Jig's Final Choice in Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants
This essay argues that Ernest Hemingway's 1927 short story "Hills Like White Elephants" — deliberately ambiguous in its iceberg-theory style — ultimately reveals that its protagonist, Jig, chooses not to have an abortion and will separate from her American lover. Drawing on close readings of the story's dialogue, characterization, and symbolism, as well as relevant literary criticism and biographical context, the essay demonstrates how Hemingway embeds his conclusion in subtle textual cues: Jig's oblique conversations about her unborn child, her growing exasperation with the American's relentless pressure, and her final declaration that she feels "fine" — a statement that implicitly affirms both her pregnancy and her resolve.
- Introduction: Hemingway's Deliberate Ambiguity: Thesis: Jig chooses not to abort her child
- Dialogue as Coded Communication: Jig and the American talk past each other
- Characterization and Growing Disenchantment: American's pressure alienates Jig further
- Symbolism in the Story's Conclusion: Train and bar symbolize coming separation
- Jig's Final Declaration: "I feel fine" signals acceptance of pregnancy
- Conclusion: The Iceberg Theory and Jig's Decision: Iceberg theory unifies all textual clues
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What makes this paper effective
- The thesis is specific and arguable: rather than remaining agnostic about the story's ambiguous ending, the essay commits to a clear interpretive claim — that Jig will keep her child — and marshals textual evidence to defend it.
- Each body section targets a distinct literary device (dialogue, characterization, symbolism), giving the argument a disciplined, organized structure that is easy to follow.
- Extended quotations from the primary text are followed by close, sentence-level analysis, modeling how to unpack diction and pronoun choice as evidence for interpretive claims.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies close reading as an analytical method. The author does not merely summarize plot; instead, specific word choices — such as Jig's use of "they" to mean medical staff and "it" to mean the unborn child, or Hemingway's description of other passengers waiting "reasonably" — are isolated and interpreted as evidence. This granular attention to language is the defining skill of literary analysis at the undergraduate level.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a contextualizing introduction that names the central debate (abortion) and states the thesis. Three body sections then build the argument sequentially through dialogue, characterization, and symbolism. A dedicated section on Jig's closing lines delivers the climactic textual proof, and a conclusion ties the argument back to Hemingway's iceberg theory. An annotated works-cited list closes the paper, adding source context unusual in standard MLA format.
Introduction: Hemingway's Deliberate Ambiguity
It is quite possible that Ernest Hemingway was being deliberately deceptive when he wrote "Hills Like White Elephants," which first appeared in 1927 in the short story collection Men Without Women. Regardless of his intention, when the story is read outside of the social and cultural context in which it was written — as is the case when a contemporary reader peruses this text — it carries a certain aura of duplicity in which undiscerning readers may be lulled into misinterpreting its meaning, or possibly even thinking that there is no meaning at all. Close analysis of literary criticism, as well as an examination of biographical information about Hemingway's life, informs readers that a crucial debate is occurring between the two main characters regarding whether or not a young woman named Jig will have an abortion — a subject that was certainly taboo, shocking, and largely illegal during the time the story was written (Anderson, 2009). Hemingway deliberately ends the short story without climax or resolution to the conundrum that has absorbed the characters throughout. Yet a close reading of the dialogue, characterization, and symbolism that figure prominently in the story reveals that by its conclusion, Jig has decided not to get an abortion and to keep the child she is carrying.
Works Cited
Altman, Christine. "A Junction In Life." VCCS Litonline. 2003. Web.
Anderson, Jefferson. "Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants: Icebergs, Raisin Bread, and the Short Story." Neither Red Nor Blue. 2009. Web.
Hashmi, Nilofer. "'Hills Like White Elephants': The Jilting of Jig." The Hemingway Review (2003): 72–83. Print.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Hills Like White Elephants." Men Without Women. New York: Scribner's Sons, 1927. Online reprint. Scribd.com, 2011. Web.
Mellow, James R. Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. Print.
Renner, S. "Moving to the Girl's Side of 'Hills Like White Elephants.'" Hemingway Review, Fall 1995. Vol. 15, No. 1. p. 27.
Stukas, Jake. "Literary Analysis: Hills Like White Elephants." Helium. 2007. Web.
Weeks, L., Jr. "Hemingway Hills: Symbolism in 'Hills Like White Elephants.'" Studies in Short Fiction, Winter 1980. Vol. 17, No. 1. p. 75.
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