Journal 2 - Hills Like White Elephants

I chose to write about Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”. I was unsure exactly how this story was going to take place, or even what it was about until I got to the halfway point of the story. At this point in the story you can plainly tell that the couple that the story focuses on is heading to Madrid, by train, that they have been drinking at the bar inside the train station, and that they are talking about something of great importance. The two characters never explicitly tell us what it is they are talking about, like they’re ignoring “the elephant in the room”, and making small talk or talking about the topic of interest as “it”.

The topic of the conversation seems to be something that the woman does not want to go through. The man tries to comfort her saying, “It’s really an awfully simple operation…It’s not really an operation at all”, which makes the event spoken of sound like something of a medical nature (The Norton Introduction to Literature, 167). As the conversation progressed I began to think that what they were talking about was marriage.  Of course, the conversation could also be centering around abortion of an unplanned baby when the woman says, “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?” (167). The thought of abortion left me when the man says, “I’m perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you”, which sounds like the man promising a commitment to the woman (168).

The thought of the marriage is the one that stuck the strongest with me, even after reading the story for the third time over. It all made sense: the man making sure not to press the subject, even saying that it’s just a simple operation, the woman saying that she doesn’t mind going through with it, but asking the man “Doesn’t it mean anything to you?” (168). Mentions of how other people had gone through this procedure and were very happy also lead to the thought of marriage. I enjoyed the story, and couldn’t help but think that the title was a clever use of the old saying of “ignoring the elephant in the room”.

Work Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants”. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10^th ed. Ed. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2010. 166-169. Print.