How Do “Hills Like White Elephants” and Contemporary Works Address Similar Themes?
Author: Martin Munyao Muinde
Email: Ephantusmartin@gmail.com
Direct Answer
Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” (1927) and Jhumpa Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter” (1999) address remarkably similar themes of relationship breakdown, communication failure, reproductive loss, and life-altering decisions despite being written seventy years apart. Both stories employ minimalist narrative techniques to explore how couples navigate crises that expose fundamental disconnection and incompatible desires regarding parenthood and their relationship’s future. Hemingway’s story centers on an abortion decision that reveals the couple’s inability to communicate authentically, while Lahiri’s narrative depicts a couple whose relationship disintegrates following a stillbirth, with both authors using subtext, symbolic settings, and sparse dialogue to convey emotional weight. The thematic parallels include power imbalances within intimate relationships, the permanence of reproductive choices, gender differences in processing loss and change, and the inadequacy of language to bridge emotional distance between partners. However, the works also reveal significant differences in cultural context, narrative resolution, and gender perspective that reflect their distinct historical moments. By analyzing these texts alongside each other, readers gain insight into how fundamental human struggles around intimacy, choice, and loss persist across time while the cultural frameworks for understanding these experiences evolve with changing social norms regarding gender, marriage, and reproductive autonomy.
Thematic Foundations: Communication Breakdown in Intimate Relationships
Both Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” and Jhumpa Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter” explore how couples experience profound communication breakdown when facing reproductive crises, revealing that physical proximity and shared history do not guarantee authentic understanding or emotional connection. In Hemingway’s story, the American man and Jig engage in a conversation about abortion that circles around the central issue without directly naming it, using euphemisms and indirect references that conceal more than they reveal (Hemingway, 1927). Similarly, Lahiri’s characters Shoba and Shukumar have stopped truly communicating following their baby’s stillbirth, conducting their marriage through practical arrangements while avoiding the emotional territory where genuine connection might occur (Lahiri, 1999). Both narratives demonstrate that couples can speak extensively while saying nothing meaningful, and that the most important truths often remain unvoiced, creating chasms of misunderstanding that undermine relationship foundations. The authors use dialogue-heavy narratives that paradoxically emphasize silence and evasion, showing how language itself becomes inadequate when individuals cannot or will not access and express their authentic feelings and needs.
The minimalist narrative styles both authors employ serve to heighten the communication breakdown they depict, forcing readers to interpret subtext and read between sparse lines just as the characters must attempt to understand each other through inadequate verbal exchanges. Hemingway’s famous “iceberg theory” dictates that the most significant content remains beneath the surface, with only minimal details explicitly stated (Johnston, 1987). Lahiri similarly employs restraint and indirection, revealing character psychology through small gestures, omissions, and the charged silences between words rather than through extensive exposition or internal monologue (Brada-Williams, 2004). This stylistic parallel reflects both authors’ recognition that authentic communication in intimate relationships operates as much through what remains unsaid as through explicit statements, and that the gaps, silences, and evasions within conversations often communicate more truthfully than the words themselves. The stories suggest that understanding the communication breakdown in failing relationships requires attention to these absences and indirections, to what partners avoid discussing as much as what they actually say. By forcing readers to engage in the interpretive work of reading subtext, both authors replicate the challenging dynamics that their characters face in attempting to understand partners who cannot or will not speak directly about their deepest concerns, fears, and desires.
Reproductive Loss and Divergent Processing of Grief
A central thematic connection between “Hills Like White Elephants” and “A Temporary Matter” lies in how both explore reproductive loss or potential loss and the gender dynamics that shape how partners process such experiences differently. Hemingway’s story depicts a couple facing an unwanted pregnancy, with the potential abortion representing a form of preemptive loss that will prevent a potential child from coming into existence (Hemingway, 1927). Lahiri’s narrative focuses on the aftermath of an actual loss—a stillbirth that has devastated both partners but affected them in distinctly different ways that they cannot successfully communicate to one another (Lahiri, 1999). In both cases, the reproductive crisis reveals fundamental differences in how the male and female partners understand the meaning of parenthood, loss, and their relationship’s purpose. The men in both stories appear more focused on practical concerns and maintaining previous lifestyle patterns, while the women exhibit deeper emotional engagement with the reproductive loss or potential loss, though they struggle to express this engagement adequately to their partners.
