What Is The Conflict In Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants?

In “Hills Like White Elephants,” published in the literary magazine Transition, author Ernest Hemingway portrays the difference in the implicit and explicit dialogue in the couple’s conversation. In this short story, a young couple is faced with a crucial decision of going through with an abortion or keeping the baby. The girl, named Jig, is confronted with the struggle of deciding, while the American man, unnamed, already had his mind set on getting the abortion. While Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” portrays a simple conversation between two lovers, the hypertext of their dialogue reveals the conflict between them. Throughout the couple’s conversation, it might be known for him to make a comment, but really he means something
When one can understand how an author writes, it might explain why their style is the way it is. Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois on July 21, 1899. He lived in an upper-middle-class Chicago neighborhood. As he grew, he followed his father and became an outdoorsman at a young age. His father’s profession was a physician, and to his father’s disappointment he did not follow that rough in the medical field. He spent his summers in Northern Michigan at his summer house on Walloon Lake. Hemingway was not healthy in his youth but put his physical tolerance to the test. This behavior carried on as he grew as well. Grace Hall Hemingway, his mother, was highly educated and showed much interest in music. Grace never showed interest in his writing or seemed to be fond of it due to the way Hemingway’s portrays her in his writings in only negative ways. As Hemingway grew older, he had an attraction to older women. This appeal is due to the lack of affection from his mother and not being able to win over her approval. His interest can be seen through the age difference between him and his wives. He liked the attention he gained from these older women that admired his writing. Hemingway had four wives, and three of them were greatly older than he. His first wife was Hadley Richardson; they got married in 1921. He wrote his first novel The Sun Also Rises in 1926 followed by A Farewell to Arms in 1929.
Someone might overlook the definition of white elephant. When talking about white elephants, the implicit and explicit conversation has a deeper meaning. “On the surface, ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ appears to be no more than a thumbnail sketch, a story with a plot so slight that it can be summarized in a few sentences” (Lanier, 1982, p. 279). If one were just to skim through, many details would be missed. One might think that the white elephant is just how the hills look. The title is “Hills Like White Elephants,” but Wikipedia states that the definition of a white elephant is “a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of.” Hemingway equates the baby to the white elephant. The implicit and explicit dialogue come into play at this point. Explicitly, the white elephant is how the hills look. Implicitly, the definition of white elephants symbolizes the baby who is