User:The stuart/The Curse and Prize of a White Elephant
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Stuart Field Catherine Ozment English 1023
The Prize and Curse of a White Elephant At first glance the short story “Hills like White Elephants” is rather boring. A couple arrives in a train station in Madrid, Spain. After sitting down at a table and having several drinks, they discuss nothing in particular other than the fact that some mountains they can see look like white elephants. They have a little quarrel, but it is never clear what it is about, although an operation is mentioned. Then the story is over. There isn’t any rising or falling action. No conclusion is reached, and nobody learns anything. The reader is left empty and bored. That is, unless they discover the true meaning behind the plain yet cryptic discussions.
It may seem that Hemmingway is just chronicling an encounter with a woman he may have met in a bar during his travels in Europe, but there is much more going on in this story than two people having boring chit chat in a train station. The woman in the story is in fact pregnant and doesn’t want to deal with the problem. The man, either her husband or her boyfriend, is upset because he knows that a child would mean the end of their traveling together, and the beginning of a much more serious time for both of them. His solution to the dilemma is an abortion. However, neither of them is quite sure what they should do and, say they only want to make the other happy. But, in fact they are equally worried about each of their own lives. Although, the story never clearly explains this, it is implied over and over by use of imagery combined with the plain and reaistic way the two characters speak to one another. Without the imagery or without the use of the chosen dialogue the story would not be near the piece of genius literature that is.
The symbolic imagery starts with the title and flows throughout the story. White elephants are given as gifts in Thailand. They are very rare and prized animals. However, the animals are extremely difficult to keep. Besides the fact that they are very large creatures and need a lot of room, they also consume great quantities of food. Plus, because they are sacred, they can’t be forced to work. So, receiving a white elephant is a great blessing since it is a token of good fortune, but it is also a tragedy because receiving one means you will have to spend all your time taking care of the beast. The white elephant is obviously a metaphor for a new born baby. The man sees the baby as a burden and an end to their leisurely life style. Symbolically, he doesn’t like thinking about the mountains because they represent the baby.
The woman sees the elephants as a far away illusion. This would suggest that the idea of a baby is nothing more than a distant figment of her imagination. The reality of an actual living baby is not something that she either can comprehend, or doesn’t want to try to. And considering their apparent life style of traveling and trying new drinks it is not surprising that responsibility for a child would take the form of a distant illusion.
There are lots of images of division in the story. The train station is in a valley with a river running through it. This could symbolize the rift the baby is causing between the two characters. The station is set between two railroad tracks. The station could symbolize the decision that must be made. Each track is two paths that the decision will take them down, each one equal but opposite. Hemmingway seems to suggest that they have reached a point were they have to decide whether to have the baby or not, possibly before they leave that station, yet we never know if they do.
Besides the symbols, there is the realness of their conversation that helps allude to the underlying meaning of the story. The story was written in 1929, and presumably takes place in or around that year, although the date is never stated. At that time less was known about the effects of alcohol on a fetus, than is known today. So there is no way Jig could know that a pregnant woman should not drink very much alcohol. However she most certainly would be aware of the fact that drinking impairs judgment. The woman in the story not only drinks alcohol but drinks heavily. She has two beers and a very strong drink called “Anis del Toro”. If the woman was concerned for the life of her child she wouldn’t be making decisions about its future under the influence alcohol. This is evidence that her pleasure is much more important to her than the taking responsibility for a baby.
The way the man describes the abortion is nothing short of bizarre. It is very obvious from his description of the procedure that he doesn’t understand what happens during an abortion. He tells her that all they have to do is let some air into her body, and that it is very natural. If he knew how dangerous an abortion can be, and if he loved the woman as much as he says he does, he wouldn’t be so nonchalant about the operation. The woman on the other hand seems to sense that it isn’t as easy as he describes. She begs him to stop talking about it, but he continues. It is much more important to him that they take care of this as soon as possible, than it is to make his girlfriend happy.
Hemmingway uses this unusual style of sparse dialogue and imagery to convey the idea of two people very confused at the cross roads of true adulthood and responsibility. He doesn’t tell us what happens to the couple. He leaves it up to the readers to decide if the woman goes through with the abortion and how that effects their lives of travel and exotic beers, or if the couple has the baby and the man becomes a reluctant father with extreme wanderlust. Indeed, more questions have been raised than answered by the end. Such as, how pregnant is the woman and how long an abortion would still be possible. May be that was the intention of the author, to give us something to think about and take away from the piece, and hopefully encourage us to seek out the answer for our selves by only giving the thin top layer of the scene.
