Response to "Hills like White Elephants"

I finished reading "Hills like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway in its original English. I found it a riveting read.

In the story, an American man and a girl are waiting for a train to Madrid at a Spanish train station. The girl remarks that the hills across the valley of Ebro look like white elephants, but the man steers the conversation away from nature to abortion. The man tries to persuade the girl to have an abortion, but to no avail. The conversation ceases abruptly when the girl becomes agitated and implores the man to stop talking. At the end of the story, knowing the train to Madrid is coming soon, the girl suddenly regains her composure and becomes cheerful. By transitioning the narrative from the broad establishing description of two contrasting landscapes -- the barren valley and the lush lands -- to the imminent arrival of the train, the story suggests that as long as one clings to hope, there is potential for finding a different way out.

The conversation starts with the girl's remark, "They look like white elephants", followed by another unanticipated comment from her, "Everything tastes of licorice". Both notions are contemptuously dismissed by the man. "It's really an awfully simple operation," he interrupts. At first glance, the man seems to have a rational, unhesitating, and decisive mind, whereas the girl is whimsical and talks in a discursive way. However, as the conversation unfolds, we hear the man discuss abortion in an airy style: "We'll be fine afterward. Just like we were before'', "And I know it's perfectly simple", "It's all right for you to say that, but I do know it". The truth gradually dawns: he is deceiving himself about the ease with which he can live with the consequences of his actions. He hopes to find release and solace in his words, oblivious to their contrariness and emptiness. Engrossed in things as they are, he fails to envision things as they might be or ought to be.

The girl, on the other hand, is paralyzed by an extreme state of indecision, because part of her still remains open to alternatives. When she says, "I don't care about me", we can easily gather the notion that she is desolate, fragile, and hopeless. Yet when she gazes out wistfully at the hills resembling white elephants, we also sense her expectation of finding something new around all of life’s corners. Perhaps, while awaiting the train, she realizes that a glimmer of hope, as beautiful and elusive as the hills like white elephants in the distance, still persists within her, still beckons.

Throughout the story, the barren valley in their view stands in stark contrast to the verdant lands on the other side of the station, accentuating the dichotomy between life and death, possibility and impossibility, change and permanence. Therefore, in the story's final moments, the sight of the train coming, amid two different lands, appears to be a striking juxtaposition and hints at the existence of a third solution, a divergent path.