The goal was for this to read as a review of the short story and its themes without sounding like a wiki-article piece which may have been used for some guidance in what symbolism means. Original thought after a bit of nudging towards what is actually significant in a story is an acceptable means of literary review, it turns out! Otherwise you just worry you're obsessing over unimportant details, and that your professor will solemnly point out an obvious bit of symbolism you somehow missed, and there is naught but despair in your heart.
Anyways, I thought the story was neat, I did some thinking on it and made this, and I hope you find this to be neat! Have yourself a lovely day, and be prepared for the final member of my trilogy of self-professed clever essay titles this Friday!
The White Elephant in the Room by Mac Clevinger
The short story “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway follows the conversation of a man and woman while they wait for a train to arrive, revealing a conflict between them about an operation the man wants the woman to have. The theme of this work is that a life spent chasing vapid pleasures is a half-life devoid of meaning; that the denial of a true purpose leaves you nothing more than a drifting ghost that drags others down into a turgid, empty existence. Ernest Hemingway presents this theme through the use of several literary devices, chief among them being the setting of this story that describes the opposing nature of the outcome of the two choices lain out in this story.
Additionally, Hemingway uses characterization to illustrate the two viewpoints that each come to their different conclusions as to what kind of life they should follow. Finally, Hemingway uses symbolism in the guise of the operation that the man and woman talk around, but never properly name. The unborn child is the meaningful future, a denial of the simple life of looking at things and trying new drinks to instead take a stand and do something with your life. While other devices were used by Hemingway, these three are essential to the theme he pushed towards the reader in his work.
The lifestyle that is proposed by his character is one that drags others down with it into a search for simple pleasures with no motivation to do anything besides entertain itself, creating that barren wasteland which serves no purpose but to let people drift along in sight of the distant beauty and more meaningful lives without bringing them any closer to either. Like the barren land around the train-station, this is one of two lifestyles presented by the story. The woman is not the polar opposite of this. She does not actively push for a rejection of the man’s idea, but she doubts the meaningfulness of this kind of life. While the man is content to drink and pay little to no attention to his surroundings, she stands up and looks around. She comments on their life together, and struggles against his insistence that they not tread from the shallow waters. Hemingway gives the woman insight to stand as a contrast to the man’s consistent denial of the woman. “’Yes,’ said the girl. ‘Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.’ ‘Oh, cut it out.’” (Hemingway 636).
An apathy has set over their lives, an indifference to the greater bounds of life beyond gazing on beauty and drinking beer. She sees the other side of the valley with all of its beauty, and she can see the hills like white elephants that stand over a much better place than where she is. She has a choice with the operation: either continue the traveling life and submit to the lifestyle of the man, or leave it. Hemingway makes the man a static character who holds the same view throughout the story. The man is not going to change his mind on the matter; he wants the lifestyle he has been living. The dynamic character is the woman who has to make a choice, with the man’s external pressure insisting she not change and an internal pressure forcing her to acknowledge that there is more to her life than this. It is this conflict between how the man and woman are characterized, their differing natures clashing and not being resolved at the end, that creates the theme: two opposing lifestyles that acknowledge people’s predilection towards an easier life while showing the reader the flaw inherent there.
Hemingway uses the child in this story as a symbol for the opportunity to find meaning in our lives; a symbol for the opportunity to break free from the apathetic life devoid of purpose that the man and woman have fallen into. The child is the opportunity, which is the white elephant: something rare and unique to be treasured that comes at a cost. The land that surrounds the hills like white elephants are verdant and full of life, similar to how a life that embraces opportunity for more than basic pleasures (or for the woman, the child) and doesn’t throw that away is surrounded by meaning and purpose. The man does not want the child, and is indifferent towards it. “‘I don’t care anything about it.’” (Hemingway 638). He feels content with his life of traveling and drinking and sees neither the child nor the hills like white elephants as anything special. He is devoid of purpose or meaning, but the woman is not.
She is the alternative that Hemingway presents to us, unable to not care about this doorway to a different kind of life. “’Doesn’t it mean anything to you? We could get along.’” (Hemingway 637). The woman recognizes the value of the hills like white elephants as the value in the child for what it could bring to their lives, and she cannot stand by and let her life be dictated by another as it has before because of the introduction of this child that has given her an opportunity to escape from that life. The conflict of this story revolves around the child, a symbol for the theme Hemingway designed now posed as a question: throw away the opportunity to have meaning in your life, or accept it for both the benefits and consequences it will bring?
The subject of “Hills Like White Elephants” is of a man and a woman discussing an operation that the woman may be having, and its theme states that a life spent chasing fleeting pleasures and denying yourself purpose when it comes along only leads down a meaningless path. It is through Ernest Hemingway’s use of the setting in this story that evokes the idea of an important choice, the characterization that describes both sides of the decision to the reader, and the symbol of the unborn child as being the point around which the entire conflict hinges that plants the theme deeply in the mind of the reader.