"The Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemmingway and "Metaphors" by Sylvia Plath are both used to express stories of unwanted pregnancy. Both stories tackle this topic in two very different ways. Hemmingway goes about his story in a short story format while Plath uses a nine-line poem. While complete opposites, both stories give great insight into the minds of the main characters. In Hemmingway's story the characters are sitting in a train station waiting on their train to come into the station. They are having a heated conversation about the woman's unborn child. The man wants her to abort the baby, but the woman is a little more hesitant. She is, rightfully so, a little more attached to the idea of the baby. She seems to have a possible connection with the child that the father does not seem to possess. . He basically makes the female chose him or the baby On the flip side, in Plath's poem the narrator of the poem is pregnant and is unhappy with her pregnancy. The mother to be compares herself to many unflattering things while talking about her pregnancy. She feels like she is losing herself because of this baby. After reading Sylvia Plath's "Metaphors" the reader can better sympathize with Ernest Hemmingway's "The Hills Like White Elephants'" unnamed main character's thoughts on pregnancy through their uses of negative connotations and metaphors to describe the pregnancy, the importance of the elephant in both stories, and the imagery of the train station and the road to nowhere.

 Sylvia Plath is known for writing in a bleak, unhappy manor. She is probably known for being one of the most dramatic and depressing writers in American Literature. She was known as a troubled soul, as most successful poets are, because of her suicide at just thirty years old. She had a sad outlook on the world and had tried to take her own life multiple times before her successful attempt. She took the same tone from her life and thrust it into this poem. The bulk of Plath's poem is negative views toward the pregnancy. The narrator feels like she is trapped and has no way of escaping. She starts off the poem by saying that the poem is "a riddle in nine syllables"(Plath); meaning each line of the poem is nine syllables long.  These, along with the nine lines of the poem, are symbols of the nine months of pregnancy.  The woman in the poem describes herself in a multitude of unpleasant ways. She feels that she is an ugly, large creature. She no longer feels human. She describes herself as "a ponderous house" and a "cow in calf" (Plath). She loses her sense of identity. No longer is she a person; she is just a thing housing this baby. She is there solely to give this baby food, nutrients, and shelter. The narrator feels that for her to become a mother, she must forego the person that she was and become a caregiver for this child. This was the main concern in the "Hills Like White Elephants". The man was feeling like the woman in "Metaphors". He was not ready to give up whatever is left of his youth to take care of this baby. Although he was not carrying this baby, he felt it to be more of a burden than the woman did. He was trying so hard to get rid of the baby that he kept ordering alcoholic beverages for them to drink. The woman soon became more open to the idea of the abortion, but it was for all of the wrong reasons. She was not the one being trapped by the pregnancy, the man was and he wanted to be able to leave whenever he wanted without having to worry about a child to take care of. In the phrase "'I've eaten a bag of green apples"(Plath) she is referring to the sourness that she is feeling. She is bitter about this baby. Also, she is hinting to how large her stomach actually is if she had actually eaten an entire bag of green apples. The allusion to the green apples is also a play on the story of Adam and Eve. Eve was tested by a serpent to take a bite of the forbidden fruit, often portrayed as an apple, and eventually gave in to the wishes of the serpent. When she discovered how delicious the fruit actually was, she took it to Adam and persuaded him to have a bite as well. He agreed, and they ate the forbidden fruit together. When God found out about their disobedience of his one rule, they were severely punished and kicked out of the Garden of Eden. One of the consequences of their sin was childbirth. She is trying to say that childbirth is a type of cruel punishment for her. 

Elephants make an interesting appearance in both of these pieces of writing. Cute, little cartoon elephants are often seen in baby nurseries, and can be seen as a happy time. They are made in the poem to be a bad thing. Instead of being a cute sign of a little bundle of joy coming home with her, she feels like an elephant. While made to be these cute animals printed on wallpaper, in fact they are giant, awkward creatures that really are only prized in the real world for the ivory on their tusks. In the poem the lines "An elephant," and "O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!"(Plath) are used to talk about the elephant. All of these lines reiterate her feelings of being only made to carry that baby. An elephant has been used in the Asian countries to carry heavy objects from one place to another. The elephant has tusks made of ivory. This ivory is very expensive and very valuable. Without this ivory, an elephant automatically loses some of its value. Just as if a woman does not have children she is seen as less of a woman. This pertains to "Hills Like White Elephants" because of the same elephant imagery. White elephant gift exchange is when you go to a holiday party and everyone brings a quirky gift that most likely no one will want. These gifts are traded until the very last person picks their gifts. Hemmingway is comparing having a child to a white elephant gift exchange. Generally no one wants the presents that are on the table just like the man does not want that child. The woman has no idea what she wants to do about the baby. She wants to abort it so the man will love her, but she also is starting to love the baby. While waiting for the train, they start to get into an argument about what to do about the unborn child. The woman starts off by saying 

"And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.''What did you say?''I said we could have everything.''We can have everything.''No, we can't.''We can have the whole world.''No, we can't.''We can go everywhere.''No, we can't. It isn't ours any more.''It's ours.''No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.' (Hemmingway)" 

to try and convince the father that everything would be okay. This is where the fight about the child is actually talked about directly. This is the first time that the woman is actually trying to convince the man to run away with her to start a family, but he firmly declines because he feel that they will lose their youth. He says, " Once they take it away, you never get it back. (Hemmingway)" He feels very strongly about not wanting to bring a child into this world. He is the Sylvia Plath of "Hills Like White Elephants".

Trains seem to be the main mode of transportation in these stories. This is the proffered way of transportation because they are almost completely anonymous. The other passengers have no idea who you are, where you come from, or where you are going. This seems to be freeing to the main characters in both of these stories. They both end with the passengers embarking on their journey to the unknown in search of their answers. The vagueness symbolizes the uneasiness of parenting. No one actually knows what they are doing when they are parenting a child. In "Hills Like White Elephants" it is unsure if the woman decides to go through with the pregnancy or to abort it and follow the man into the sunset to live happily ever after. In "Metaphors" it is unsure if the woman just accepts her fate or has the baby. Either way she is forced to come to terms with what is about to happen to her. She might lose herself like she thinks she will, but deep down the person that she always has been will always be there every step of the way. She is worried about losing her identity, but it can also be seen as transferring her identify from herself into her child. The child's successes will become her successes and the child's failures become her failures. This is the circle that she must come to terms with and accept if she is going to be a successful parent. If one looks at the example in the "Hills Like White Elephants", it can be seen that the father is the one who is feeling what Silvia Plath is feeling. To him, a child would be the final straw the coffin of his youth. He does not think of childbirth as a blessing, but as a curse. He sees it as the end of an era not the beginning of a new chapter in his life.  

Silvia Plath and Ernest Hemmingway both captured the essence of what women feel when they are faced with difficult decisions when it comes to pregnancy. In Plath's story the narrator was unhappy because she was pregnant. She felt like she was losing her identity within the very confines of her stomach. She was growing the thing that was causing her so much pain. In the case of the "Hills Like White Elephants" the man was trying to run from his problems, but his girlfriend would not let him. He wanted her to have the abortion, but he did not want to pressure her into doing anything that she did not want to do. He was very manipulative and tried to make it seem like her idea so she would be more inclined to do what he wanted. Plath used metaphors and negative language to get her point across in her poem. The reader had to infer what she was talking about. Breaking down this poem helped the reader to decipher what Hemmingway's short story was about. By the use of symbols it was easier to understand what both authors were trying to say in an indirect way.