However, the stories handle the gender dynamics of reproductive loss with important differences that reflect their distinct historical contexts and authorial perspectives. Hemingway’s story, written by a male author in the 1920s, primarily depicts the male perspective through narrative focus on the man’s arguments and concerns, with Jig’s inner experience remaining more opaque and accessible primarily through inference from her brief, often cryptic statements (Renner, 1995). Lahiri’s story, written by a female author in the 1990s, provides more balanced access to both partners’ perspectives, allowing readers to understand Shoba’s grief and withdrawal as fully as Shukumar’s, and revealing how both partners have retreated into private pain rather than supporting each other through shared loss. This difference reflects broader literary evolution toward more nuanced portrayal of women’s interior lives and recognition that reproductive loss affects both partners profoundly, though often differently. Both stories demonstrate that when couples cannot successfully share and process reproductive grief together, the loss multiplies—they lose not only the child or potential child but also their connection to each other, with the reproductive crisis becoming an inflection point that either strengthens or destroys the relationship foundation. The narratives suggest that successfully navigating reproductive loss requires couples to bridge the different ways men and women may process such experiences, finding language and connection that honors both partners’ distinct relationships to pregnancy, loss, and parenthood.
Power Dynamics and Decision-Making in Relationships
Both stories examine how power imbalances within intimate relationships shape decision-making processes, particularly around reproductive choices, and how these imbalances often disadvantage women despite rhetoric about partnership equality. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” the American man wields considerable power through his apparent financial support of Jig, his emotional manipulation disguised as concern for her autonomy, and his ability to threaten departure if she makes choices he disapproves of (Hemingway, 1927). Though he repeatedly insists “I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to,” every statement he makes is designed to pressure her toward abortion, revealing how proclaimed support for a partner’s autonomy can mask coercive intent (O’Brien, 1987). Similarly, in “A Temporary Matter,” while the power dynamics operate more subtly, Shukumar’s control over information—he knows about Shoba’s secret job search and apartment hunting before she reveals it—gives him strategic advantage in their relationship’s final dissolution (Lahiri, 1999). Both narratives reveal how apparently equal partnerships often contain hidden asymmetries that emerge during crises, with one partner wielding disproportionate influence over outcomes through economic resources, emotional manipulation, information control, or other forms of power.
The stories also explore how power operates through the ability to define relationship reality and determine which concerns receive priority in couple discussions and decisions. The man in Hemingway’s story repeatedly frames the abortion as “the only thing that bothers us” and insists it will allow them to return to their previous happiness, attempting to define their relationship reality in ways that minimize the significance of Jig’s potential desires for motherhood or lasting commitment (Hemingway, 1927). In Lahiri’s story, both partners attempt to control the narrative of their relationship’s meaning and future, with Shoba secretly planning departure while Shukumar imagines possible reconciliation, until the final revelations force both to confront realities they had been avoiding. The parallel reveals that power in intimate relationships operates not only through obvious forms like economic control but also through more subtle dynamics like whose interpretation of events becomes authoritative, whose feelings get prioritized, and whose vision for the relationship’s future shapes actual decisions. Both stories suggest that healthy relationships require acknowledging and actively countering these power imbalances rather than pretending they do not exist, and that crises reveal the true distribution of power that may have been obscured during calmer periods. The narratives demonstrate that without conscious attention to equality and mutual respect, relationships default to power-based dynamics that undermine genuine partnership and authentic mutual decision-making.
Symbolic Settings and Liminal Spaces
Hemingway and Lahiri both employ carefully constructed settings that function symbolically to reinforce their stories’ thematic concerns, particularly using liminal spaces to represent the transitional, uncertain states their couples occupy. Hemingway sets his entire story at a train station between Barcelona and Madrid, a space of transit and waiting where the couple exists temporarily between destinations, unable to remain where they are but facing uncertainty about where they will go (Hemingway, 1927). This geographic liminality mirrors their relationship’s state—they stand between their previous carefree existence and an unknown future that will be determined by the decision they are struggling to make about the pregnancy. The train tracks extending in different directions symbolize the diverging life paths available to them, while the forty-minute time limit before their train arrives creates pressure that emphasizes the irreversibility of choices made during such threshold moments. Lahiri similarly uses liminal space in “A Temporary Matter,” setting key scenes during evening power outages that create temporary darkness and altered conditions allowing the couple to speak truths they cannot access in normal circumstances (Lahiri, 1999). The temporary darkness becomes a threshold space between their false daytime routine and the final revelation that will end their marriage, allowing brief intimacy before permanent rupture.
