After reading the short story, I found it weird that the girl was drinking beer considering she was pregnant. Today that is something is frowned upon. Why would she do that to her baby? Hemmingway presents the story in a roundabout way because he wants the reading to think about why the man calls abortion a “simple operation” and wants the girl to kill the baby. It was illegal to bring up abortion in the 19th century. Hemingway had to speak around the subject of abortion and not come out and directly call it abortion. Instead he calls it a “simple operation”. I was unsure of what the term white elephant. It is something that is useless and to the man the baby was useless and wanted the girl to abort the baby. It states, “Everything taste of
