Ernest Hemingway's opening paragraph in "Hills Like White Elephants" immediately pojects his readers into a landscape that is barren and uncomfortable. It is a scene so simple, yet so the vivid, that the reader physically senses the burning of the sun and the stillness of the day, interrupted only by the pesky flies and the woman from the bar. It is a scene symbolic of the lives, the future, and the relentless indecision that confronts …showed first 75 words of 622 total…

…showed last 75 words of 622 total…of the story, the womanfrom the bar announces that "the train comes in five minutes." Thirty-five minutes have passed. The couple prepare to leave, and he still does not know what the decision will be. The reader senses that there is no real hope for Jig if she consents to an abortion and no hope for the American if she doesn't. The train will arrive in five minutes, but Hemingway's characters remain at their junction.