Abortion Symbolism and Metaphor in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"

Introduction: The Abortion Debate in Hemingway's Story

The short story "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway (1927) features an intense conversation between a man and a woman on the topic of her having an abortion — one that clearly parallels many, if not all, aspects of the ongoing abortion debate today. These parallels include a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion, the timing of a pregnancy, and the readiness and willingness of both members of a couple to commit to continuing a pregnancy and thereby accepting the future life changes and added responsibilities that decision would eventually bring. Also, as with many real-life couples past and present when it comes to the abortion issue, the couple in "Hills Like White Elephants" talks around the subject rather than directly confronting it, and cannot arrive at a decision that pleases them both.

The man in the story clearly desires for the woman to have the abortion, telling her at one point — using words and phrases he repeats at various other times — "It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig . . . It's not really an operation at all" (Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants"). When the woman's downcast eyes indicate that she has been neither comforted nor convinced, the man continues: "I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig. It's really not anything. It's just to let the air in." In the same way couples nowadays might resist uttering the word "abortion" and choose instead to talk around the subject metaphorically and symbolically, neither the woman nor the man in Hemingway's story manages to say the word "abortion" at any point. The closest either comes is during their repeated, mutually edgy exchanges about "white elephants."

The phrase "white elephants" is first used in the story by the woman to describe the appearance of some hills visible beyond the train station where the couple sits drinking beer while waiting to board the next train to Madrid. But the term is also a symbolic reference to an unwanted or unwelcome gift — and this is in fact the common meaning of the colloquial phrase "white elephant" in everyday language.

The 'White Elephant' as Central Symbol

The veiled subject of the woman's pregnancy as "white elephant" first surfaces in the couple's conversation as follows:

The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry. "They look like white elephants," she said. (Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants")

Implicitly denying to both of them any underlying connection — which they both know is there, anyway — between the woman's description of the faraway hills and the man's own feelings about her pregnancy, the man tells her: "I've never seen one" (Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants"). In other words: your pregnancy, which I have seen, is not a white elephant; it is just a temporary interruption in our otherwise happy life together. Then he busies himself drinking his beer.

"No, you wouldn't have," the woman replies — implying that the man must have been so busy fulfilling his own desires that he would never have noticed any unasked-for gift entering his life. But then the man replies: "I might have . . . Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything" (Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants"). Here the man implicitly suggests that perhaps he has encountered previous "white elephant" intrusions on his desires and his life, and that he has not lived as obliviously or self-indulgently as she believes. He has, in other words, experienced other things that he considered — as he now considers the woman's pregnancy — to be "white elephants."

Coded Dialogue and Circumlocutory Language

The man also implicitly suggests that he has not always simply been out for himself, and that he has learned from life that it is a mistake to accept an unwanted "white elephant." When they order two more drinks — Anis del Toro with water — the woman notices how "Everything tastes of liquorice [bittersweet]. Especially all the things you've waited so long for . . ." (Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants"). She means that she herself has longed for this pregnancy, but that it now has a disappointing, not-quite-sweet aspect to it as well.

This exchange is a clear example of what scholars identify as Hemingway's "iceberg theory" — the notion that the deeper meaning of a story should be felt by the reader without being explicitly stated. The couple's entire conversation operates on this principle: the real subject is never named, yet it saturates every exchange. Their dialogue about hills, drinks, and train schedules is a sustained act of circumlocution, with each oblique phrase encoding a position in the debate neither character will state directly.

A short while later, still trying to convince the woman with his own logic, the man says: "That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's made us unhappy." The woman clearly disagrees, telling him they could still do everything they do now. For his part, the man keeps insisting they could not:

"We can have the whole world."
"No, we can't."
"We can go everywhere."
"No, we can't. It isn't ours any more." (Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants")