Earnest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” portrays a couple struggling with a decision for the woman to undergo an operation. The story takes place on the platform of a railroad station where on an extremely hot day, with some time to spare before their train came the couple goes into a little bar for something to drink. The narrator observes as the couple orders drinks and engages in conversation. We never learn the name of the man but our narrator refers to him as “the American”(Hemingway,335) and the woman with him we know her name is Jig. Jig looks out into the mountains and says “They look like white elephants” (Hemingway, 336 ) referring to the hills. They later order some more drinks and then proceed to discuss an operation which the American seems pretty anxious about. The story never actually reveals the nature of the operation in question but from the wording in the story we can come to the conclusion that it was most likely an abortion because at one point the American says “I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.”(Hemingway, 337) Jig then replies “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”(Hemingway,337) which again goes to show how much women at that point in time idolized men and gave in to their wishes instead of focusing on their own. Granted in this story, The American constantly repeats to Jig, we don’t have to do it if you don’t want to but it was still her initiative to keep her man happy.
I do agree that the woman in the story cared way too much on what the American thought. At one point she says she does not care about herself only about him. This story is yet another story of a woman living under a man's society. She is willing to go through an abortion to get the love of her man back; which the man states is still there but due to the arguments it was probably hard for her to see, or feel.
ReplyDeleteThough she does seem to want to please the American man, the last part of the store shows us that she decided to make her own decision in the end and not let a man control her. By deciding to keep the child it can be inferred that she is probably going to leave the man.
ReplyDelete