Hills Like Elephant

 

Short fiction named "Hills Like Elephant" written by Earnest Hemingway. The story involves two lovers sitting at a station waiting for a train while having drinks and wandering around. Their conversation indicates that the girl is pregnant and they are arguing over taking a decision over whether or not they should go through an abortion. The mention of white elephant is used as a metaphor to describe a burden to the guy. It represents that the couple is skeptic in having to face the complex situation standing in front of them. The writer attempts to identify the unspoken factors that the writer hid in the words.

In the whole story we see the guy talking in two directions. The girl however, does not still seem to be convinced. She reflects his desires but in a passive aggressive way- "I'll do it because I don't care about me" The writer has left a number of signs about that. This represents how a portion of our society, especially the men thinks of having a family as an obligation to their freedom. On the other hand, the girl wants to be settled down a little bit to make their relation stronger. To her, this is the happiness.

The story shows us how girls and boys play a very stereotypic role in their relationship. The guy in the story clearly puts layers over layers on his unwillingness to lose his freedom with reasons like the abortion being easy, his love being constant and their satisfaction in this relationship being the same. Besides, they also highlighted how men often see having serious responsibilities as a rock on the free road. "The man's insistence that the abortion is the simplest and most reasonable thing to do is at direct odds with the girl's feelings about her pregnancy" says author. While the man sees an abortion as a chance to return to their former easygoing, pleasure-seeking relationship, the girl is doubtful and resistant.

The couple would have to build a home of their own. The man very definitively doesn't want to "settle down" in this way. In a sense, he thinks that the pregnancy is something they can just leave behind the way they would leave a hotel they'd already stayed in.

 

 

Comments

  1. RickyDecember 20, 2020 at 9:05 AM

    Good blog post.

    I enjoyed your blog post. You really explained this dilemma quite well. I liked how you said, "... a portion of our society, especially the men thinks of having a family as an obligation to their freedom," which I believe speaks to many. Unlike women, men tend to see settling down as giving up their freedom. This story definitely touches on that because it seems that the American man already had made up his mind even before the conversation took off. Also, as you said, "he thinks that the pregnancy is something they can just leave behind the way they would leave a hotel they'd already stayed in," speaks to this and just how unwilling he is to keep the baby. He sees it as easy as an operation.

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