Hills Like White Elephants Iceberg

‘Hills like White elephants’ by Ernest Hemingway revolves around a conversation between a girl and an American man. The story is written in simple sentences and when one reads the story one does not really notice the subtleties present. Hemingway’s iceberg theory is relevant to this story because though the story seems to be simply about a man and a woman having a causal conversation there are undertones of more serious and pressing issues. It is set at a train station in between Barcelona and Madrid. Hemingway does this on purpose in order to highlight the fact that the relationship between the American and the girl is at crossroads. Throughout the passage there is no explicit sign of conflict however there is a slight undercurrent of uncertainty and tension. The entire passage is written in third person, it is objective and just states the facts of the conversation without really giving the reader any background information about the situation or the characters. This is probably been done to maintain a sense of mystery. The title of the passage is also significant as ‘white elephants’ are symbolic of something that is unwanted and as the whole conversation between the American and woman revolves around whether to do an ‘operation’ or not to get rid of something that is supposedly an unborn baby, making the operation an abortion, this symbol is extremely important.
The first paragraph of the passage is dedicated to describing the setting. It starts with a description of the
Throughout the girl uses words such as ‘could’ and ‘I don’t know’ whereas the man is more confident and sure of himself. He is the girl’s pillar of support as she depends on him completely. However later on in the story she does change as she gains the confidence to question the American and reconsider whether or not she wants to have an