“Hills Like White Elephant” is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story takes place in a train station, where a young couple is waiting on a train. Hemingway wrote the story as a dialog between the couple; Jig, the woman in the story, is pregnant, and she and her partner “the American” are discussing their options on whether to abort the child or not. The couple’s conversation does not clearly explain the conflict of the story, for the words abortion and child are never said throughout the dialog. In order to understand the story, Critic Stanley Renner suggest the reader must do a little work:
Hemingway leaves virtually everything, even what is at issue between the girl and the American, for the reader to “figure” out, meanwhile unobtrusively supplying what is needed to understand the story’s structure and conflict, it seems logical to assume that he also expected the reader to be able to answer the question left by the store’s ending: What are the couple going to do about the girl’s pregnancy? (Renner, 27)
Hemingway tells this story in a way that requires the readers to focus in on all parts of the story to understand the conflict and the ending.
The setting of “Hills like White elephants” tells more about the story than just where it is taking place. The setting reveals the dilemma of the story and describes the results of the final decisions. Doris Lanier describes the setting as painting a picture of what is going on in the story (Lanier). The characters use the setting in their conversation to explain how they feel and what decision they to make. The characters’ reference to the “Hills Like White Elephant” reveals the conflict of the story and also the final decision of the characters by the way they use it in their conversation.
This story is set at a train station in the Ebro valley of Spain where a young couple is waiting for a train to Madrid:
The hills across the valley of the Ebro...