Matt Matrisciano

22 April 2011

Maybe he’s compensating for something:

Manipulation, age, and insecurity in
Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”
Surprisingly few articles and essays about Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills
Like White Elephants” have been published. Fewer of them examine the

characters’ motivations. Among these few, there seems to be a general

agreement that the American is in the relationship with the girl for sex, and
that this is the reason he wants the girl to have an abortion—but none of the
articles dig deeper into this vein. This situation would be fine if the
American’s desire for sex fully explained his actions. Close reading of the
story, however, reveals that it does not. Throughout the text, Hemingway
shows a man who is executing carefully crafted steps in order to convince his
lover to comply with his wishes, and that this desire is ultimately of a fear of
inadequacy and of middle age.
In his brief discussion of “Hills Like White Elephants,” Stephen
Portch devotes one paragraph to considering the implicit gaps of silence in
the American and the girl’s conversation (98–99). After explaining why there
are most certainly stretches when the couple is silent—at the beginning, the
train will arrive in forty minutes, and at the end, it will arrive in five—Portch
concludes that the dialog “suggests” and the silence “confirms” that the story
is one of “failed communication” (99). Since Portch makes no other remarks
on the dialog than those aforementioned, it is unclear what led him to this
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conclusion. Not saying everything that is on the mind does not mean that one
fails to communicate—nor does remaining silent for minutes at a time.
Ironically, after the conclusion Portch tacks on this statement: “Hemingway
. . . communicates this nonverbally as well as verbally” (99). Since Hemingway
as author does not outright write everything he thinks and means and remains
silent on many aspects of the story, does that not mean that he too has failed
to communicate? No, it does not. Likewise, “Hills Like White Elephants” is
not about failure to communicate. Throughout the couple’s conversation, the
American says what he wants to say and the girl understands what he is
saying; the girl says what she wants to say and he understands what she is
saying. Even in his dismissals of what the girl says, the American does not fail
to understand her—he simply chooses to disregard what she says.
It seems that what Portch sees in the story as being failed
communication is, in fact, manipulated communication. The girl views their
relationship as an emotionally invested one. She cares for him, and for them,
and she assumes he does as well: She asks the American if he thinks that they
will be “all right . . . and happy” (Hemingway 73) after the abortion; if he will
“be happy” and will love her (Hemingway 73) after the operation; if he will not
“ever worry” (Hemingway 73) afterward. After getting positive answers to
these questions, the girl declares in agreement that “everything will be fine”
once she has the abortion (Hemingway 74). The American knows how she
sees their relationship and capitalizes on this from the beginning of the story.
When the girl says, “Let’s drink beer,” the American orders them immediately
and without question (Hemingway 69). When the girl later asks if they can

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drink Anis, he orders it straightaway (Hemingway 70–71). Their discussion

about white elephants (Hemingway 70–71), though sarcastic, comes across as
playful banter at points, especially when they venture into licorice and
absinthe and come back to the elephants. Even though the man disagrees
with her remarks, he capitulates each time and plays it off. It is an odd way to
build rapport, but this oddity is reduced when one considers the
conversations of other couples’ that one has witnessed.
Even when the American brings up the issue of the abortion, he makes
sure to sprinkle his sentences with declarations of his love for her: “I love you
now” (Hemingway 73), “Well, I care about you” (Hemingway 74), “I don’t
want any one else” (Hemingway 76). The last quote—“I don’t want any one
else” (Hemingway 76)—must be qualified here. In this line the American is
referring to the baby in the girl’s womb and is saying that he wants only her.
While its implications are brutish, the man is appealing to the girl’s desire for
a man devoted to her. In saying that he does not want anyone else, the
American is leading the girl to believe that he truly is devoted to her, that he
can be, is, and will be faithful to her and there to support her. He puts on an
air of submissiveness in his aforementioned acts of buying her drinks—drinks
that she wants and asks for—without reservation. He echoes this when he says
that he would do “anything” for the girl (Hemingway 76) and tries to further
cement the idea of his devotion by carrying their bags—“the two heavy bags”
(emphasis mine)—to other side of the train station (Hemingway 77).
The question that arises, then, is why does the American do all these
things? He is trying to win her to his side of the argument, to convince her to

