An Analysis Of Hemingway's 'Hills Like White Elephants'

Although most of the features of "Hills Like White Elephants" have been well discussed and understood, so that Paul Smith, in his 1989 survey of opinion on the story, can wonder if there is anything left to say about it (209), what has not been satisfactorily resolved is the question of the ending. In view of the fact that Hemingway leaves virtually everything, even what is at issue between the girl and the American, for the reader to "figure" out, meanwhile unobtrusively supplying what is needed to understand the story's structure and conflict, it seems logical to assume that he also expected the reader to be able to answer the question left by the story's ending: What are the couple going to do about the girl's pregnancy? Yet the ending
has seemed stubbornly indeterminate. A majority of commentators, by my count, assume that the girl will have the abortion in order to please and thus keep her lover. But a considerable minority find these arguments unconvincing and conclude that the story leaves the question open.