review of ‘hills like white elephants’

We read about a short story in Todd’s class this Friday. It is called Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway.

This story is mainly telling about a conversation between an American and a girl at a Spanish station. The girl compared hills nearby to white elephants. They discussed an “operation” which the man wanted the girl to have. The author didn’t tell us what exactly the operation is, but we can try to fathom it according to the limited resource Hemingway gave.

It is really hard to understand this article. Classmates and I discussed a lot in groups and finally got some points of it. Although the story is not so long, almost everything that the author mentioned symbolizes something else.

The white elephants in literature often represent unwanted gifts. Therefore, the white elephants the girl said could be in regards to the baby. The American probably saw the baby as an unwanted gift because he didn’t want to spend money raising it. Meanwhile, the girl wanted to keep the child in order to build a family. She maintained that the baby could be a wonderful companion for their journey. They argued with each other for a long time and finally the story ended in a joyful atmosphere.

Apart from the hills, there were still many other symbols in the story. The settings expressed the tension and conflict surrounding the couple. For instance, the train tracks from a diving line between the barren expense of land stretching toward the hills on one side and the green, fertile farmland on the other, symbolizing the choice faced by each of the girl and the American and differing interpretations of the dilemma of pregnancy.

After I did some research about the background, I found even more information throughout the story. The story was written in 1927, a decade after the first world war. By the time, many of the Americans felt confused and didn’t know what to do. The American in the story may represented to the young and confused Americans at that time who didn’t want to take responsible. And what Hemingway wanted to tell us is to reconsider about our faiths in order to solve the problems we face.