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have an abortion. There is a calculated carefulness in how the American

frames their discussion about the abortion. He waits until they have two
drinks before mentioning it; during these two drinks he engages in fairly
playful banter with the girl. Once she has been warmed up with alcohol and
flirting, then the American introduces what he really wants to talk about.
Even then, he never quite dances around the issue, but he qualifies it every
time he mentions it: “[I]f you don’t want to you don’t have to” (Hemingway
73); “I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to” (Hemingway 73); “I
don’t want you to do it if you feel that way” (Hemingway 74); “I don’t want
you to do anything that you don’t want to do” (Hemingway 75); “I don’t want
you to do it if you don’t want to” (Hemingway 75). He is not avoiding the
issue, but he is constantly working to soften its impact. He always makes sure
to tell the girl she has a say in the matter. Yet even then he inserts his own
judgments on the matter: “I know it’s perfectly simple” (Hemingway 73); “I
think it’s the best thing to do” (Hemingway 73); “I’m perfectly willing to go
through with it if it means anything to you” (Hemingway 75–76). In fact, this
is how he introduces the subject of abortion: “It’s really an awfully simple
operation” (Hemingway 72). The American can get away with this, however,
because not only is he portraying himself as a man who really loves the girl,
but he is also planting the idea in the girl’s mind that he wants her to have a
say in the matter. By the time she has her say, though, his manipulations seem
to have won her over. She is brought in line with what he wants, and her
saying that she is fine (Hemingway 77) implies that she is fine because, even
though the procedure will likely have a painful impact on her, she is all right

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going through with it. She loves the American, she thinks he loves her, and
lovers make sacrifices for each other. She thinks the American has sacrificed
for her, so why should she not sacrifice for him?
If the American does not actually love the girl, though, then why does
he go through so much trouble to convince her to get an abortion? The
immediate answer is that he wants to continue the sex life they have: “He . . .
looked at the bags . . . . There were labels on them from all the hotels where
they had spent nights” (Hemingway 76). This is the reason that Scott
Donaldson (139) and Alan Holder (154) reach in their respective discussions of
“Hills Like White Elephants.” At first, sex seems to be a satisfying answer,
but it does not hold up. If the American’s basis for being in the relationship is
strictly sex, then could he not just leave the girl? Would he not have left her
once he found out she was pregnant? Yet, interestingly enough, the American
displays no desire to end the relationship. Why does he cling to the girl as his
partner? The answer is deeper than sex but shallower than love: It is fear.
There is quite an earnestness in the way the American makes the case for the
abortion to the girl. He repeatedly states, in different manners, that: the
operation is simple (three times on page 72, once on 73, once on 74, twice on
76), and that everything will work out for the better (twice on 72, three times
on 73). And as previously stated, he makes sure to tell the girl that he loves her
and that she knows that she should do it only if she wants to. This fear,
combined with the American’s string of manipulative actions and dialog,
points to a deeper issue than sex.

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One problem with defining the American’s interest in the relationship

as sex is that in doing so, one is assuming that the American will leave the girl.
Why does he insist that the girl abort the baby if he is going to leave her
anyway? Why has he not already left? The reasons the American gives for
having the abortion and, more importantly, the way in which he states these
reasons indicate that he does not want the relationship to end. This is why he
has not already left, and why he is not threatening to leave. This is not to say
that he is emotionally invested in the girl, nor is it to deny that his primary
interest is sex, but rather, it is to point out that there is something deeper to
the American’s desire for the girl. In keeping with the iceberg theory that
Hemingway himself championed, one must examine the text for subtle clues.
If Hemingway is not going to mention sex or abortion—which is the focus of
the couple’s discussion—then he certainly is not going to explain or mention
why the American is so adamant on staying with the girl.
Margaret Bauer, in “applying Hemingway’s iceberg theory,” suggests
that the American is a World War I veteran suffering post-traumatic stress
disorder (132). In this vein, she says, “perhaps he . . . is not yet ready to resume
a ‘normal’ life, which explains his resistance to wife and child” (133). Yet
whether or not the girl is his wife, the fact is that the American already is, in a
way, living a “normal” life, if “normal” is taken to imply a life lived with a set
partner: For the couple to know that they have a baby on the way, they must
have already been together for several months by the time the story begins.
There are other issues in applying post-traumatic stress disorder to the
American, but the most obvious is that nowhere in the story, whether in

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dialog or not, is there anything that could be construed as a hint to the

