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Surprisingly few articles and essays about Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" have been published. Fewer of them examine the characters' motivations. Among these few, there seems to be a general agreement that the American is in the relationship with the girl for sex, and that this is the reason he wants the girl to have an abortion—but none of the articles dig deeper into this vein. This situation would be fine if the American's desire for sex fully explained his actions. Close reading of the story, however, reveals that it does not. Throughout the text, Hemingway shows a man who is executing carefully crafted steps in order to convince his lover to comply with his wishes, and that this desire is ultimately of a fear of inadequacy and of middle age.
In his brief discussion of "Hills Like White Elephants," Stephen Portch devotes one paragraph to considering the implicit gaps of silence in the American and the girl's conversation (98–99). After explaining why there are most certainly stretches when the couple is silent—at the beginning, the train will arrive in forty minutes, and at the end, it will arrive in five—Portch concludes that the dialog "suggests" and the silence "confirms" that the story is one of "failed communication" (99). Since Portch makes no other remarks on the dialog than those aforementioned, it is unclear what led him to this conclusion. Not saying everything that is on the mind does not mean that one fails to communicate—nor does remaining silent for minutes at a time. Ironically, after the conclusion Portch tacks on this statement: "Hemingway ... communicates this nonverbally as well as verbally" (99). Since Hemingway as author does not outright write everything he thinks and means and remains silent on many aspects of the story, does that not mean that he too has failed to communicate? No, it does not. Likewise, "Hills Like White Elephants" is not about failure to communicate. Throughout the couple's conversation, the American says what he wants to say and the girl understands what he is saying; the girl says what she wants to say and he understands what she is saying. Even in his dismissals of what the girl says, the American does not fail to understand her—he simply chooses to disregard what she says.
It seems that what Portch sees in the story as being failed communication is, in fact, manipulated communication. The girl views their relationship as an emotionally invested one. She cares for him, and for them, and she assumes he does as well: She asks the American if he thinks that they will be "all right ... and happy" (Hemingway 73) after the abortion; if he will "be happy" and will love her (Hemingway 73) after the operation; if he will not "ever worry" (Hemingway 73) afterward. After getting positive answers to these questions, the girl declares in agreement that "everything will be fine" once she has the abortion (Hemingway 74). The American knows how she sees their relationship and capitalizes on this from the beginning of the story. When the girl says, "Let's drink beer," the American orders them immediately and without question (Hemingway 69). When the girl later asks if they can drink Anis, he orders it straightaway (Hemingway 70–71). Their discussion about white elephants (Hemingway 70–71), though sarcastic, comes across as playful banter at points, especially when they venture into licorice and absinthe and come back to the elephants. Even though the man disagrees with her remarks, he capitulates each time and plays it off. It is an odd way to build rapport, but this oddity is reduced when one considers the conversations of other couples' that one has witnessed.
Even when the American brings up the issue of the abortion, he makes sure to sprinkle his sentences with declarations of his love for her: "I love you now" (Hemingway 73), "Well, I care about you" (Hemingway 74), "I don't want any one else" (Hemingway 76). The last quote—"I don't want any one else" (Hemingway 76)—must be qualified here. In this line the American is referring to the baby in the girl's womb and is saying that he wants only her. While its implications are brutish, the man is appealing to the girl's desire for a man devoted to her. In saying that he does not want anyone else, the American is leading the girl to believe that he truly is devoted to her, that he can be, is, and will be faithful to her and there to support her. He puts on an air of submissiveness in his aforementioned acts of buying her drinks—drinks that she wants and asks for—without reservation. He echoes this when he says that he would do "anything" for the girl (Hemingway 76) and tries to further cement the idea of his devotion by carrying their bags—"the two heavy bags" (emphasis mine)—to other side of the train station (Hemingway 77).
