HEMINGWAY’S THEME IN “HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS LEE COX ENG125 INTRODUCTUCTION TO LITERATURE INSTRUCTOR MICHAEL SLOTEMAKER JUNE 29, 2014

The theme of a writer’s story is nearly always much deeper than the plot. The plot merely tells you what happens in a story while the theme tells the reader what the story is all about. The following will show that the theme of Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants “ was the insincerity of both the man and woman perhaps even downright dishonesty of the man when discussing the upcoming procedure the woman was to have. Both symbolism and setting played a large contribution to Hemingway’s theme in this work. Symbols depicting everything from the Hills looking like White Elephants because shape, dimensions, and color to drinks at the station representing their unwillingness to discuss the dilemma at length and with clear heads. The symbolism even carries into the reader being left to decide how the story ends. Whether or not the girl has the procedure and whether she stays with the man or not. Nilofer Hashmi proposed an interesting alternative conclusion when he wrote “However, there is strong support in the narrative for a fourth outcome that fits in with the dark overall prognosis presented in the scholarly interpretations: the girl will indeed have the abortion, expecting in this way to stay on with the man, but after the operation has been performed, he will abandon her.” (Hashmi, 2003). Given that Hemingway’s themes were generally dark by nature this alternative conclusion proposed by Hashmi is quite plausible. Creating the setting for the story is the other major factor in Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants”. He sets the conversation between the two protagonists of the story between two rails at a train station in the heat a short distance from long white hills in the valley.
This setting itself holds implications of its own as is well stated by David Wyche in 2002, “The station is situated between two sets of rails, whose significance lies "in their figurative implications" (Renner 34), and between two contrasting landscapes that symbolize the couple's options. On one side are the "hills on the dry side of the valley" (SS 277), which' are "long and white" (273), inspiring Jig's titular simile; and on the other are "fields