Symbolism In Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” portrays the turmoil a couple endures when faced with an unplanned pregnancy, the choice to hold onto their current life or to begin a new life. Readers are allowed to intrude on a conversation between an American man and a girl, further conflict is presented through Hemingway’s use of symbolism. The man wants to go through with an abortion while the girl is unsure about which track she should take. Throughout the story, Hemmingway’s use of abundant details about the setting, rather than providing much detail about the characters, reveal a conflict between the man’s desire for the girl to have a “perfectly natural” (Hemingway 116) procedure and the decision to forgo an “awfully simple operation”
This bead curtain symbolizes a wall between one choice and another. The couple is sure of their decision and have no need of exploring what is behind the curtain. According to him, this pregnancy is “the only thing that bothers us…the only thing that makes us unhappy” (116). What lies on the other side of the curtain must be considered, however, when the man calls out to the curtain to order drinks. Have they really considered the other side? We are then led to an occasion when the girl looks at the bead curtain. She seems to study and wonder what is on the other side of this decision she is allowing someone else to make for her. The curtain can now be viewed as a separation of what the man wants and what the girl wants. At one point in the story, the curtain actually reaches out and hits the table where the couple is sitting. It is as if the wall is coming down and she is becoming more firm in her decision to keep the baby. At the end of the story, the man is on one side of the curtain, while the girl is on the other. Here he is at least considering becoming a family man, yet he returns to the other side of the curtain still sure of his decision. To him, her argument is not