The setting used for Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” serves as a Foucaulian Panopticon. The couple is having a very intense discussion regarding whether or not the female should go through with an abortion. Since this short story takes place in a very Catholic Spain their actions are affected by the location.
Foucault argues that the best way to ensure that a population acts in a specific manner is that a person “knows himself to be observed” (555). It isn’t fear of punishment, but knowing that the rest of the population is watching, that works to ensure that people behave. The couple is not Spanish, rather, the man is American and the woman is an unknown nationality. Since they are in a different country, they cannot act out and make scene because of what the others may do to them.
The couple are sitting in a train station located in valley surrounded by fields and hills. If they were to act out or say something offensive to that society, they would have no where to go. The American doesn’t want to go back to his country because he would not have the freedoms he has in Spain. The only thing that the Spanish would look down upon is an abortion or an out of wedlock birth. It is because of this that the words pregnancy and abortion are never mentioned. The couple don’t want to offend the society and they don’t want that society forced upon them.
Foucault, Michel. "Discipline and Punish." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Blackwell: MA. 2004. 549-566.
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