Hills Like White Elephants

by Ernest Hemingway

Hills Like White Elephants: Foil 1 key example

Foil
Explanation and Analysis—The Man and the Girl:

The man and the girl act as foils for each other in this story, meaning that their juxtaposition reveals important qualities of the other's character. While it’s clear that both characters enjoy traveling and living a life of leisure—their bags contain labels “from all the hotels where they had spent nights”—by the time the story starts, they are on very different pages about their future. Though they never reference the girl’s pregnancy directly, they spend the entirety of the story arguing about whether or not she should have an abortion.