Hemingway Fries My Brain Once Again

     My sophomore year, I was forced to do this giant book project on Hemingway's novel The Old Man and the Sea. It included a 45 minute power point presentation that consisted solely of me trying to explain to the class every single metaphor and allusion that the good old Ernest stuffed into a seemingly short and simple  80 page book. When I saw that we were assigned to read Hills Like White Elephants, I knew that I was in for another not-so-simple read as soon as I saw who the author was. 

     This story, unlike The Old Man and the Sea...was actually kind of straight-forwards in what it meant, or at least you may think. Hemingway goes the whole time just narrating a back and forth conversation between a young girl and a man, otherwise referred to as "the American". You can't even draw the conclusion that he is her lover for a little while. But...the big question that the reader is left with is what on earth the operation is that this man keeps urging the girl to pursue. And further, we are left wondering at the end if she decided to pursue it or not. Now, I may awkwardly be WAY off in saying this, but my theory is that the operation referred to during the course of the novel is actually an abortion. The story refers to elephants a couple of times. The popular phrase an "elephant in the room" is described as when you have a situation or topic of major importance that no one wants to talk about, but the topic is there nonetheless. The baby growing inside of the poor girl's stomach is the elephant that is in the room. The American (her lover) does not wish to take responsibility for the baby, so he is pressuring her to abort it, promising that their relationship will go back to normal and he won't leave her. Obviously, seeing how weak of a human being he is just for saying this, the girl should not trust him even with that...but the rant that would ensue from this criticism of mine clearly does not belong in an English class blog. Anyhow...they also conjointly refer to the operation as "not even an operation" that "doesn't take long". Many times, abortions can be done medically rather than surgically; the woman simply takes a series of pills that kill the fetus and make her feel sick for about a week or so. So, like I said, I may be really really wrong in this theory, but that's kind of just the guess that came to mind first.

PS I was absent during class today, so I missed the discussion on this. If my theory about the hidden meaning is really really really wrong, don't judge.