The question that arises, then, is why does the American do all these things? He is trying to win her to his side of the argument, to convince her to have an abortion. There is a calculated carefulness in how the American frames their discussion about the abortion. He waits until they have two drinks before mentioning it; during these two drinks he engages in fairly playful banter with the girl. Once she has been warmed up with alcohol and flirting, then the American introduces what he really wants to talk about. Even then, he never quite dances around the issue, but he qualifies it every time he mentions it: "[I]f you don't want to you don't have to" (Hemingway 73); "I don't want you to do it if you don't really want to" (Hemingway 73); "I don't want you to do it if you feel that way" (Hemingway 74); "I don't want you to do anything that you don't want to do" (Hemingway 75); "I don't want you to do it if you don't want to" (Hemingway 75). He is not avoiding the issue, but he is constantly working to soften its impact. He always makes sure to tell the girl she has a say in the matter. Yet even then he inserts his own judgments on the matter: "I know it's perfectly simple" (Hemingway 73); "I think it's the best thing to do" (Hemingway 73); "I'm perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you" (Hemingway 75–76). In fact, this is how he introduces the subject of abortion: "It's really an awfully simple operation" (Hemingway 72). The American can get away with this, however, because not only is he portraying himself as a man who really loves the girl, but he is also planting the idea in the girl's mind that he wants her to have a say in the matter. By the time she has her say, though, his manipulations seem to have won her over. She is brought in line with what he wants, and her saying that she is fine (Hemingway 77) implies that she is fine because, even though the procedure will likely have a painful impact on her, she is all right going through with it. She loves the American, she thinks he loves her, and lovers make sacrifices for each other. She thinks the American has sacrificed for her, so why should she not sacrifice for him?
If the American does not actually love the girl, though, then why does he go through so much trouble to convince her to get an abortion? The immediate answer is that he wants to continue the sex life they have: "He ... looked at the bags .... There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights" (Hemingway 76). This is the reason that Scott Donaldson (139) and Alan Holder (154) reach in their respective discussions of "Hills Like White Elephants." At first, sex seems to be a satisfying answer, but it does not hold up. If the American's basis for being in the relationship is strictly sex, then could he not just leave the girl? Would he not have left her once he found out she was pregnant? Yet, interestingly enough, the American displays no desire to end the relationship. Why does he cling to the girl as his partner? The answer is deeper than sex but shallower than love: It is fear. There is quite an earnestness in the way the American makes the case for the abortion to the girl. He repeatedly states, in different manners, that: the operation is simple (three times on page 72, once on 73, once on 74, twice on 76), and that everything will work out for the better (twice on 72, three times on 73). And as previously stated, he makes sure to tell the girl that he loves her and that she knows that she should do it only if she wants to. This fear, combined with the American's string of manipulative actions and dialog, points to a deeper issue than sex.
One problem with defining the American's interest in the relationship as sex is that in doing so, one is assuming that the American will leave the girl. Why does he insist that the girl abort the baby if he is going to leave her anyway? Why has he not already left? The reasons the American gives for having the abortion and, more importantly, the way in which he states these reasons indicate that he does not want the relationship to end. This is why he has not already left, and why he is not threatening to leave. This is not to say that he is emotionally invested in the girl, nor is it to deny that his primary interest is sex, but rather, it is to point out that there is something deeper to the American's desire for the girl. In keeping with the iceberg theory that Hemingway himself championed, one must examine the text for subtle clues. If Hemingway is not going to mention sex or abortion—which is the focus of the couple's discussion—then he certainly is not going to explain or mention why the American is so adamant on staying with the girl.
Margaret Bauer, in "applying Hemingway's iceberg theory," suggests that the American is a World War I veteran suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (132). In this vein, she says, "perhaps he ... is not yet ready to resume a 'normal' life, which explains his resistance to wife and child" (133). Yet whether or not the girl is his wife, the fact is that the American already is, in a way, living a "normal" life, if "normal" is taken to imply a life lived with a set partner: For the couple to know that they have a baby on the way, they must have already been together for several months by the time the story begins. There are other issues in applying post-traumatic stress disorder to the American, but the most obvious is that nowhere in the story, whether in dialog or not, is there anything that could be construed as a hint to the American's having served in the army. Perhaps the detail of the couple's bags could be twisted to fit this—they could be seen as an allusion to the bags soldiers carry when they head off to and come back from wherever they are stationed—but nothing about the bags themselves is noted that could support the American's being a soldier. In short, this is a misapplication of the iceberg theory: Instead of reading meaning from the story, Bauer is reading meaning into it.
