Communication is Love

You sit at a table with the one you love. There is a problem in your relationship that you know threatens to destroy everything you have together. You know that if you talk about it your relationship could fall apart because of your opposing views. But if you let it go and ignore it the problem might become inevitably worse than if you just discussed it in the first place. So all you and your significant other have managed to do is scratch the surface and avoid real conversation about this dilemma and time is running out. This could be the death of love. This is exactly the the subject of Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants”. Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants” suggests that couples have difficulties communicating when a situation threatens to permanently change their lives.       

  

            In this short story, Hemingway opens with an american couple sitting at a table outside a train station in rural spain during the 1920’s. They are drinking beers and waiting for a train to madrid. The couple are indulging in light small talk but the conversation quickly segues into something of a much more serious nature. The man starts this new topic by telling the woman that “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig” (Hemingway 690). For the next sixty or so lines the man and woman bicker over an issue that is never revealed to the reader. The remainder of the short story, which is about five lines, consists of the man getting the bags and taking them to the other side of the station in preparation for the train which he is told, by the waitress, will be arriving in five minutes. Then he goes into the bar and has a drink before returning to his girlfriend. When he returns to the patio and she smiles at him. He asks if she is feeling better and with the last sentence she responds “There’s nothing wrong with me, I feel fine” (Hemingway 692). 

Throughout the piece there are many ways Hemingway proposes the theme of communication, namely characterization, symbolism, and tone. The characterization conveys the theme by presenting the man and the woman as relaxed and uncaring. As the story goes on though they seem to become more and more uneasy. When the woman describes the hills through the trees as looking like white elephants the speaker is symbolizing the couple’s unborn child. The tone of the story is one of reserved uncertainty and steadily increasing desperation and uneasiness. This conveys the theme by demonstrating the couple’s lake of real communication.

            The dialogue of the characters is the main attribute of characterization in this piece. We get to know the couple by what they say, not by a detailed description. The speaker does not even tell us what they look like. Yet if you read carefully, by the end of the story you feel like you know the man and woman relatively well. The dramatic shifts in conversation and toward the end, the woman’s determination to not carry the conversation any further are our best indications to the theme of communication. The fact that they are having a laid back conversation about their general surroundings and all of a sudden the man says “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig” (Hemingway 690) gives us a really clear indication that something isn’t right about this seemingly normal couple. for the first five lines of this new topic the man holds a monopoly on the conversation and the woman is hanging her head, looking at the ground. This suggests that they have had this conversation before and it was not resolved, adding to the theme of communication. For awhile the girl seems to rely on the man to carry the exchange. She is asking him if they will be okay if she has the abortion and he is reassuring her that they will be fine and everything will go back to the way it was before she got pregnant. Then at line fifty nine the girl says “Then i’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me” (Hemingway 690), speaking about the abortion. The man goes on to say that he doesn’t want her to have the operation if she is just doing it to make him happy. This chunk of dialogue, lines forty two through sixty nine, are a very strong indicator to a severe lack of real communication between the man and woman. A lot of this dialogue is very redundant with the woman asking if they will be okay and the man saying they will be. They never ask each other what they want and why, and they don’t weigh out the consequences. So they end up just talking instead of actually communicating. The same process starts again at line seventy one. The girl looks toward the mountains and says “And we could have all this” (Hemingway 691), referring to the world. The man then says “We can have everything” (Hemingway 691). For the next ten lines the couple have a very meaningless exchange of no we can’t, yes we can that just seems to upset the girl. On line eighty six the man says “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do---” (Hemingway 691) and then she says “Nor that isn’t good for me, I know.” (Hemingway 691). This exchange tells us that she wants to get deeper into the conversation and talk about both of their wants and needs but all he is doing is saying he doesn’t want her to if she doesn’t want to, which effectively gets them no where, which again ties the dialogue back to the theme of a lack of communication. This also gives us a clue that they have had this conversation before because she was able to cut him off and finish his sentence. On line ninety eight the woman effectively ends the exchange by saying “Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?” (Hemingway 691). This sentence marks the end of the conversation. She is contributing to the lack of communication by refusing to open up and talk about what she really wants. From lines forty two to ninety eight both of the characters says a lot but none of it amounts to anything. He says she shouldn’t get the abortion if she doesn’t want to; she says she will get the abortion if he wants her to. Neither character wants to be selfish or make the other upset. So they spend the majority of the  piece talking but not communicating.

            The most important symbol in “Hills like White Elephants” are the hills that the woman sees through the trees. The woman is sitting at the table, drinking her beer, and looking at the hills in the distance when she says “They look like white elephants” (Hemingway 689). A white elephant is an idiom for a precious possession that is financially burdensome. In the case of the short story, the hills symbolize the man and woman’s unborn child. The couple is afraid of the uncertainty of their future and they know that getting an abortion is a huge decision. On the one hand they are afraid of the responsibility of taking care of a child. On the other hand they are afraid what might happen to their relationship if they do get an abortion. They feel that if they do get the abortion they might be damaged physically and emotionally. All of these things together contribute to the theme of Communication. Because of all their misgivings they avoid the situation by not devoting themselves to a conversation aimed at resolving the issue.

            The tone of the story is one of reserved uncertainty and increasing desperation and uneasiness. The story starts with the couple having a relaxing drink while they are waiting for their train. It is easy to discern this relaxed environment because they are commenting on the weather “It’s pretty hot” (Hemingway 689), and observing their surrounding “The girl looked at the bead curtain” (Hemingway 689). Although the conversation escalades quickly, there is a feeling of ease throughout the story. None of the character’s dialogue is rushed, angry, or packed with too much emotion. Even one of the most serious lines in the story, line eighty one “No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back” (Hemingway 691), does not have a resentful feeling to it, it is almost playful. However, you can tell by the dialogue that both characters are trying to reassure not only each other but themselves by saying things like “I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it”. (Hemingway 690). This mixed feeling of ease and uncertainty demonstrates that they are trying to feel relaxed and act like everything is normal because they don’t want to face the real problem so they bypass it with self reassurance. By the end of the conversation about the abortion there is more of a feeling of desperation and uneasiness. The woman wants the man to engage her in an exchange that will have meaningful dialogue instead of just words. She demonstrates this by cutting him off and finishing his sentences, she is tired of the same old exchange of words. The man is uneasy because as the conversation progresses he is losing the ability to reassure her that everything will be okay. He is worried because she isn’t satisfied with his same responses anymore and he may have to start a conversation with some substance. She wants real communication but is afraid to engage it and he is afraid of a real conversation because he does not want the responsibility of a child.

            The theme of this Short story is that couples have a hard time communicating when it comes to issues they know could ruin everything. Through the use of characterization, symbolism, and tone, Ernest Hemmingway was able to build a perfect example of a couple avoiding things that they should really be addressing. Hemingway was able to keep the mood of the story light but by doing so he actually asserted the theme even more because this dilemma isn’t something that should be taken lightly. If you ever find yourself in a situation with someone you care about that could ruin everything, don’t turn your back, take it head on.