I need help writing an argumentative essay about the relationship and the nature of their relationship in "Hills Like White Elephants."

I would
like to suggest that you take the unpopular position that the American and Jig are married. Most
people who have commented on this story believe they are just living together. I can offer a
number of reasons to support the position that they are actually married.

The
subject of marriage is never mentioned by either of them, although it seems unlikely that Jig
would want to have a baby--in those days--without being married.

The
American repeatedly tells Jig that she can have the baby if it is important to her, but he does
not say that he will marry her. This strongly suggests to me that they are already married but
he doesn't want a baby. Here are instances in which he tells her she can have the
baby:

"Well," the man said, "if you don't
want to you don't have to [i.e. have the abortion]. I wouldn't have you do it if you didn't want
to. But I know it's perfectly simple."

"I don't want you to do it
if you feel that way."

"I don't want you to do anything that you
don't want to do--"

At one point the girl asks
him:

"Doesn't it mean anything to you? We could get
along."

This sounds like wife talking to her husband
about their financial status. She thinks perhaps he is opposed to having a baby because of the
expense. This may in fact be true.

Again:

"I don't want you to," he said. "I don't care anything about
it."

He actually tells her five times that she can
have the baby if she wants it, but never a word about their getting married. He could not ask
her to have a baby without their being married. It was just unthinkable in the 1920s.

Their luggage is covered with stickers from all the hotels they have stayed at
together. In those days it would have been quite difficult for unmarried people to share a room
in a respectable hotel. They would actually have been turned away. In Europe travelers have to
show their passports, which would prove they were not married.

He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of the station. There
were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights.

Hemingway and his first wife Hadley actually did have a baby a
short while before Hemiingway wrote this story. They nicknamed the baby Bumby. Hemingway was
trying desperately to make a living as a freelance writer, and having a baby would have made his
task nearly impossible. They were living in Europe because the exchange rate was extremely
favorable to the American dollar, and Spain was the cheapest country of all. He would have had
to take some kind of paying job, which might have necessitated moving back to America. This
suggests that Hemingway might have been opposed to Hadley's having the baby but gave
in.

Jig might have been less careless and more careful about avoiding
pregnancy if she had not been married. She may have wanted to present her husband with a
"fait accompli." Women does these kinds of things, don't they?

The
only reason for supposing that the American and Jig are not married is that the author doesn't
not say so. But this story is told in a purely objective fly-on-the-wall-viewpoint technique.
The reader has to do a lot of guessing and make a lot of assumptions and deductions.

This is my suggestion for your argumentative essay about the relationship between the
man and the woman.