The Stress of Abortion - Essay Example

O’Neill’s play shows the results of a marriage which apparently only happened because the woman did not get an abortion after her boyfriend made her pregnant. Together both stories suggest that our actions have consequences we do not realize until it is too late. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” most of the story is a conversation. It starts out when the woman discusses the hills they are watching, and then they order a beer because it is hot. However, after the man does not respond to her joke she gets upset and then he starts to talk about the abortion though he never says the word.

He says it is “an awfully simple operation” (Hemingway ###) and that it is “really not anything” (Hemingway ###). He also says that if she doesn’t want to do it, she doesn’t have to but it is suggested that he does not mean it, from the way he keeps bringing it back up until she threatens to “scream” (Hemingway ###). In “Before Breakfast,” the talking is all done by one character, Mrs. Rowland. She is stressed out because she has to “sew every day” while her husband plays “the gentleman and loaf around barrooms with that good-for-nothing lot of artists from the Square” (O’Neill ###).

He does not do any work and she has to support them both. Their marriage is very unhappy, as can be seen from how she sneakily drinks gin which was hidden “behind the dishes” while her husband is getting up (O’Neill ###). She talks about how he had gotten her pregnant in the past and sarcastically that she “ought to be glad you were honorable enough to marry after getting me into trouble” (O’Neill ###). She also suggests that his father tried to make her get an abortion by buying her off (O’Neill ###).

In the end, her husband kills himself, probably because of how miserable both of them have made their own lives. Both of these stories deal with the topic of abortion, but at a different time in each person’s life. Also, the stories show the stresses that women particularly have to face with this difficult topic. In Hemingway’s story, it is the girl, Jig, who has to deal with the stress. Her boyfriend does not understand or maybe does not want to, why it should be such a big deal.

In O’Neill’s play, both Mrs. Rowland and Helen, the girl her husband has had an affair with, have had to deal with the idea. Although we do not really know what Jig decides to do, in the play by O’Neill the decisions that Mrs. Rowland has made, and how terrible her husband feels about his life, force him to commit suicide and her to be an alcoholic. Taken together, “Hills like White Elephants” and “Before Breakfast” both show the danger that can be arrived at when you do not think through your actions.

They can be read as a warning to women not to sleep with anyone unless they are really sure that the person loves them. Or, at least, to use proper protection. The stresses of even thinking about having a child are terrible but they are usually worse for a woman than for a man. They can certainly, as these stories show, be fatal to relationships and to happiness, no matter what decision the woman makes.