Hills Like White Elephants Rhetorical Analysis

In the Ernest Hemingway short story, Hills Like White Elephants, Hemingway uses a narrative voice as an eavesdropper and uses indirect characterization like dialogue to portray a serious conversation on abortion. Instead of providing a backstory, including motives and emotion of the characters, Hemingway puts the reader in the role of eavesdropper to the couple’s conversation. The setting is in the 1920’s at a train station. The man, the American, and the young girl, Jig, have a discussion about a sore topic. Both talk, but neither listens or understands the other’s point of view. Like any eavesdropper, tuning in to another’s conversation, the reader is left to discern the topic merely by listening. The American man will say anything to convince his girlfriend to have the operation. He tells her he loves her and that everything between them will go back to the way it used to be.”That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy” (page 2). Revealing the selfishness of the American, and revealing Jig’s uncertainty. Her statements referring to the hills looking
Why this goes along with the title is from the couple's conversation about a troubling topic, abortion, that Jig is trying to avoid. Jig referring to the white elephants throughout the story; “They’re lovely hills,” she said. “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the colouring of their skin through the trees.” (page 2), allowing the readers to believe that Jig is trying to discuss her questionable