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 boyfrie

I did not realize this until I went through the story, found my own symbols, and then looked at that first paragraph once again. That was when I finally made the connection. That first paragraph was like a list of items that I was to find in a scavenger hunt, and I found them all. “Hills Like White Elephants” is an excellent example of how a setting full of nonliving things can be used to symbolize things that only humans can experience.

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. She is pregnant, and they both know that there is a baby on the way. Drinking alcohol is the last thing that she should be doing. He has so much power over Jig, as implied by the author, that he has convinced her to wait for the train near the bar and drink with him even though it could harm the baby.

Hemingway also uses the actual train station, another part of the setting, as a symbol. The author tells us “the station was between two lines of rails in the sun” (757). This train station, between Barcelona and Madrid, symbolizes the decision that can change the direction of their lives that must be made after the story ends. If they choose to keep the baby (which is highly unlikely because she would have to fight for her own beliefs against her lover) they would be on a different track for the rest of their lives. If they choose to abort the baby, then they would hop on their scheduled train ride and stay on the track their life is traveling on now. But at the moment that is captured in the story, the couple sits in the middle because they have not made that choice yet. Hemingway shows again that the Ame

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