Black Man And White Woman In A Dark Green Rowboat Analysis

Abortion has always been a difficult topic to discuss. While some are open to discussing it, others are very secretive and uncomfortable about the issue. Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” brings abortion into a light that many choose to steer away from. This short story inspired other authors to discuss the topic and give the readers an idea of what many people go through in this situation. Russell Bank’s “Black Man and White Woman in a Dark Green Rowboat” and David Foster Wallace’s “Good People” were influenced by Hemingway to give a different point of view of the emotional roller coaster that is abortion. Both Hemingway and Banks gives their readers a deeper understanding of what it feels like to have someone take control of

Both stories share a combination of internal and outside dialogue that gives a reader an idea of what is going on inside of the male's head but you do not know what is going inside of the women in the stories head. In both stories, they give the implication that both women keep the baby. Hemingway shows this when Jig and the man move from the darker side of the train station and go to the brighter, lighter side with the two hills and then the man asks Jig how she feels and she says, ““I feel fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine”(Hemingway 592). This is the implication that Jig realized that she wanted to keep the baby. Wallace shows the implication that Sheri keeps her baby by showing Lane’s inner thought of what he thinks is going to happen. “She will carry this, and have it, and love it and make no claim on Lane except his good wishes and respecting what she has to do. That she releases, all claim, and hopes he finishes up at P.J.C and does so good in his life and has all joy and good things”(Wallace). Sheri knows that Lane doesn’t want anything to do with this child, but she has made a bond with this child and she plans on keeping it. She doesn’t want Lane to feel that he has some responsibility to take care of her child so she plans to do it herself. Sheri probably knew the second that she sat at the table with Lane that she was

Banks wanted to reach out to a younger audience that this can happen to anyone, not just adults so he uses two teens in college with bright future who makes a mistake. Like the other stories there was outside influence on them but what makes them different is that it is the influence of religion. They both were afraid of what God would do, more specifically Lane. “He rarely before now had thought of damnation and Hell— that part of it didn’t speak to his spirit”(Wallace). Although Lance was religious, he never really thought of the bad things that would happen to him because he never did anything wrong, but now seeing as he got Sheri pregnant he was terrified of what could happen to him. What makes this story from the other two is that this story is strictly inner dialogue, so the reader only knows what is going on inside of Lane’s head and his conflicting emotions. They don’t get to hear any conversation with Sheri and Lane, nor do they get to understand what is going inside of Sheri’s head at such a stressful time. One specific struggle that Lane seems to go through is debating on if he loves Sheri or not.“But neither did he open up and tell her straight that he didn’t love her”(Wallace). Unlike the other two characters in the other stories, the man who clearly doesn’t love Jig and the Black Man who does have some type of love