Hills Like White Elephants

Hills Like White Elephants is a short story by Ernest Hemingway.

The story takes place in the Ebro river valley in Spain. A man and a woman make seemingly casual conversation while waiting in a small train station for their train to arrive. The story is told almost entirely through the couple's dialogue. The woman's name is Jig but the man's name is never mentioned, we only know that he is an American. The two are apparently a couple. They drink beer and a liquor called Anis del Toro while waiting.

At first glance the story may appear anticlimactic and not particularly interesting. Their conversation starts out being fairly mundane, if testy. Soon, however, the reader discovers that the topic that is being discussed by the two is an abortion. Hemingway uses the plain language to disguise the topic but also to show the characters' inability to cope with the issue. Though the conversation seems quite brief, it takes place over the course of approximately 35 minutes, with Hemingway leaving it largely to the reader to construe the silences. Consistent with the oblique style of the conversation, Hemingway never makes explicit the outcome, whether the couple will go forward with an abortion or not.

The name of the story comes from a comment made by the woman about the hills she sees looking like white elephants. The white elephant is also possibly a metaphor in the story for her unborn child.