Looking at the dialog and the earnestness of the American's reasons, pleas, and repetitions, he is revealed to be very much insecure about and lacking confidence in himself. In part, this is merely an appearance: The American knows he is walking a thin tightrope. If he misspeaks, he will ruin any chance of continuing the relationship. The rest, though, does indeed stem from insecurity and lack of confidence; from what is not immediately clear. It is possible that the American is uncomfortable with or simply dislikes something about him, something in his appearance. But even if he is not particularly attractive, he would still likely be able to find another young woman to sleep with. He might be upset after the break-up, he might go awhile without a regular sex life, but eventually he would find another woman—because he would have time to do so. If the American is in his early to mid thirties, then he would still be able to call himself a young man and not mock himself while doing so. While one can read the story this way, this still leaves sex as the basis for the relationship and does not explain why he does not want to leave the girl.
If the American is middle aged, however, the entire scenario changes. As a man in his forties, he has a new set of concerns. Aging becomes a problem. He is passing—or perhaps has already passed—out of youth and younger years to the time of his life in which he will lose his virility. Though this is certainly not clear after the first reading of the story and does not become clear until a few more readings, there are textual hints that support this. The simplest and most consistent of these is the nouns Hemingway uses to refer to the characters. The sparseness of his style means that almost every word used must be used deliberately, especially if the word is how he refers to a character throughout a story. Hemingway could simply have used the pronoun "he" to establish that the American is male, but he chose to use the word "man." Likewise, he could have named the girl a feminine name, or simply referred to her as "she," or called her "woman," but the girl is simply "the girl." By using "girl" to refer to the girl and "man" to refer to the American, Hemingway has made a strong age distinction. He is saying the girl is younger than the American. Not only is she younger than he, but also she is young enough to see him as a man, as someone who is a good deal older than she. College-age women and women in their mid-twenties are often referred to as "girls." If she is in this age group, somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-six years of age, then for the girl to see the American as a man implies that he is more than ten years older than her, likely between fifteen and twenty years older. This would place him between thirty-seven and forty-six years of age.
Beyond the characters, though, there are several words and phrases that Hemingway uses in describing the setting in the first two pages of the story that hint to the American's age. In the very first sentence on page 69, the hills in the valley are described as being "long and white." Each of these adjectives carries its own connotation. The word "long" brings to mind the expression "long in the tooth," which is used to describe something—someone—that is "past its prime"; middle age is the period in one's life when one is said to be past one's prime, passing from youth to old age. The word "white" calls up the white hair that is indicative of old age; white hair is tied to the fading of hair, and it is in middle age that a man's hair begins to fade noticeably. If the American has started noticing grey hairs, this would likely be a concern for him.
In the second sentence of the first paragraph, Hemingway states that there is "no shade and no trees" (69) in the area. This lack of foliage is an allusion to hair loss that men experience in their middle age. Hemingway furthers this thread when he describes the part of the station that the couple is next to: He mentions a curtain that is "made of strings of bamboo beads" and has been "hung across the open door" (Hemingway 69). The open door is a hole—a blank or empty space—that is surrounded on the left, right, and top by wall. Thinking geometrically, this reflects male pattern baldness: Viewed from the top down, a man's bald scalp is the blank or empty space (the open door) in the middle of his head and is surrounded on the left, right, and top by hair (the wall). The curtain itself represents a comb-over, with the bamboo-bead strings stretching to cover the empty doorway just as hairs combed across a bare scalp cover the skin. Both do a poor job of concealing what is underneath.
At the end of the first paragraph, Hemingway mentions that the train from Barcelona—the one the American and the girl are waiting for—"would come in forty minutes" (69). Considering the deliberateness of Hemingway's word choice, even something as trivial as the amount of time before the train would arrive must be chosen carefully: When one turns forty, one is said to be entering into middle age. One's youth is finished and old age will arrive before one realizes it. The train, the story continues, will stop at the station for two minutes before it continues on to Madrid (Hemingway 69). This short amount of time reflects the fact that the American does not have much time in which he can still consider himself as having just finished the first half of his life. He is currently in a transition period, and very soon he will have to admit that he is no longer young or close to it.
