A Biographical Analysis of "Hills like White Elephants"

The "Roaring Twenties" were a time of great excess and self-indulgence. It was quite common for wealthy socialites of the day who became bored with the United States to pull up stakes and move to Europe on a whim. Among these expatriates was a young author named Ernest Hemingway. In 1926, shortly after completing his novel The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway wrote "Hills Like White Elephants," a short story dealing with an expatriate couple in Spain faced with an unplanned pregnancy ("Hills"). The male character in "Hills Like White Elephants" wants the female character, referred to as Jig, to get an abortion because a baby would complicate their frivolous lifestyle. However, Jig appears reluctant to go through with the procedure. In "Hills Like White Elephants," Hemingway strongly manifests through the male character, whose main concern in life is seeing the world and drinking new drinks, and Jig is representative of the contempt Hemingway felt towards women and other forces in his life that impeded his wanderlust.

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, a conservative suburb of Chicago, in 1899. Later in his life, Hemingway wrote that Oak Park was a town of "wide lawns and narrow minds." During Hemingway's childhood, his mother was determined to turn Ernest into a musician. Ernest was not overly interested in music, however, and he "suffered" through the various musical practices his mother forced him to take part in.. Like most boys would be, he was much more interested in hunting and fishing, activities introduced to him by his father. By the time Hemingway graduated from high school in 1917, America was involved in World War One, and Ernest looked at military service as the perfect way to get out of Oak Park. (Wilson)

However, Hemingway encountered a hurdle when he tried to enlist in the army. Doctors determined that his vision was too poor in his left eye for duty, so he was deferred. Although it would be unfair to blame her for this, Hemingway's mother also had poor eyesight, and he most likely inherited it from her. Still looking for an excuse to leave home, Hemingway learned that the Red Cross was accepting volunteer ambulance drivers, and he left for Europe in April of 1918. Ernest was in Europe for only a little while, returning home in 1919, but his experiences abroad made mundane life in Oak Park seem even more unbearable. (Wilson)

Fortunately for Hemingway, he soon found literary success and married Hadley Richardson, who brought with her a comfortable trust fund. The couple decided to move to Paris in 1921. Two years later, just when Ernest Hemingway was beginning to make a name for himself as a writer, Hadley became pregnant, and Hemingway had to put his career on hold so the couple could travel back to North America where the hospitals and doctors were preferable at the time. The Hemingway family was able to move back to Paris in 1924, but a few years later, around the same time "Hills Like White Elephants" was written, Ernest and Hadley's marriage began to disintegrate, and the couple divorced in 1927. Interestingly enough, the title of the book in which "Hills Like White Elephants" was published was Men Without Women. (Wilson)

The man in "Hills Like White Elephants" did have a woman, but he may have wished that he didn't. Three years after a baby postponed his career, Hemingway wrote a story about a man whose lifestyle is threatened by a pregnancy. Throughout the story it is quite evident that the man wants Jig to go through with an abortion procedure, even though he uses language that makes it seem like he values her say in the matter. "If you don't want to you don't have to. I wouldn't have you do it if you didn't want to. But I know it's perfectly simple," he says, at first telling her that he is leaving her in control of her decision, but then trying to sway Jig by telling her how easy it would be to abort (Hemingway, 133). Along with never detailing any alternative options to an abortion, the man orders his pregnant girlfriend drinks, thus showing that he doesn't care about the baby's health. The man's number one priority seems to be his enjoyment, but the man at least appears to exhibit a gentlemanly stoicism characteristic of Hemingway, who once stated that "courage is grace under pressure" ("QuoteDB").

Jig, however, is the one that blurts out "let's drink beer," seeming to lack the composure of her male counterpart (132). Through the character Jig, Hemingway created a woman who played mind games through her language. She mentions that the hills "look like white elephants" (132). While this remark appropriately describes her unplanned pregnancy, she could also be referring to the hills. Webster defines the term "white elephant" as meaning "an object no longer of value to its owner but of value to others"("white"). Jig no longer values the hills, which are representative of the couple's spontaneous and nomadic life, but this same symbol would be of great importance to the man. Later on in the story, Jig rescinds her previous comment, saying that "they're lovely hills," and "they don't really look like white elephants" (133). In doing so, Jig appears to be speaking either sarcastically or being even more flighty and confused about her situation. Also, many of her remarks sound bitter and melodramatic. Three times during the story she repeats the line "I don't care about me" (134). This seems like a strategy to persuade the man to pity her and make him realize that he doesn't care enough for her.

After going through the lead-up to a divorce, Hemingway would be very familiar with the bickering between a couple that has fallen out of love. He also would have had experience in dealing with his mother's techniques of persuasion, going back to those musical lessons that he so loathed. Critic Frederick Busch writes that women in Hemingway's stories quite often "seem to be projections of male needfulness" (Busch). Therefore, Hemingway was a bit of a sexist on today's standards, in that he treated women as extensions of men; and in the case of the man in "Hills Like White Elephants," the extension was an anchor.

Aside from the woman as an anchor theme, another aspect of Hemingway's personality surfaces in "Hill's Like White Elephants." At one point, Jig comments "that's all we do, isn't it-look at things and try new drinks?" (133). Much like his drinking buddy and fellow expatriate F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway tried his share of new drinks in his life, and his alcoholism contributed to his eventual suicide (Wilson). Another interesting thing to look at in the story is the "cliffhanger" ending. The story concludes with neither character revealing their intentions. Hemingway's life was at a very uncertain point when the story was written. The future of his marriage would have been bleak, and Hemingway did not yet know whether his days of happiness were coming to an end or if a new leg of his life's journey would soon begin.

In general, aspects of authors tend to seep into their work, and Hemingway is an extreme example. From being a trapped artist in Oak Park, Illinois, to being trapped in an unhappy marriage, Hemingway was able to channel some of his wandering spirit into his literature, but unfortunately he also found the negative outlet of alcohol, and Hemingway had trouble finding happiness through the rest of his life. His volatile relationships with women served as painful inspiration for "Hills Like White Elephants." As Hemingway scholar M. Wilson writes "when you want to find the truth about Hemingway's life, look first to his fiction" (Wilson)

Sources

Busch, Frederick. "Reading Hemingway Without Guilt." The New York Times on the Web.

Hemingway, Ernest. "Hills Like White Elephants." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, Kelly J. Mays. 9^th Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. 132-135

"Hills Like White Elephants Summary / Study Guide." Enotes.com

QuoteDB.

"white elephant." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

Wilson, M. The Hemingway Resource Center. Ed. M Wilson.