American’s having served in the army. Perhaps the detail of the couple’s bags
could be twisted to fit this—they could be seen as an allusion to the bags
soldiers carry when they head off to and come back from wherever they are
stationed—but nothing about the bags themselves is noted that could support
the American’s being a soldier. In short, this is a misapplication of the iceberg
theory: Instead of reading meaning from the story, Bauer is reading meaning
into it.
Looking at the dialog and the earnestness of the American’s reasons,
pleas, and repetitions, he is revealed to be very much insecure about and
lacking confidence in himself. In part, this is merely an appearance: The
American knows he is walking a thin tightrope. If he misspeaks, he will ruin
any chance of continuing the relationship. The rest, though, does indeed stem
from insecurity and lack of confidence; from what is not immediately clear. It
is possible that the American is uncomfortable with or simply dislikes
something about him, something in his appearance. But even if he is not
particularly attractive, he would still likely be able to find another young
woman to sleep with. He might be upset after the break-up, he might go
awhile without a regular sex life, but eventually he would find another
woman—because he would have time to do so. If the American is in his early
to mid thirties, then he would still be able to call himself a young man and not
mock himself while doing so. While one can read the story this way, this still
leaves sex as the basis for the relationship and does not explain why he does
not want to leave the girl.

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If the American is middle aged, however, the entire scenario changes.

As a man in his forties, he has a new set of concerns. Aging becomes a
problem. He is passing—or perhaps has already passed—out of youth and
younger years to the time of his life in which he will lose his virility. Though
this is certainly not clear after the first reading of the story and does not
become clear until a few more readings, there are textual hints that support
this. The simplest and most consistent of these is the nouns Hemingway uses
to refer to the characters. The sparseness of his style means that almost every
word used must be used deliberately, especially if the word is how he refers to
a character throughout a story. Hemingway could simply have used the
pronoun “he” to establish that the American is male, but he chose to use the
word “man.” Likewise, he could have named the girl a feminine name, or
simply referred to her as “she,” or called her “woman,” but the girl is simply
“the girl.” By using “girl” to refer to the girl and “man” to refer to the
American, Hemingway has made a strong age distinction. He is saying the girl
is younger than the American. Not only is she younger than he, but also she is
young enough to see him as a man, as someone who is a good deal older than
she. College-age women and women in their mid-twenties are often referred
to as “girls.” If she is in this age group, somewhere between twenty-two and
twenty-six years of age, then for the girl to see the American as a man implies
that he is more than ten years older than her, likely between fifteen and
twenty years older. This would place him between thirty-seven and forty-six
years of age.

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Beyond the characters, though, there are several words and phrases
that Hemingway uses in describing the setting in the first two pages of the
story that hint to the American’s age. In the very first sentence on page 69,
the hills in the valley are described as being “long and white.” Each of these
adjectives carries its own connotation. The word “long” brings to mind the
expression “long in the tooth,” which is used to describe something—
someone—that is “past its prime”; middle age is the period in one’s life when
one is said to be past one’s prime, passing from youth to old age. The word
“white” calls up the white hair that is indicative of old age; white hair is tied
to the fading of hair, and it is in middle age that a man’s hair begins to fade
noticeably. If the American has started noticing grey hairs, this would likely
be a concern for him.
In the second sentence of the first paragraph, Hemingway states that
there is “no shade and no trees” (69) in the area. This lack of foliage is an
allusion to hair loss that men experience in their middle age. Hemingway
furthers this thread when he describes the part of the station that the couple
is next to: He mentions a curtain that is “made of strings of bamboo beads”
and has been “hung across the open door” (Hemingway 69). The open door is
a hole—a blank or empty space—that is surrounded on the left, right, and top
by wall. Thinking geometrically, this reflects male pattern baldness: Viewed
from the top down, a man’s bald scalp is the blank or empty space (the open
door) in the middle of his head and is surrounded on the left, right, and top by
hair (the wall). The curtain itself represents a comb-over, with the bamboo-
bead strings stretching to cover the empty doorway just as hairs combed

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across a bare scalp cover the skin. Both do a poor job of concealing what is
underneath.
At the end of the first paragraph, Hemingway mentions that the train
from Barcelona—the one the American and the girl are waiting for—“would
come in forty minutes” (69). Considering the deliberateness of Hemingway’s
word choice, even something as trivial as the amount of time before the train
would arrive must be chosen carefully: When one turns forty, one is said to be
entering into middle age. One’s youth is finished and old age will arrive before
one realizes it. The train, the story continues, will stop at the station for two
minutes before it continues on to Madrid (Hemingway 69). This short
amount of time reflects the fact that the American does not have much time
in which he can still consider himself as having just finished the first half of
his life. He is currently in a transition period, and very soon he will have to
admit that he is no longer young or close to it.
On page 70, the girl looks at the hills and says they look like white
elephants. What is significant to this essay is not that the girl thinks the hills
look like white elephants, but rather that she says they are white. This
continues the thread of old age, again bringing to mind its association with
the color white. The American’s response indicates that he feels as if she is
teasing him about his aging, that he is almost offended by the remark. “I’ve
never seen one,” he says, and drinks his beer (Hemingway 70). This response
illustrates the denial men go into when confronted with their middle age: In
saying that he has never seen a white elephant, the American is saying that he
does not see himself as white, as old, as aging; to do so would be to

