Book Reports / Help on revision for "Hills Like White Elephants" [2]

"Hills Like White Elephants" The narrator and Jig face the literally "unspeakable" possibility of having a child. Discuss the symbolic use of white elephants in the story and how this symbolism reveals their complex reaction to this unplanned pregnancy and the consequences it threatens/promises to have on their current lives. I discussed in class that this author belonged to the so-called "Lost Generation" of writers who wrote in the aftermath of The Great War (WWI). How do the characters and their plight echo the culture in which the Lost Generation?

"Hills like White Elephants": "and once they take it away, you never get it back"

"Hills like White Elephants" encompasses an entire generation into one short story. Both Jig and the American epitomize a disillusioned generation that the Great War harrowed and destroyed. Their struggle parallels a struggle most everyone feels: disillusionment and worry. Hemingway employs the white elephant to describe Jig and the American's conundrum while ultimately describing a disillusioned Lost Generation.

Hemingway symbolically utilizes the white elephant as a metaphor for the unborn baby and to describe Jig and the American's lives. The baby, fragile yet cumbersome, proves through the dialogue to be their current carefree lives' bane. While waiting at the simultaneously figurative and literal junction, "which was a station between two rails in the sun" (611), the two discuss the fetus in terms of the hills beyond their table. They are in the dry, hilly parts of Cataluńa "white in the sun and the country. . . brown and dry (612)." Jig, pregnant and scared, anxiously awaits not only their fate as a couple but also the baby's fate. Here the two must decide if the merits of settling down outweigh its negatives. The white elephant metaphor parallels their view of Jig's pregnancy: the elephant while precious and beautiful, carries a great burden to the owner often times outweighing its superficial benefit. While discussing a possible abortion, the American cynically states that "they just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural" (613).This nonchalant statement reflects the American's personal beliefs in regards to life. Having undergone the world's most devastating war, the American rightfully justifies his attitude and position. In addition, his knowledge and the carefree explanation and proposal leads one to believe that he, too, has seen how quickly life passes to death perhaps through his own war and abortion experiences. Jig proves to be the American's foil reflecting how the American once was not too many years before and all that he has lost through time's passage. While Hemingway employs the white elephant to describe a perhaps undesirable pregnancy, this story has a definitive context within its time period.

Hemingway's works especially during the 1920's personified the battle scarred, shell-shocked "Lost Generation." Those who came out of World War I alive witnessed the corporal death of millions while experiencing and dealing with the emotional and spiritual deaths of millions more. Once the war finished many could not go back to their former lives. Consequently, a generation of bourgeois Americans and Europeans whom the war did not ruin, made a life on the run, going from country to country, train stop to train stop to never have to experience a stable life's tragedies and devastations. This pretext serves to better explain Jig and the American's situation. The two move from place to place for perhaps the same reasons and now that a pregnancy confronts them, the whole lifestyle they have clung to possibly could come to a halt. As Jig rightfully laments "no, it isn't [ours]. And once they take it away, you never get it back" (614), the reader intuitively comprehends that once a person loses his or her innocence such as experiencing an abortion or dealing with the pains of war, one can never can experience life as before nor act as nothing has happened. At this point, Jig has truly experienced losing her innocence upon confronting the harsh realities of life: all at once she realizes that she may lose her partner and the frivolous lifestyle she has led. Through her personal experience with the American, Jig witnesses first hand that the American can never live the life she desires: the American's enthusiastically appeals to Jig, "we can have everything and "it's our's" (614). His ardent pleas only reaffirm Jig's disillusionment as she passively agrees while simultaneously realizing how empty she feels inside that not even her partner shares her feelings. So while she remains seated, and he crosses the tracks, one infers that he has made the decision to live on the other side of the tracks, always on the run while Jig still clings to a stable life fraught with possible misfortunes and woes. While this story pertains to a segment of American history, it still applies to modern times.

Hemingway employs the white elephant to describe an undesirable pregnancy while describing an entire generation and consequently current ones. The white elephant parallels the era's sentiments, and the overall disregard for past customs and traditions. Similarly today, many people disregard convention and put of getting married and having children until later in life to avoid feeling stuck or tied down too quickly. While the Twenties have passed, many traditions remain such as dating: invented to curtail courtship's and marriage's ties. The author certainly achieves his goal of calling out our persistent weaknesses as a society and making them parallel the story.