Hills Like White Elephants

Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 short story “Hills Like White Elephants” was published first in the periodical transitions and then in his short story collection Men Without Women. One of his most well-known short stories, it utilizes many of the techniques that typify Hemingway’s writing, such as minimalism, direct dialogue, and indirect characterization. The story consists almost entirely of dialogue, with only sparse, sporadic narrative description. Please note that this story concerns discussions of abortion and may be triggering for some readers.

As the story opens, a woman and a man sit at a table outside a train station in the Spanish countryside, waiting for a train from Barcelona that will take them to Madrid. The man (known to the reader only as “the American”) orders two beers for the couple, calling out “Dos cervezas” through the doorway into the station bar; the bartender, who speaks only Spanish, brings the drinks.

The young woman, named Jig (though at this point referred to only as “the girl”), remarks that the hills in the distance look like white elephants. Instead of playing along, the man replies that he has never seen a white elephant, to which Jig responds, “No, you wouldn’t have” (70). The man bickers that she shouldn’t assume as much about his experiences.

Jig comments on the advertisement for Anis del Toro, an anisette drink, painted on the beaded curtain that hangs over the doorway to the station bar. They order it, and the bartender (whom the narration only ever calls “the woman”) asks whether they want water, too. Because only the man, and not Jig, can speak Spanish, he converses with the bartender and translates a bit for Jig, requesting water in addition to the Anis del Toro. When Jig tries the new drink, she comments that it tastes like licorice, and goes further to say, “Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe” (71). The man responds, “Oh, cut it out” (71). After this, they agree, begrudgingly, to try and have a “fine time.” Jig notes, though, that she was already trying to have a fine time with her earlier imaginative remark: “I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?” (71). However, she now changes her mind and says the hills don’t look like white elephants after all.

At this point, the man raises the real topic on his mind, as though simply continuing a conversation they were having: “It’s really a simple operation, Jig […] It’s not really an operation at all” (72). He goes on to tell her that it is nothing, and it is “perfectly natural.” She asks him what they will do afterward, and he says that things will be just as they were before. Though neither character openly identifies the operation, it’s implied to be an abortion. The man claims that “it” (meaning the pregnancy) is the source of their unhappiness and that when it is terminated, they will be happy again. When he says she doesn’t need to be afraid and that he’s known many people who’ve done it, she replies sarcastically, “And afterwards they were all so happy” (73).

The man then redirects his argument and says she doesn’t have to do it if she doesn’t want to. Jig focuses on whether he will be happy if she does it, saying, “I don’t care about me” (74). She gets up from the table and looks across the station to the lush grain fields and vegetation along the Ebro riverbank. She considers what would happen if they kept the pregnancy, saying, “We could have everything […] And once they take it away, you never get it back” (75).

When the man calls her back to the table and begins his argument again, Jig asks if they could stop talking. Her rising distress is clear, yet he continues talking until Jig says, “I’ll scream.” The bartender comes out again and places down two more glasses of beer, telling them the train for Madrid will be there in five minutes; Jig asks the man to translate for her, and when he does, she smiles “brightly” at the bartender in gratitude for the message.

The man then leaves to take their two weighty bags to the tracks and has a drink inside the bar with the other people who, the narration says, are “all waiting reasonably for the train” (77). When he comes back, he asks Jig if she feels better, to which she replies that she feels fine.