Both authors also use contrasting landscapes or spaces within their settings to represent the different futures or relationship possibilities their couples face. Hemingway places the train station between barren hills resembling white elephants on one side and a fertile valley with fields of grain and trees on the other, symbolizing choices between sterility and fertility, between maintaining their current childless lifestyle and embracing parenthood (Hemingway, 1927). Lahiri uses the contrast between the couple’s increasingly disordered home interior and Shoba’s neat office space to represent the diverging lives they are building separately while still physically sharing a home (Lahiri, 1999). These spatial contrasts emphasize that the couples face not merely abstract decisions but concrete choices between substantially different lived realities, different physical and emotional environments they will inhabit depending on which path they choose. The symbolic settings reinforce that the relationship crises depicted are not temporary difficulties to be resolved and moved beyond, but rather definitive moments that will determine the fundamental shape of these characters’ futures (Weeks, 2016). Both authors demonstrate masterful use of setting to convey thematic meaning, allowing physical spaces to carry emotional and symbolic weight that enriches the stories’ exploration of relationship breakdown, difficult choices, and the permanence of certain life transitions.
Endings: Ambiguity Versus Resolution
One significant difference between the two stories lies in their endings, with Hemingway maintaining radical ambiguity while Lahiri provides clear if painful resolution, reflecting different approaches to narrative closure and distinct visions of how relationship crises conclude. “Hills Like White Elephants” ends with Jig’s enigmatic statement “I feel fine” and the couple waiting for their train, leaving readers uncertain about what decision they will make regarding the abortion and whether their relationship will continue (Hemingway, 1927). This ambiguous ending has generated extensive critical debate and multiple interpretations, with some readers believing Jig will acquiesce to the abortion, others suggesting she will refuse, and still others arguing the decision remains genuinely open at the story’s conclusion. Hemingway’s refusal to provide resolution reflects his broader aesthetic of minimalism and his belief that stories should replicate life’s ambiguity rather than offering neat conclusions (Johnston, 1987). The ambiguous ending also emphasizes that the abortion decision itself may be less significant than the process through which the couple navigates it, and that regardless of what choice they make, their relationship has already been fundamentally altered by the conversation and power dynamics revealed.
In contrast, Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter” concludes with definitive if devastating clarity, as Shoba reveals her plans to move out and Shukumar responds with his own cruel revelation about their stillborn child, effectively destroying any possibility of reconciliation (Lahiri, 1999). This conclusive ending reflects contemporary literary preferences for explicit emotional resolution and Lahiri’s particular interest in depicting the precise moments when relationships end rather than leaving their fates uncertain. The different endings also suggest distinct understandings of how relationship crises typically resolve: Hemingway’s ambiguity implies that such situations often remain unresolved, with couples continuing in states of unacknowledged conflict or unhappiness rather than reaching clear breaking points, while Lahiri’s definitive ending suggests that accumulated pain and disconnection eventually reach a threshold where relationship dissolution becomes inevitable and explicit. Both approaches offer valuable insights—Hemingway captures the uncertainty and ongoing ambiguity that characterizes many troubled relationships, while Lahiri depicts the cathartic if painful clarity that can come from honest acknowledgment of relationship failure (Brada-Williams, 2004). Together, the contrasting endings suggest that relationship crises can follow multiple trajectories, some remaining suspended in perpetual uncertainty while others reach definitive conclusions, with neither pattern necessarily more authentic or common than the other.
Cultural Context: 1920s Versus Late 20th Century
The seventy-year gap between these stories’ publications means they emerge from and speak to dramatically different cultural contexts regarding gender, marriage, reproduction, and relationship norms, differences that shape how they explore their shared themes. Hemingway’s story was written during the 1920s, when birth control and abortion were illegal in most jurisdictions, when unmarried couples traveling together violated social norms, and when women’s autonomy in reproductive decisions was limited both legally and practically (Cott, 2000). The story’s power partly derives from its willingness to address taboo subjects and depict morally ambiguous situations without explicit judgment, reflecting modernist literary rebellion against Victorian propriety. The couple’s discussion of abortion, conducted in euphemisms at a public train station, captures both the necessity of secrecy around such topics and the beginning of more open discourse that would eventually transform into contemporary reproductive rights movements. Jig’s vulnerability reflects historical reality in which women lacked many legal protections and faced severe consequences for violating sexual and reproductive norms, making her dependence on the American man’s support not merely personal but structural.
