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Hills Like White Elephants

HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS
In “Hills Like White Elephants”, a couple awaits a train on its way to Madrid.   It is hot, “there isn’t any shade and no trees” and the couple’s sits to discuss a situation in which they both have very different points of view and are very passionate and intense about their view.   Through the setting Ernest Hemingway is able to portray, the intensity and passion of this discussion.
The couple is in turmoil while deciding to have the baby or have an abortion.   The train station is significant because it represent neutral territory, while its tracks represent the two decisions. The tracks represent the couple, two separate people perhaps traveling in two totally separate directions and their paths may never cross.   Hemingway was able to use the landscape on each side of the track to represent the choices that face the couple.
The girl looking out to one side of the tracks could see a line of hills which were “white in the sun and the country was brown and dry” (132). This side represents abortion, land that’s barren and can’t produce life.   In contrast the   other side of the tracks “were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro” (134) which represent   life, fertility and the choice to carry the baby to term.
Beyond the choice of life and abortion, the setting represents the two different types of lives the couple desire.   It seems as though Jig is growing tired of the gypsy life, she is longing for stability and virtue that only a baby could bring.   The American on the other hand is satisfied with the gypsy life.   There is a certain freedom in only being responsible for oneself, “But I don’t want anybody but you” (134).
As the conversation continues the girls becomes frustrated and she gets us to walk to the other end of the station. Here the setting is used to show a barrier and space between the couple. She looks out and ponders again over her life now in comparison to her life with a child. In the sky the clouds are...