Darkness and Light in "Hills"

Jacqueline Kopp

ENG 112

2^nd Submission w/Requested Revisions

Symbols of Darkness and Light in “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway

or did she?

“I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn’t show.”

- Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway believed in writing compactly. Hemingway admired the artist Cezanne who deliberately left portions of his canvas blank believing that the audience would fill in the blanks. This short story hints at much but declares little, leaving the reader to play an active role in determining the meaning of the symbols and deciding the outcome they feel is appropriate given their own personal interpretation of the story.

For my research, I’ve chosen to interpret the symbols of darkness and light used liberally throughout the story. The first is mentioned in the title - the white elephant. Critics and commentators have relied heavily on the more traditional and American definition of a white elephant as “a rare, expensive possession that is a financial burden to maintain, something of dubious or limited value, or an article no longer wanted by its owner.” Lewis E. Weeks, Jr. noted in his essay:

“Our immediate understanding of the white elephant reference when we learn that the story’s conflict revolves around an unwanted pregnancy is probably that associated with the ubiquitous white elephant sale.”

Jeffrey Meyers places even more importance on this symbol.

“The comparison of hills with white elephants – imaginary animals that represent useless items, like the unwanted baby – is crucial to the meaning.”

I agreed with these viewpoints as representing the American’s attitude toward the unplanned pregnancy. Further investigation, however, revealed an alternate interpretation of the white elephant’s symbolism. Lewis Weeks also picked up on this duality. “…we may remember that Buddha’s mother, Mahamaya, before his birth, dreamed of a beautiful silvery white elephant”. According to Buddhist text, the white elephant represents fertility and knowledge and that in Buddha’s mother’s dream before his birth, the elephant presents her with a lotus, a symbol of purity and knowledge. When the American responds that he’s never seen one, Jig’s cutting response “No, you wouldn’t have” indicates that he would not, and clearly did not, perceive this positive connotation while also hinting that she may be more “worldly” than the American and understands the white elephant to be a symbol of blessing rather than an easily discarded unwanted object. I feel Hemingway deliberately presents this paradox of symbolic meanings to show the juxtaposition of the two main characters’ emotions about the pregnancy.

A contrast to the lightness and purity of the elephant symbol is the use of darkness and shadows in the story. Hemingway first sets the tone of shadow and darkness by describing the shadow on the side of the station where the couple chooses to sit. Although in shadow, it provides little respite from the heat and separates the couple from the other “reasonable” passengers waiting inside the bar. Their situation and the dilemma they face separate them from the rest of the world in this moment.

Shadow is used again as it passes over a field of grain while Jig contemplates what could be. I felt this was symbolic of what the abortion would mean to her fertility, possibly affecting her ability to conceive in the future. When Jig walks out of the shade to the end of the station, she’s moving away from the dark, shady situation of an unplanned pregnancy with a man she’s presumably not married to into the light of a “legitimate” life, symbolized by the fertile fields of grain and the river beyond. This prompts her comment “we could have everything”. It’s clear she wishes to keep the child and live a life filled with more than just looking at things and trying new drinks. The American calls her back into the shade and although he reassures her that he doesn’t want her to do anything she doesn’t want to do, he begins to barrage her with reassurances despite her requests that they not talk anymore.

Darkness is symbolized again with the mention of licorice. Weeks compares this to sorrow, “Color symbolism involving the blackness of licorice and the whiteness of the hills suggests the contrast between sorrow and joy as has the already mentioned contrast between the white hills and the brown, dry countryside.” “BB’s” research into absinthe and wormwood, “Wormwood was used medicinally since the Middle Ages, primarily to exterminate tapeworm infestations while leaving the human host uninjured” caused me to wonder at Jig’s comment, “like all those things you wait so long for…” It made me wonder if perhaps Jig and the American may have tried using absinthe to provoke a miscarriage and had been waiting for that to happen. Perhaps the bitterness of that failed experiment caused Jig to now perceive all alcohol as tasting of the bitter licorice.

The American’s reassurances about the operation struck me as a strange choice of words. More than once, he uses “let the air in” to describe a surgical procedure that would end a developing life. It brought to my mind images of a dark, musty room being aired out and refreshed. It was as if the American felt if they could just “air out” this little problem, their lives would return to being happy and carefree.

When the American moves the couple’s bags around the station to the other side of the tracks, he appears to be moving into the light. He cannot see the train and does not appear to know his or Jigs’s decision yet in regard to the pregnancy. Moving into the shade of the bar, symbolizing the murky and uncertain circumstances, he pauses for another drink and looks around at the “reasonable” people, perhaps wondering what it would be like to be one or perhaps feeling disdain for them because he views them as ordinary and boring.

The end of the story leaves its’ outcome purposefully unclear. Does Jig’s smile indicate her own happiness with choosing to keep the baby? Or has she decided to submit to the American’s desires and return to being “bright”? In the end, Hemingway leaves the couple where they began, in the dark with a difficult decision to make. The choice is not in the hands of the couple, but rather, in the mind of the reader.

Bibliography

Dictionary.com "white elephant."

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=white%20elephant

Hemingway, Ernest. The Paris Review. Spring 1958.

Gaillard, Theodore L., Jr. “Hemingway’s Debt to Cezanne: New Perspectives”

Twentieth Century Literature, Spring 1999

Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway A Biography pp. 196-197, Harper Row Publishers,. 1985.

Weeks, Lewis E. Jr., “Hemingway Hills: Symbolism in ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ “
In Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 17, No. 1, Winter, 1980 pp. 75-77.

This essay was posted with permission of student Jacqueline Kopp of J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in October, 2004. References to ideas of critics are from the page of summaries in this website.


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