Print out, read, and annotate Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway)
For this weeks blog post my assignment was to read the short story: Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway). This story was originally published in 1927. The setting is at a train station in Spain between Barcelona and Madrid. An American man and a women are sitting down at a cafe in the train station while waiting for the train to Madrid. The woman compares the hills around them to white elephants and then the two begin to discuss an operation that the woman may get which is assumed to be an abortion. After reading the story I was to answer these two questions: (Does the girl in the story stay in her relationship with the man?/ Does the girl in the story keep the baby? and When have you made a important choice to stay in a relationship or leave a relationship -- OR -- stay or leave a difficult situation?). I'll answer these questions below. Does the girl in the story stay in her relationship with the man?/ Does she keep the baby? After analyzing the actions and dialogue of the characters in Hemingway’s story, I don’t think the girl kept the baby, but I am pretty sure she stayed in the relationship with the man regardless of if she kept the baby or not. To me it seems like the man is pressuring her to get an abortion when she does not really want to, for example, When the man first brings up the topic of “the operation” he says “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig. It’s really not anything” and “It’s really not an operation at all”. Those two statements definitely make it sound like he does not want the girl to have the baby, and is trying to convince the girl to get the operation. With all of this persuasion from the man I think even if she was against the abortion she may have gone through with it anyway. It also seemed like the man kind of made the decision for her when he carried their luggage to the other side of the train station, (I’m assuming this was the side of the station that the train going to Madrid would arrive on), and I think once she was on a train to Madrid she may have felt obligated to get the operation. What made me feel she’d stay in the relationship no matter what happened was when the man said “That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy”. If the only thing that makes them unhappy is the girls pregnancy, then why would they have a reason to end the relationship? Unless she did have the baby and the man was still bothered enough by it that he chose to end the relationship. When have you made a important choice to stay in a relationship or leave a relationship -- OR -- stay or leave a difficult situation? I’d say the most important choice I ever made to stay or leave a difficult situation was when I decided to leave my job working with concrete in order to finish high school and enroll in college. I wouldn’t even be writing this blog post right now if I’d decided against going back to school. There I was, at a ridiculously early hour of the morning standing in an unfinished warehouse with dirt floors (soon to be concrete), and no roof, waiting for concrete trucks to arrive. For perspective, working with concrete can take a very, very, very long time. It wasn’t uncommon to work over twelve hours a day, and then have to be back again early the next morning, so sleep was a commodity that I usually didn’t get enough of. This morning was no exception, there I was, half asleep, when the sound of a concrete truck brought me back to reality and I had to quickly put on my muck boots and start working (muck boots are large rubber boots you have to wear in concrete to prevent getting a chemical burn). I recall many times, standing in over a foot of concrete while trying to rake it into place, and thinking to myself, “This sucks, I should go back to school”. It was a very difficult decision as I was making decent money and my older brother also worked there, so I decided to stay for a bit longer. The thought of leaving and going back to school was always on my mind and sometimes even distracted me from my work, so I decided it was time to leave. I don’t regret leaving, I like to work with my hands but looking at grey concrete floors all day got very monotonous, and now that I’m going to college and majoring in machine tool technology I’ll have the opportunity to get a job doing what I want to do, which is why when facing the decision of “should I stay or should I go”, I chose to go.
3 Comments
9/29/2017 02:32:08
Jesse, I liked reading your opinions on the story because they differed from my own. I think that your argumenr based on the story could have benefited from a stronger stance, however. What I mean by that is, you used words like "may have" a lot where I think that it's more literarily powerful to use "I believe that...". I think that your argument would seem stronger if written in such a way.
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Sthefany Lamegos
10/3/2017 05:18:14
Jesse, I'm glad you made the decision to go back to school. I think the way you wrote the prompt could have benefited from more details, like you could have explained how it feels to be sleep deprived or you could have added more struggles because working with concrete and working that many hours is a lot of work.
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10/3/2017 05:18:47
Jesse, it must have been hard leaving a job that you are making good money at for school which is a long of time and expensive. But I definitely feel that you made the right decision. I agree with you when you said that she did have the abortion and that she stayed in the relationship, which is sad to conclude. But I like your reading style!
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