"Hills Like White Elephants" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, and like all works by Hemingway, every little detail has its own underlying meaning. Hemingway does a great job of characterizing a young couple without directly telling the reader much about them. It is apparent that they are a young American couple, and Hemingway gives off little hints so that the reader may infer that. The man is referred to as the American, and the girl only speaks English, which can be taken as a sign that she is also American. The fact that Hemingway refers to her as the girl, rather than the woman suggests that she is young and still naive. The story reflects the struggle of a making a difficult decision between life and death and whether the girl should have an abortion or not. Hemingway uses imagery to contrast the two different decisions. He describes the hills as being white in the sun and the country was brown and dry. The hills symbolized the purity and fertility, while the countryside represented a barren alternative. The American wanted to go through with the abortion, and references were continually made supporting this. He kept playing the operation down and making it seem like it was no big deal. He even said "They just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural". Other metaphors are also made such as the metaphor of the American telling her to come back into the shade which represented the abortion. The couples views of the situation contrast against one another, and although the American feels that the baby would be a burden, the girl feels otherwise. In the end, the man takes their bags to the other side of the station, which symbolizes the consent of the abortion, and the story ends. Hemingway did a great job in writing this, giving subtle hints for the reader to pick up on. This is partly why Hemingway has been my favorite author for some time now.

Ernest Hemingway portrays women within his short stories as inferior to men, and utilizes degrading terms within his literature to characterize the womanly figure. However in juxtaposition to the various claims against Ernest Hemingway as being an antifeminist, Hemingway’s short story, Hills Like White Elephants, embodies the usage of derogatory characterization towards women as a means of character development, to illustrate the growing strength within women.
The two characters within Hills Like White Elephants face an arduous decision as they contemplate their options in regard to child bearing, at a junction between Barcelona and Madrid. Whether the two characters Hemingway depicts chose to board the train to Madrid or not signifies a decision has been made. Within the introductory paragraph Hemingway instantly creates inferiority between the characters within the short story by the Hemingway utilizes demeaning terms within the narration of Hills Like White Elephants to highlight the inferiority between man and woman. “The American” or “The man” serve as respectable terms, that allocate respect and power to the stature of the beholder. However the term “The Girl” depicts a lack of respect and power towards the woman. Throughout the short story, The Man consistently urges the girl to think about following through with an abortion as a means of supposedly regaining a happy relationship, the girl states, “Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me” (64), an illustration of her unrelenting ease to which she adheres to the whims of the male figure. However towards the very end of the short story, when the woman finally decides to stay at the train station, and leave the man, Hemingway refers to the “the girl” as “she”, a term Hemingway never used to describe the girl when she listened to the pleas of the man instead of her own needs. Hemingway also empowers the woman figure, at the resolution of the short story, when he depicts the woman as one of her own decisions and willing to provide for herself in a foreign country as opposed to the traditional system of women being dependent on men.
Hemingway creates a structure within Hills Like White Elephants through diction and setting to illustrate growth within women, as a proponent of feminism.