"Hills Like White Elephants" by Earnest Hemingway is a short story about the American and Jig's lack of good communication. One would not understand the true meaning of this story without examining the symbolism used by the author. The story begins with a description of the setting. There were long hills, a train station, a bar, and a beaded curtain. At this point in the story, I thought that Hemingway was just trying to start another tale of his. Little did I know he was showing me, the reader, how important the setting is by talking about it first. I learned that I had to examine every physical part of the scenery to understand the story. From the beginning of "Hills Like White Elephants" to the very end, Hemingway uses the various aspects of the setting as symbols to reveal things about the American, the Jig, and them as a couple.
While waiting for their train, the man and woman sat outside the bar that was next to the train station. They passed the time by drinking, and the woman was observing the scenery at the same time. Jig mentions to her boyfriend "they [the hills] look like white elephants" (758). A white elephant is something that is useless. Jig is pregnant. The American boyfriend does not want her to have the baby. If she were to have the baby, it would change his lifestyle. Thus, the baby would be a white elephant to the man. This is when I learned that there is symbolism in the setting. In this case, it was in the landscape of the countryside of Spain. This is the most obvious case in the story, and it foreshadows that there is more to come.
The bar in Spain that the American and Jig are sitting at is also symbolic. Hemingway mentions in the first paragraph "the American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, next to a table outside the building [the bar]" (757). He purposefully does not indicate what country the girl is from. To clarify, Hemingway is showing the reader the boyfriend's supremacy over her.