In the fictional story of "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway; A man and a woman are sitting at the train station, ordering drinks and observing everything around them. But they have a problem that they need to solve, the problem is that the woman is pregnant and the man wants her to have an abortion. She doesn't want an abortion but is willing to do it if they are happy afterwards. The couple sits at the train station waiting for the train and discusses the abortion which they disguise the word as a "simple operation". “It's really a terribly simple operation, Jig.”(325) I think they do it because when the story was published in 1927 abortion was not a common procedure, and talking about it would attract attention and people would despise them. Another thing that came to mind while reading this story was that the story had to be set in a foreign country because in 1927 alcohol was illegal. They ordered drinks one after another. So they were going against the norm in more ways than one, drinking alcohol and thinking about having an abortion. When discussing the decision to carry out the simple operation it is clear that the man really wants to go through with it because he likes it the way it is and does not want to change it and make it more complicated. The woman, on the other hand, seems to want a child. "That's all we do, isn't it? Look at things and try new drinks?" (324) I think she wants the baby so they can have something new in their relationship and move forward with it. It seems that the man is trying to convince her to complete the simple task using guilt. "Well," the man said, "if you don't want to you don't have to. I wouldn't want you to do it if you didn't want to. But I know it's very simple." He continues to reassure her that it is a simple and natural process and that he will still love her no matter what she decides. At the end of the story she seems convinced that she will complete the simple task. One thing to keep in mind is that they are drinking during the conversation, and drinking alcohol impairs judgment; so drinking while deciding whether to go through with it or not wasn't a good idea.