"Hills Like White Elephants" by Earnest Hemingway

One critic has said that "Hills Like White Elephants" is a story about transience and loss- about failed possibility. Do you agree?

Although one with a fatalistic point of view may see that about this story, I strongly disagree. I personally believe this story is about innocence becoming one with the idea that we must someday take charge of our own lives and decide what is important to us.

Hemingway takes great pangs to describe the scenery. He paints an image of life in the Ebro River Valley, with lush trees and fields of grain, while on the other side is death, drought sandy heat and parched hills. The conversation is tense from the onslaught, with Jig's comment about the Hills being like white elephants. We get the idea that they have been running around the country rag-tag and carefree. The labels on the luggage suggest just that. Then oops here comes an unwanted pregnancy. Most of the conversation revolves around the American trying to convince this girl to have an operation. We deduce the operation is an abortion, first by the way the woman working the bar seems distant and in a hurry to be rid of these ill-reputed visitors. The tense attitudes hint also at the fact that there is great weight in the discussion we walk in on. (That seems to be how we come to observe the entire story) From the beginning the American is paying for drinks and Jig has to ask for each drink implying subservience. He also seems to be somewhat haughty and self-seeking. Jig sees the world through the eyes of youth and innocence, while the American sees them through the eyes of an experienced and likely adulterous lifestyle. He seems cold and callous only concerned with how this (pregnancy) has impacted his footloose and fancy free lifestyle. The more the American speaks the more he seems to alienate the girl. She at one point tells him to "please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please stop talking. He seems very insensitive to the overwhelming emotions this young girl is feeling. She goes as far as to tell him that once they take it away you never get it back. Here I think she is talking literally about the baby and metaphorically about innocence. She, more than he, seems to realize just what it is he is asking her to do. She, to completely give herself over to him and surrender to his will, must sacrifice her entire existence and maintain the subservient life of denial to self. She seems to be ready to do just that, but as he opens his mouth and repeatedly discloses his own personal shallowness, she sees him in his true form. She, upon contemplating the rest of her life, the decision she has to make and the meaning of her life, I believe finds herself. She decides, in my opinion, she is going her own way, having the baby and thus having a purpose and direction for her life that seems much more fulfilling than following this egotistical, self centered, unloving person around and letting him dictate what she should think and do.

In conclusion, I feel Hemingway shows his mastery of words in the title of this story. The "white elephant" at first implies the baby- something that is too expensive to keep up to be a good investment- while in the end it truly means innocence (Jig's). The cost of Jig maintaining her innocence is shattered by life's demand for a decision. Not that the decision itself is responsible for the loss of innocence, but the contemplation of the gravity of the situation.

So you see the white elephant is Jig's innocence. It costs her too much to keep. It costs her too much to keep because she must allow him to make every decision for her every time in order to keep it. To accept her role in life and keep this baby and thus do what her morals tell her is right she must surrender her innocence stand up for her choices, take the reigns and survive for and by herself. Jig's innocence could also be called her freedom to choose.