First published in 1927, Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” takes place at a train station in Spain where a couple, an American man and a character simply described as a “girl,” are waiting for the express to Madrid. It is hot, and in typical Hemingway fashion, the characters begin their exchange by talking about what they would like to drink. Dos cervezas. Two beers. Big ones, at that. After being served, the girl makes a simple observation. The hills in the distance, she says, look like white elephants. This is as innocuous a statement as could be made, but it is the beginning of an exchange that has nefarious, ignoble currents. The girl, the reader soon intuits, is pregnant, and the man, through guile and clever wordsmithing, is trying to convince her to have an abortion. He says it’s “just to let the air in” and after this happens, they will both be so happy. What makes his scheme so duplicitous, however, is how he repeats the words “don’t do it” if you do not really want to. He makes the argument that they will be as they were before – blissful, free of responsibility – only, again, only – if she agrees to go through with it. Discerning readers see and understand his attempt at reverse psychology, and perhaps the girl does, too, for, in the end, she begs, “Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?” She has had enough of his efforts, his manipulative ways, and soon thereafter, to his question, “Do you feel better?” replies, “I feel fine. There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”
The defeatist sarcasm practically jumps off page.
Sometimes, readers are disgusted by the man, but other times, I will hear the tired refrains from the Pro-Choice camp. My body, my choice. I do not need to repeat the slogans. Two interpretations. Two takes on a short story nearing a hundred years old. Given the fact that the story is a product of the same century that gave us the sexual revolution, I wonder if it might be helpful to offer a different sort of analysis – one that scratches at the surface of what it fundamentally means to be human.
Dear listeners, allow me to offer the following: We are made in the image of God, the Creator. As such, we are made to create. We create books and cities, machines and paintings, and, most importantly, we create babies. Little human beings with immortal souls. From conception, I hasten to add. When we indulge in sexual sin, however, which is to say any sexual act that is not intended to create, we, thus, fail to live up to being a creator, to being, as it were, in the image of God. Again, sexual sin, and I will leave it to you to spell out the list, is sin that does not create – sin that is not ordered to create. This is likely why sexual sin and the traps that lead to it are so prevalent. In our films, in our music, in our advertisements, in our news feeds -- the temptation to sin sexually is alarmingly pervasive. But why? Have you ever asked yourself why, around every corner, on every station and channel, a part of so much public discourse is there so much sexually laced content? Perhaps it is precisely because it tempts us to reject being in His “image.” The enemy – that fallen angel secularists insist is an invention of the Godly to keep people in fear and under control – wants us to live in a distorted and disordered way. He does not want us to be image-bearers of God. He does not want us to see each other as children of God with souls. What does this mean? A society in the death grip of pornography and, as it relates to Hemingway, abortion is either heading toward a nihilistic end or, sadly, is already there.
When the girl finally acquiesces, the man’s response is telling. He says, “I don’t care anything about it.”
So there you have it.
Does a nothingness worldview follow shortly on the heels of indifference? Is apathy a sure way to meaninglessness? It seems to be the case. Nihilism is the opposite of the “image” bequeathed to each one of us by God Himself. So let’s recognize the tactics for what they are and the silver tongues surrounding us repeating “don’t do it; don’t do it” all the while placing the temptation beneath our very nose, for not to do so runs the risk of a future when we will be unable to recognize ourselves let alone God who formed us out of the dust.
