“Hills Like White Elephants” (1927)

Just because the 1927 Ernest Hemingway collection is called Men Without Women doesn’t mean we’re going to get any stories without women, and here we are. The story is good, or not bad, but the values it puts out are terrible, repugnant. It’s another very short story—four printed pages—and involves a conversation between a man and a woman who are traveling together and waiting at a station for a train. They are having drinks. There is something between them—it’s likely she is pregnant and they are talking about an abortion, but the story is never explicit on the point, which is annoying. I mean, I’m pretty sure what’s going on here, but the third-person narrator is never clear enough for me. It feels stupidly coy. But it’s clear enough. He wants her to get an abortion and she doesn’t want to. She would prefer to marry but it doesn’t seem to be an option for him. All speculation on my part. This is one story where the whole “iceberg” thing goes awry. The wrong things are revealed. Too much is not disclosed. The narrator has an unexplained hostile attitude toward the woman. She is referred to as a girl and she seems to be behaving petulantly and immaturely. What the story doesn’t seem to understand at all, or at least not very well, is that this man is a jerk. The way I read it, he wants her to get an abortion and he doesn’t want her to bear his child. He obviously doesn’t care what she thinks, how she feels, or what she wants. He doesn’t want to talk about it at all. It’s infuriating to me and completely explains her behavior. Of course I have some sympathy for the guy’s position. Who among us has not wanted to eat their cake and have it too? But he is at least as petulant and immature as her. I’m not sure the story, or the narrator—or Hemingway—is aware of it. In terms of the mechanics of the story, yes, I have to admit it’s pretty good. The setting and the moment are well conceived and the story is carried by majority dialogue. It could be a one-act play. It’s poignant in its way, at least insofar as it subscribes to old school values that have arguably had their day. But it’s impossible to untangle the virtues of this story from the toxic attitudes. Somehow unfortunately this seems to happen with some frequency with Hemingway.

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
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