Hills Like White Elephants Code Hero Analysis

Hills Like White Elephants: Will the child come?

In the 1920’s abortion was a taboo idea and many frowned upon it in the United States. “Hills Like White Elephants” is another one of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories that may seem very simple, but has many underlying symbols and lead the outlier to reread the story to find the symbols and hidden meanings. A lot can be assumed when reading “Hills Like White Elephants” and if you understand how Ernest Hemingway thinks using his “Code Hero’ way of thinking, you can see that The American and Jig will soon be having a child. By analyzing a few symbols seen throughout the story; White Elephants, the description of Jig as a girl and not a woman, and the bead curtain we will conclude with the fact

In the end the Code Hero will lose because we are all mortal, but the true measure is how a person faces death. He believes in "Nada," a Spanish word meaning nothing. Along with this, there is no after life. (Gillani)

In “Hills Like White Elephants” we see the American as this stoic, adventurous man who drinks and lays with women but is fighting the pregnancy as if it is a problem and assumes it will stop his drinking and adventurous ways. Although some see pregnancy as this amazing time he sees it as chaotic and stressful, described when he tells Jig, “You know how I get when I worry” and ““But I don’t want anyone but you. I don’t want anyone else”. The American does go through a small transition at the end, and it is brought to us by the bead

From Jigs transition into thinking they could have the child and “get along” we notice the transition the American makes as well, when he goes to the ‘other side’ of the tracks and finally goes into the bar. As described earlier, the other side of the tracks are where Jig saw the fields of grain and the Ebro. The man unknowingly walked into his decision. After all, he did reaffirm to Jig that “I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to”, after she asks “Doesn’t it mean anything to you” he replies “Of course it does”. (Hemingway) Ernest Hemingway is asserting that no matter what Jig decides, the man will be there. We can translate this into his code hero, by being courageous even when he sees it as the death of his way of life. Once the man puts the bags down there are three important factors that come into play. He look sup the track but does not see the train and he goes into the bar, something that had separated the two from the very beginning was the bead curtain. Not seeing the train gives us the idea that they couple ultimately des not decide to go to Madrid and there for does not have the abortion. When he returns from the bar he also walks through the curtain, which was seen as a barrier the entire time in the story. This is his transition that he listens to Jig and in the end understands that she is wanting to have the child. Code hero tells us that the man will be courageous and in the end lose to the