The renowned writer Earnest Hemmingway is famous for his novels The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and Old man of the Sea for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. The following year he won the Noble Prize in Literature. Hemmingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” was first published in late 1927.
This story is written in the second person point of view where the characters, An American man and Jig, are at a train station in Spain. He is accompanying her to have a “simple procedure” as he calls it so that everything could be the same again. The procedure is the focus of their conversation but Jig tries to change the subject to picture life after the procedure. They may have traveled a long way for this procedure as it stated that they had bags with all the labels on them from where they had spent nights. I believe that the procedure that is being had is an abortion.
Jig states that she doesn’t care about herself, she just care about him. She will do it and everything will be back to the way it was. Seems like they were having a good time together and now they are being slowed down. Maybe they have been bickering a lot and she will have the procedure to get things back to what is normal for them.