There are two central characters in Hemingway’s short story Hills Like White Elephants. A nameless American man and woman converse at a table over beers and Anis del Toro at a train station somewhere between Barcelona and Madrid. The setting is hot, sparse, and somewhat exotic with painted bamboo bead room separations and a somewhat mysterious female barkeep. There are hills in the distance and treeless train tracks and the station. This setting serves to reinforce the theme which regards the current state of the relationship between the man and woman. Like the “white elephants” of the title and like the resemblance of the hills to white elephants, so, too, the relationship has become metaphorically something of a white elephant. This is exhibited by the constant references of the female to wanting their relationship to go back to a more pleasant, romantic time “But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?” (Hemingway 173). It is also expressed by the fact that before rejoining the female at the end of the tale, the man stops for a drink by himself in an outer bar.
What appears to be a stumbling point the relationship between the two central characters is some kind of “awfully simple operation”, a topic that takes up most of their discussion in the bar (Hemingway 172). The “operation” is never named. Both male and female take a different attitude toward the operation. He sees it as “perfectly simple” and she views it as a bargaining chip to get their relationship on more solid footing. We can only surmise that the “simple operation” is more than likely an abortion. It appears as if they have been consumed by this and their relationship has suffered as a consequence “That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy” (Hemingway 172). Perhaps one ni
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