“Hills Like White Elephants”

 After I read this piece, I was very reminded of the Theatre of the Absurd, and especially the premise of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot - I’ve never read or seen the play, but I do know of it. The premise is that two men are sitting and talking while waiting for someone named Godot to arrive, which never actually happens. This piece seems very similar to it - two people are sitting and talking while waiting for a train that never actually arrives. It was also interesting in that works from the Theatre of the Absurd are known for being circular, which “White Elephants” also is - the whole story is talking around the subject of the woman’s pregnancy and potential abortion without actually coming to a resolution about what they would do about it, ending in the same place they began. On the other hand, the feeling that I got about Waiting for Godot was that nothing that happened actually had any impact, while here they are discussing what is a very real and important issue to them, even if they don’t actually get to make any decisions about it. This was published in 1927, while the Theatre of the Absurd as a movement was in the late 1940s and 50s, with Waiting for Godot being created in 1953. I don’t really think that “White Elephants” had any real tangible impact on the development of the Theatre of the Absurd, but it is very interesting to me how two separate things can be so unintentionally similar.