On page 70, the girl looks at the hills and says they look like white elephants. What is significant to this essay is not that the girl thinks the hills look like white elephants, but rather that she says they are white. This continues the thread of old age, again bringing to mind its association with the color white. The American's response indicates that he feels as if she is teasing him about his aging, that he is almost offended by the remark. "I've never seen one," he says, and drinks his beer (Hemingway 70). This response illustrates the denial men go into when confronted with their middle age: In saying that he has never seen a white elephant, the American is saying that he does not see himself as white, as old, as aging; to do so would be to acknowledge that he can no longer consider himself almost young, and accept the fact that the first half of his life has come and gone. After this, the girl looks at the bead curtain and notices that something has been painted on it (Hemingway 70). When one paints something, one does so in order to make it look better than it did. "Painted," then, can be seen as an allusion to the lengths people will go in order to conceal their loss of their youthful appearances—such as dyeing (in a way, painting) hair that is fading.
Considering the American's age, then, his relationship with the girl is about more than sex, and it is about more than fear of being abandoned. It is about reliving his youth—or living out the youth that he did not have but wishes he did—and compensating for his coming middle (and old) age. This is not to say that sex is a small part of the couple's relationship. In fact, it likely is the main aspect: The very act of sleeping with a woman many years his junior implies that the American needs to be with a young woman to help him feel less insecure and frightened of his aging. If he can regularly sleep with a girl, he must be doing something right. Somehow he managed to initiate the relationship with the girl, and he has likely been able to continue it because he has physically pleased her, and pleased her many times. If the girl leaves him, though, the fantasy will end and the American would again be faced with the reality of his age. He would have—or is afraid that he would have—no small amount of difficulty in finding another young woman to sleep with regularly. Yet if the girl carries the baby to term, the steady sex life that the American has enjoyed will come to an end: Not only will he have to forego sex during her pregnancy, but he will also have to fight for time to have sex with the girl once the baby is born. Regardless of how seriously the American would take his responsibilities as a father, simply having the baby living with the girl at home would remind the American that he can no longer enjoy the fairly carefree lifestyle that he and the girl led prior to the baby's birth. In a sense, he would be entering adult life a second time.
Another aspect of youth that the American relives is traveling. In looking at the bags with labels from "all the hotels where they had spent nights" (Hemingway 76), he is not only thinking of their lovemaking but also of the different places they have been to. Not only is the American sleeping with a young woman but he is also taking her to countless different cities. The man and the girl are vagrants with money, seeing the world as if there were nothing else for them to do. This vagrancy also serves the purpose of masking the fact that the American is not moving quickly from one woman to another—indeed, that he cannot do so. Instead of moving between partners, he is moving between cities and countries. Were the girl to give birth to the baby, though, this traveling would likely be forced to stop—and even if the couple could still go to different places, they would either have to take the baby with them or find someone to leave it with.
Growing old is perfectly natural. The American, though, lives as if he can put it off forever. He refuses to accept that he cannot escape the fact that he is getting old already, that he will be old one day, and that before he knows it he will be dead. In observing the girl's willingness to carry their baby to term, he sees that she is ready to grow up, to take on responsibility, to settle down. He, however, cannot settle down, refuses to settle down because he will be forced to acknowledge that he is past his prime, long in the tooth, in need of hair dye and a toupee—and so he works to convince the girl to abort the baby so that he can continue living his fantasy. The American believes he has found some source of extended youth. It will be a day of weeping and gnashing of teeth for him when his body tells him otherwise.
Works Cited
Bauer, Margaret D. "Forget the Legend and Read the Work: Teaching Two Stories by Ernest Hemingway." College Literature 30.3 (2003): 124–137. Print.
Donaldson, Scott. "The Averted Gaze in Hemingway's Fiction." The Sewanee Review 111.1 (2003): 128–151. Print.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Hills Like White Elephants." Men Without Women. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955. 69–77. Print.
Holder, Alan. "The Other Hemingway." Twentieth Century Literature 9.3 (1963): 153–157. Print.
Portch, Stephen R. "Writing Without Words: A Nonverbal Approach to Reading Fiction." The Journal of General Education 34.1 (1982): 84–101. Print.
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