, these statements directly contradict her awareness that, if she has the operation, things may not be fine. Her dialogue presents a tension between what she is saying and what she is suppressing. She is the more complex, more cognizant character, and she has a more flexible imagination—a defining trait shown in her observation about white elephants. She is also therefore the more conflicted of the two characters, and by the end of the story, her decision is ambiguous; much scholarship debates the work’s interpretation in this regard, but no single reading has emerged victorious or become canonical.

Jig further exercises her imagination when she gets up from the table and looks across to the other side of the train station, at the grain fields and the Ebro river. She seems to see a different, possibly richer path for their future, and she recognizes how their decisions so far have been holding them back when she says, “And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible” (74). Just moments later, she states, “And once they take it away, you never get it back” (75); in an immediate sense, this refers to the operation’s irrevocable nature, but it also alludes to how, even if she has the abortion, the two of them will never fully reclaim their former life, even though the man seems convinced otherwise.

When the man takes their bags to the tracks, the narration describes them as “heavy,” symbolizing the characters’ relationship: They have metaphorical baggage and, with this decision, will acquire more. This is the only indication that the man, too, may be aware of their decision’s gravity. But he quickly counteracts that impression when he stops to have a drink in the bar with the people who, the narration relays, are “waiting reasonably for the train” (77). This description indicates that he sees Jig, in contrast, as being unreasonable—and though the appraisal is fleeting, it is consequential insofar as it is stylistically unprecedented: Up until now, the narration (what little of it there is) has been thoroughly neutral and descriptive, but here, the narrative consciousness momentarily voices the man’s subjective perspective when it calls the others “reasonable.” This moment of almost imperceptible bias in the narration is a rhetorical allusion to the man’s domineering attitude; he is the one who (he believes) gets to “narrate,” gets to say what reality is and what it isn’t. This covert hubris announced itself as soon as he tried to tell Jig how to feel about a major operation on her own body—an operation he will never undergo or truly understand.

Jig’s emotional vacillation throughout the story illustrates the existential dilemma she faces, and her ambivalence suggests she knows that either way, things will never return to the way they were. As the story ends, Jig’s true disposition is inscrutable, though only to a degree. She says, “I feel fine” (77), and while her inclination toward or against the operation is ambiguous, it is less ambiguous that she is not fine. Because the dialogue so far has evinced her conflict and even her distress with the man’s overbearing posture, her closing remark appears deflective and superficial. Whether she says it to convince herself or to appease her partner is unclear, but their overarching interpersonal dynamic would suggest the latter.