Analyzing Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills like white elephants” at first glance is difficult to understand. It undoubtedly causes most readers to go over it multiple times to grasp exactly what is taking place. The way the story is written is so complex with the 50/50 mixture of traditional storytelling and an abundance of character to character dialogue as well. That’s not the best part; the story’s setting means everything to it. The Train station setting ties in to the plot of the story, the characters behavior, and even the point of view that the story is being told from.

The story is about a man and a woman discussing the sensitive subject of abortion. They are at a train station waiting for their train while having this conversation. The man and girl are sitting by other passengers awaiting the train while you the reader are told of their surrounding landscape. On one side it is a dessert-like environment with scorched land and no sign of life in sight. The other side of the train station was a green and healthy environment like what you would expect to see inside a greenhouse.

The setting in the story greatly an example of this is the point of view of which the story is told. As mentioned earlier the average reader after reading once may say the author is the narrator of the story there are some lines in the story that mean otherwise though. There are two instances near the beginning that caught my attention. “It’s pretty hot,” the man said.“Let’s drink beer.” “Dos cervezas,” the man said into the curtain.“Big ones?” a woman asked from the doorway.“Yes. Two big ones.” (pg.115). From that quote you should get that the man who is said to be American has some knowledge of the Spanish language. From the second excerpt the girl looked at the bead curtain: “They’ve painted something on it,” she said. “What does it say?” “Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.”(pg.116) Then you realize the girl has no knowledge of the language.
The interesting thing about the story is by reading the story you realize it’s not narrated by the author because you are never made aware of the couple’s actual relationship. For all we know they could be father and daughter, siblings, or friends. The Man and women can be ruled out as narrator because they aren’t mentioned by name but simply as an American man and a girl and most likely wouldn’t use third person. Being that they are at a train station it was most likely a nearby passenger waiting for the train that is eavesdropping.
The setting outside of the train station factors in just as much as their seating arrangement does. The man is the more talkative of the two and from what he says during the story, “We’ll be fine afterward just like we were before.” “I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to.”(pg.118) You are aware of his stance on the situation at hand from their conversation.

While it’s a bit obvious that the man is in favor of the abortion you can see they are both nervous as is normal. Throughout the story they order drinks in an attempt to avoid the matter at hand and get their mind off things. Though for the girl it was near impossible to get her minds off things. The outside scenery seemed to trigger thoughts in her mind she began to weigh the options on her own since the man has made his decision.
There was a moment where the girl came to the thought of what if she didn’t go through with it. “I don’t want you to do it if you feel that way.” The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees. “And we could have all this,” she said. “And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.” At that time she was wondering if not going through with it was best for the two of them.
Shortly after that the girl sat back at the table she took a glance at the barren land opposite of the train tracks and seemed a bit agitated as you can see from the quote. “Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?”(119). Like the green side this side also reflected what could be her future but if she gets the procedure done. You do not get to find out what her decision is but the setting sure played a part in the choice by putting the two sides into perspective.