Term Paper on "Link Between Story and Abortion Past and Present"

Term Paper 4 pages (1307 words) Sources: 1 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Letting the Air in': Abortion Symbolism and Metaphor in Ernest Hemingway's Short Story "Hills Like White Elephants"

The short story "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway (1927) features an intense conversation between a man and woman on the topic of her having an abortion, one that clearly parallels many (if not all) aspects of the ongoing abortion debate today: e.g., a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion; the timing of a pregnancy; the wherewithal (and/or readiness and willingness) of both members of a couple to make a commitment to a woman's not having an abortion and thereby accepting the future life changes and added responsibilities that not having the abortion would eventually bring. and, also as with many real-life couples past and present when it comes to the abortion issue, the couple having the conversation in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" both talks around the issue rather than directly confronting it and cannot arrive at a decision that pleases them both.

Clearly, the man in "Hills Like White Elephants" desires for the woman to have the abortion, telling her at one point (using words and phrases he repeats at various other times in the story): "It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig

. . . it's not really an operation at all" (Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants") When the woman's downcast eyes indicate to him that she has neither been comforted nor convinced by this idea, the man continues: "I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig. it's really not anything. it's just to let the air in." In the same way couples nowadays (or anytime) might resist uttering the word "abortion" and choose instead to talk around the subject at hand metaphorically and symbolically, neither the woman nor the man within Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" manages to say the word "abortion." The closest either comes is during their repeated, mutually edgy exchanges about "white elephants."

The phrase "white elephants" is first used in the story by the woman to describe the appearance of some hills that are visible beyond the train station where the couple sits drinking beer while waiting to board the next train to Madrid. But the term is also a symbolic reference to an unwanted or unwelcome gift; and this is in fact the common meaning of the colloquial phrase "white elephant" in everyday language.

The veiled subject of the woman's pregnancy as "white elephant" first comes up in the couples' conversation thus:

The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

"They look like white elephants," she said. (Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants")

Implicitly denying to both of them any underlying connection (which they both know is there, anyway) between the woman's description of the faraway hills presently within view and the man's own feelings about the woman's present pregnancy, the man tells the woman: "I've never seen one," (Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants") (i.e., your pregnancy, which I have seen, is not a white elephant; it is just a temporary interruption in our otherwise happy life together). Then he busies himself drinking his beer.

"No, you wouldn't have" [seen a white elephant] the woman replies; i.e., the man must have been so busy fulfilling his own desires all this time up to now that he never would have noticed any unasked-for gift such as this one entering his life. But then the man replies: "I might have . . . Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything" (Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants"). Here the man implicitly suggests to the woman that perhaps he has had previous 'white elephant' intrusions on his desires and life, and that he has not lived life as obliviously or self-indulgently as she thinks. Therefore, in fact, he has experienced other things that he has considered (as he now considers… READ MORE

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