Hills Like White Elephants

Although the story’s historical setting is indeterminate, it appears contemporary with the story’s 1927 publication. During this period, Hemingway was preoccupied with the lives of expatriate Americans living in post-World War I Europe, the so-called Lost Generation—a term coined by Gertrude Stein but made famous by Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. The idea of lostness relates to the psychological aimlessness of this generation, who came of age during a war of such unprecedented inhumanity and destructiveness that it seemed to invalidate traditional beliefs about faith, meaning, or even inherent human goodness. To many, the American Dream now smacked of parochialism and vapidity, and expatriation to Europe was increasingly common. Partly because it forsook the traditional American work ethic and the “back to normal” postwar mindset, an indulgent and even superficial lifestyle became a leitmotif of Lost Generation literature. Nevertheless, while these writers might have honored postwar disillusionment, they sometimes critiqued their generation’s lifestyle as potentially hollow or disoriented.

The couple in this story bear the earmarks of the Lost Generation. Though the story is a minimalist vignette that offers few explicit details about the characters, indirect