What are hills? They can be the top of your goals, what you are striving to achieve, or white elephants. White elephants are a rarity as much as a person achieving their dreams happily or reaching for the mountain top. One man is looking over to the Italian Alps while brewing himself some herbal tea, a lone wolf feeling nostalgic about stories from his grandparents about how they traversed the snowy white peaks for their honeymoon. Their reasons were the mountains were calling them to it and they had a sense that their new home would be down into the land surrounding the Alps (their destined place was around the Italian side of the Alps). This man inherited this land after his grandparents passed away and has been living there for forty years becoming hermit-like in nature surviving off of the land. Looking over the Alps in remembrance of his late grandparents, and their constant bickering about what the mountains’ snowy tops looked like (white elephants). The hills look like white elephants when the sunlight is shining on them and vice versa as if the earth believes in that both of them were right, in some sort of weird way to ease the old man. Underlining meanings are all over the place but every person has a different way of looking and visualizing each single thing.

Ernest Hemingway’s, “Hills Like White Elephants,” was written as a non-traditional short story about a couple bickering about the description of the white hills but not really at the same time. I chose this topic because of how well known the author is as well as the interesting title name of the story. Writing the introductory paragraph as a hypothetical story glimpse to highlight the assumption that the title would be played more into the story’s plot. The first question and sentence was to catch the reader’s attention while making him/her think about what the symbolism of hills could be. Next, the sentence about white elephants highlights how white elephants could be similar to achieving a dream or watching a marvelous sight. Then, for the sentences between the third sentence and the thesis are written in the manner of a hypothetical story to be illustrate one way of how the story could have turned out. They’re written as a glimpse of a page or less for the audience to understand that the title would be clear as day or a different outlook with references and secret meanings. Finally, the thesis was written last to clarify the points made in the introduction along with emphasizing how there are going to be meanings in every piece but it’s up to the readers themselves to learn and identify hat the meanings are to them.

Symbolism is closely related and used throughout the short story with the uses of “white elephants” and “it,” the story depicts the seemingly fateful couple as typical couples with a life-changing decision; in this case, the setting of the white snowy hills looking like white elephants brings a hint of what the actual plot is going to be about. White elephants are usually symbolized as bad omens or mistakes, which in the story is the baby that the girl is carrying who is in a dilemma figuring whether to keep “it” or not. The train station representing the story of life that you can get on and off destinations (situations) or get off the train forever to make your decision set and stone (the American man stays if the foreign girl keeps the baby). Serving beer in the train station shows what kind of time period they are in, especially with the way(s) of getting an abortion since they were illegal in the United States until 1973 with the Roe v. Wade court case. The story mostly likely takes place between 1920s-60s in Europe as most, if not all, European countries during these times where abortions were legal and the train was leaving Madrid. Observations on the objects and their placements indicate that the man was traveling there and probably had a series of lovers until he met this foreign girl who he accidentally got pregnant which leads to what fairs out in this story.

The story folds out into a shadow of what is on the outside compared to the actual meaning such as white elephants and referring to the unborn baby as “it” so they won’t have any emotion bias on whether to abort or keep the baby. This line “’I might have,’ the man said. ‘Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything,’” (527) showcasing that the man is dodging the elephant in the room as at this moment, he still considers the unborn baby as an it, an object, rather than an actual human being. Symbols are everywhere as anyone can interpret a certain meaning to themselves but it will be different to someone else, with the way that the world is in right now needs to be taken with a grain of salt as everyone won’t have the same ideas/thoughts as the next guy so people will interpret things their way while going about on their day just like the American man in the story.