Hills Like White Elephants

Ambiguity is among the story’s reigning qualities. For any plot detail made explicit, there is equal or greater detail that remains unexpressed. This is most conspicuously true for the prospect of abortion, which, despite being the story’s organizing force, is never mentioned outright. Likewise, Jig’s final stance on the matter is opaque. The authorial stance, too, is ambiguous; though Hemingway’s personal politics were leftist, he was among the least openly political of Lost Generation writers, and his stories rarely submit themselves to such didacticism.

The abortion is not, however, a mere vehicle for character interaction. Such a reading would elide the story’s overarching symbolism, in which the operation is far from neutral. The story draws clear parallels, aligning childbirth with meaningfulness and connecting abortion to aimlessness. In this vein, images of fertility—like the grain fields and riverbank vegetation—suggest hope. Because the Lost Generation is the story’s socio-historical backdrop, an informed reading must also acknowledge the tacit narrative of hedonism, which implies an analogy; in this context, sex without openness to procreation may connote pleasure divorced from purpose.

Nevertheless, even with this schema of symbolism, the story ultimately imbues the operation with no categorical moral value (an unusual outlook for early 20th-century literature).