Hills Like White Elephants Literary Analysis Essay

Enerest Hemingway’s short story, Hills Like White Elephants, may seem at first to be simple and plain, or as if not much is going on throughout his narrative. However, the story in reality is remarkably intricate and involved; the author was able to say plenty without using many words. The entire story was about a conversation between a man and girl who are waiting for a train in Spain. The couple are both distressed about how they should make a decision of whether to follow through with the girl’s pregnancy, or to terminate it. Hemingway was able to say indirectly that the conversation was about abortion without clearly stating it, by using literary elements. Some of the elements Hemingway uses are symbols to illustrate different meanings for concision, irony to talk about

Hemingway was able to show in his work the beauty of simplicity in his story telling, to convey verbal and non-verbal communication.

Hemingway uses a good amount of symbolism thought his story. He did this to illustrate two different meanings without having to explain every single detail. He achieved his position of being the spectator by the way he used symbols to represent things beyond the surface. For instance, when the girl talked about the white elephants, Hemingway availed this as a symbol. (275). The white elephant represents something that no one wants to talk about, in this case, was the baby that the girl is pregnant with. The author may not say the exact words that the girl was pregnant, but he mentioned it subtly when the man in the story used phrases such as, “it’s really an awfully simple operation” (276), and “just let the air in” (277). It is a euphemism for abortion. Letting air inside the uterus was one of the historical ways of terminating a pregnancy. The girl mentioned how the hills look like white elephants, yet changes her mind about the statement, and says how it does not