White Elephants

Reading "Hills Like White Elephants" was a very interesting experience for me. This was the kind of story that made you think, "What did I just read?" While I like to think that I am a decent reader, and that I can understand everything I read, this story made me think the complete opposite. A friend of mine who looked up the story online told me that it was supposed to be about abortion, but even with that knowledge in my head, I had a hard time understanding anything I was reading. There were some parts in the story where they would talk about the "operation" and I would actually know what they were talking about, but then get completely lost. I get a feeling that Hemingway added white elephants into the story only to confuse the reader even more, because without background knowledge of what a white elephant is, and how it is used in other cultures, the reader would think that the hills Jig was describing were just big like elephants. The way the events of the story were written out were just confusing as well. I had a hard time of realizing what was going on because of the way the subject of their conversation would jump around. And, I cannot stand when stories don't have a clear message. I understand that if he would have used the word "abortion" the story might have been sensored, but we could at least use a some clues about the topic he is trying to convey. Overall, this was the worst story we have read so far in class.