An Interpretation With The Main Focus On The Woman.
In the course of my interpretation of the short story "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway I story mainly want to concentrate on the woman, especially on her feelings and longings, that can be concluded from the text, and on her behaviour in general and in particular towards the American during their dialogue. Moreover, I want to refer to descriptions of nature, which appear throughout the text. .
At the beginning of they the girl, named Jig, and the American are waiting at a little station "between two lines of rails" (l.3) for the train going to Madrid. They are sitting outside a bar in the shade and order two "cervezas" (l.16). The landscape is infertile, brown and dry (l.22), and the girl is looking off the hills, that remind her of white elephants (l.23). The mentioning of the white elephants might be the girl's way of talking about the possible abortion, which is discussed later in the story, on an abstract level. The man does not get the woman's point, drinks his beer, and answers immediately, without effort to slip in her mind (l.24). He is getting on the woman's nerves ("no, you wouldn't have", l.25), and by changing the topic she stops a discussion, which is about to start (l.27). .
The girl wants to have an "Anis del Toro", which she never drank before. This shows, that she is open to try something new, what can be seen as an allusion to her relationship, which seems somehow monotonous to her. Then, on the concrete level, she states, that "it (the drink) tastes of licorice" (l.42), and the American just answers "That's the way with everything" (l.44). Thus, the girl's bitterness and disappointment about the relationship is expressed by the words "Yes, everything tastes of licorice" (l.45). The sentence goes on ("Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe"), and leads to a little discussion ("Oh, cut it out.