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acknowledge that he can no longer consider himself almost young, and accept
the fact that the first half of his life has come and gone. After this, the girl
looks at the bead curtain and notices that something has been painted on it
(Hemingway 70). When one paints something, one does so in order to make
it look better than it did. “Painted,” then, can be seen as an allusion to the
lengths people will go in order to conceal their loss of their youthful
appearances—such as dyeing (in a way, painting) hair that is fading.
Considering the American’s age, then, his relationship with the girl is
about more than sex, and it is about more than fear of being abandoned. It is
about reliving his youth—or living out the youth that he did not have but
wishes he did—and compensating for his coming middle (and old) age. This is
not to say that sex is a small part of the couple’s relationship. In fact, it likely
is the main aspect: The very act of sleeping with a woman many years his
junior implies that the American needs to be with a young woman to help him
feel less insecure and frightened of his aging. If he can regularly sleep with a
girl, he must be doing something right. Somehow he managed to initiate the
relationship with the girl, and he has likely been able to continue it because
he has physically pleased her, and pleased her many times. If the girl leaves
him, though, the fantasy will end and the American would again be faced with
the reality of his age. He would have—or is afraid that he would have—no
small amount of difficulty in finding another young woman to sleep with
regularly. Yet if the girl carries the baby to term, the steady sex life that the
American has enjoyed will come to an end: Not only will he have to forego sex
during her pregnancy, but he will also have to fight for time to have sex with

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the girl once the baby is born. Regardless of how seriously the American
would take his responsibilities as a father, simply having the baby living with
the girl at home would remind the American that he can no longer enjoy the
fairly carefree lifestyle that he and the girl led prior to the baby’s birth. In a
sense, he would be entering adult life a second time.
Another aspect of youth that the American relives is traveling. In
looking at the bags with labels from “all the hotels where they had spent
nights” (Hemingway 76), he is not only thinking of their lovemaking but also
of the different places they have been to. Not only is the American sleeping
with a young woman but he is also taking her to countless different cities.
The man and the girl are vagrants with money, seeing the world as if there
were nothing else for them to do. This vagrancy also serves the purpose of
masking the fact that the American is not moving quickly from one woman to
another—indeed, that he cannot do so. Instead of moving between partners,
he is moving between cities and countries. Were the girl to give birth to the
baby, though, this traveling would likely be forced to stop—and even if the
couple could still go to different places, they would either have to take the
baby with them or find someone to leave it with.
Growing old is perfectly natural. The American, though, lives as if he
can put it off forever. He refuses to accept that he cannot escape the fact that
he is getting old already, that he will be old one day, and that before he knows
it he will be dead. In observing the girl’s willingness to carry their baby to
term, he sees that she is ready to grow up, to take on responsibility, to settle
down. He, however, cannot settle down, refuses to settle down because he

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will be forced to acknowledge that he is past his prime, long in the tooth, in
need of hair dye and a toupee—and so he works to convince the girl to abort
the baby so that he can continue living his fantasy. The American believes he
has found some source of extended youth. It will be a day of weeping and
gnashing of teeth for him when his body tells him otherwise.

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Works Cited
Bauer, Margaret D. “Forget the Legend and Read the Work: Teaching Two
Stories by Ernest Hemingway.” College Literature 30.3 (2003): 124–137.
Print.
Donaldson, Scott. “The Averted Gaze in Hemingway’s Fiction.” The Sewanee
Review 111.1 (2003): 128–151. Print.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.” Men Without Women. New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955. 69–77. Print.
Holder, Alan. “The Other Hemingway.” Twentieth Century Literature 9.3
(1963): 153–157. Print.
Portch, Stephen R. “Writing Without Words: A Nonverbal Approach to
Reading Fiction.” The Journal of General Education 34.1 (1982): 84–101.
Print.

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