Short Story Fiction

Hills Like
White Elephants
Author Year Published Original Language
Ernest Hemingway 1927 English
At a sun-drenched train station in 1920s Spain, a conversation unfolds between a couple at a turning point in their relationship. What stakes are they playing for, as they talk around and past each other over drinks? Love, which may already be lost—and perhaps a life.

THEMES & MAIN CHARACTERS

One Relationship, At a sun-drenched train station in 1920s Spain, a conversation unfolds

between a couple at a turning point in their relationship. What stakes
Two Realities are they playing for as they talk around and past each other over
drinks? Love, which may already be lost—and perhaps a life.

Communication Love

The couple talks all the time, but they Although love brought them to this
know each other well enough to talk impasse, it means something very
around things, never directly different to each of them.
discussing what’s at stake.

The Girl (“Jig”)

Pregnant girl; realizes things

can never return to the way
they once were

Gender

Though they are sitting at

the same table—and in the
The American same relationship—the man
Young, confident traveler; and the girl experience the
trying to be rational world very differently.

Hills Like White

Elephants
by the Numbers
Symbols

0
Characters called
by their given
White Elephants name in “Hills Like
White Elephants”
Symbolize the rare and
sacred but possibly
unwanted gift of pregnancy

2
Times “Hills Like
White Elephants” was
published in 1927

7
Light & Darkness
Times Jig says
Represents the division “please” during her
between the characters’ final plea not to talk
worlds and the choice the
girl has to make

40
Minutes until the train
arrives at the station
at the start of “Hills
Railroad Tracks
Like White Elephants”
Symbolize the characters’
paths in life

Author

ERNEST HEMINGWAY
1899–1961

Known for his concise style,

Hemingway was one of
America’s great fiction writers.
His work, like “Hills Like White
Elephants,” often drew on his
experiences in Spain and his
understanding of humanity to
address what it means to be a
man and to act ethically.

nd we could have all this,”

she said. “And we could
have everything and every day we
make it more impossible.”
Narrator

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hemingway Hills: Symbolism

in ‘Hills Like White Elephants’” by Lewis E. Weeks Jr., NobelPrizes.org

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