Hills Like White Elephants Literary Analysis

In August of 1927, Ernest Hemingway wrote a short story called “Hills like White Elephants.” It was first published in the literary magazine Transition; later it was republished in a short story collection called Men without Women. In “Hills like White Elephants,” there is a ton of symbolism. Perhaps the most important piece of symbolism is the setting. Hemingway sets “Hills like White Elephants” at a train station in Spain. His goal here is to focus on the discontent in the relationship between the man and the girl. He also does this to point out that their relationship is at a crossroad. Located in the middle of a barren valley in Spain, the station isn’t an ending destination but simply a stopping point between Barcelona and Madrid. Voyagers,

like the man and the girl, must consequently decide where to go and, in this case, whether to go with each other and continue their relationship. Furthermore, the dissimilarity between the white hills and barren valley possibly highlights the contradiction between life and death, and fertility and infertility. They also mirror the choice the girl faces between what we can assume is having a baby, or having the “simple procedure” done. The girl seems torn between the two landscapes, not only commenting on the beauty of the hills but also physically walking to the end of the platform and gazing out at the brown emptiness around the station.