Lahiri’s story, published in 1999, emerges from a substantially different cultural landscape where reproductive rights are legally protected (though contested), where unmarried cohabitation has become socially acceptable, and where women have greater legal equality and economic independence. However, “A Temporary Matter” reveals that expanded rights and opportunities have not eliminated relationship power imbalances or made navigating reproductive loss significantly easier. The story’s South Asian American characters add dimensions of cultural complexity absent from Hemingway’s work, as they negotiate between Indian family expectations and American individualism, traditional gender roles and contemporary egalitarian ideals (Brada-Williams, 2004). This multicultural dimension reflects late twentieth-century demographic changes and highlights how cultural background shapes couples’ approaches to marriage, parenthood, and relationship difficulty. While Lahiri’s couple enjoys legal and social freedoms unavailable to Hemingway’s characters, they face new forms of complexity around dual cultural identity, professional ambition’s impact on family life, and the isolation of nuclear families without extended support systems. The comparison reveals that while specific manifestations of relationship difficulty change across historical periods, fundamental challenges around communication, power, and navigating loss persist across different cultural contexts, suggesting both the universality of certain human struggles and the importance of understanding how particular historical and cultural circumstances shape how these struggles emerge and are experienced.
Contemporary Relevance and Ongoing Themes
Analyzing “Hills Like White Elephants” alongside contemporary works like “A Temporary Matter” reveals how the themes Hemingway explored in the 1920s continue to resonate in twenty-first-century literature and life, suggesting that certain relationship challenges persist despite dramatic social changes. Both stories’ explorations of communication breakdown, reproductive crisis, power imbalance, and relationship dissolution remain deeply relevant to contemporary readers navigating similar difficulties in their own relationships and cultural moment. The specific details may change—contemporary couples discuss reproductive choices in different legal and social contexts, with different available options and social support systems—but the fundamental dynamics of how couples struggle to communicate authentically, navigate differing desires, and maintain connection through crisis persist across time (Weeks, 2016). This continuity suggests that while cultural progress has expanded options and reduced certain forms of oppression, it has not eliminated the core challenges of intimate relationship maintenance or made navigating reproductive decisions significantly easier emotionally even when they have become legally accessible.
The enduring relevance of these themes also indicates areas where contemporary society still struggles with unresolved tensions around gender, reproduction, and intimate relationships. Both stories reveal persistent gender imbalances in how reproductive decisions affect men and women differently, with women still bearing disproportionate physical and often emotional consequences regardless of whatever choice gets made. The communication breakdowns both authors depict suggest that expanded discourse around relationships and emotions has not necessarily produced better actual communication between partners, and that the language available for discussing intimate matters may remain inadequate to the complexity of human feeling and need. By reading these works together, contemporary audiences can recognize patterns in their own relationships and culture, understanding how current struggles around reproductive rights, gender equality, work-family balance, and relationship authenticity connect to longer histories of similar challenges (Cott, 2000). The comparison also offers hope by demonstrating how literary exploration of difficult subjects can illuminate experience and provide frameworks for understanding, even when it cannot provide simple solutions. Both Hemingway and Lahiri offer their readers the gift of recognition—the validation that comes from seeing one’s own struggles reflected in art—and the analytical tools to examine relationship dynamics with greater clarity and critical awareness.
References
Brada-Williams, N. (2004). Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” as a short story cycle. MELUS, 29(3/4), 451-464.
Cott, N. F. (2000). Public vows: A history of marriage and the nation. Harvard University Press.
Hemingway, E. (1927). Hills like white elephants. In Men without women. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Johnston, K. (1987). The three-day blow: The formal structure of Hemingway’s short stories. The Hemingway Review, 6(2), 43-58.
Lahiri, J. (1999). A temporary matter. In Interpreter of maladies. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
O’Brien, T. (1987). Allusion, word-play, and the central conflict in “Hills Like White Elephants.” The Hemingway Review, 7(1), 19-25.
Renner, S. (1995). Moving to the girl’s side of “Hills Like White Elephants.” The Hemingway Review, 15(1), 27-41.
Weeks, L. (2016). Hemingway’s Lost Generation: Historical context and literary representation. American Literary Studies Quarterly, 12(2), 145-162.