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Societal Normality In 'Hills Like White Elephants'

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Social norms and situational settings are extremely influential on a person—their interactions with others and the way they see themselves have a manipulated perception of reality. Societal normality’s can impact they way people act and can change ways of living into unethical and unpractical circumstances. The power of a situation is extremely influential on a person—beautifully demonstrated in The Stanford Prison Experiment—placing a person into a situation in which they cannot control impacts their logical way of thinking. People will change their appearances, health, and or cancel out any other forms of competition. Transforming and conforming are constantly occurring within society, even if this challenges peoples personal beliefs and …show more content…

White Elephants are symbolic for the child. The woman is conflicted, because this operation is taking away her unborn child—an apparent internal conflict. She asks the man numerous times, “"And if I do it you 'll be happy and things will be like they were and you 'll love me?" (Hemingway 3) The man is constantly reassuring his love and desire to be with her, but only her. When he speaks to the woman his manipulation of wording portrays the he’s concerned for her, but in reality he is pushing on his hidden agenda—having her go through with the operation. In the middle of their conversation he states, "if you don 't want to you don 't have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn 't want to. But I know it 's perfectly simple.” (Hemingway 4). When the women attempt to show hope and talk about the beauty of bring a child into this world; the American man continues to state that the operation is simple. In the end, the women choose to stop talking with the American man about the operation, he has pleaded his case. He has stated that this unborn child is, “the only thing that bothers us. It 's the only thing that 's made us unhappy." (Hemingway 2). Thus the result, she has chosen to proceed with this operation, despite her …show more content…

These young women sacrifice their happiness and integrity to please the one they love the most. They have taken their personal beliefs and pushed them away and are conflicted on how to please their significant other’s. Desiree left her once happy home, and will be left to be a single mother in Paris. The girl in, “Hills Like White Elephants,” preforms an operation she doesn’t see as a justified action. All because they sacrificed their personal identities to demonstrate their love for their significant

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The code of ethics in which an individual abides by speaks volume. High ethical values are very important in every facet of life. Honesty, loyalty and trust worthiness make up the moral compass in which to live. This moral compass can often be blemished with the ugliness of immorality, deceit and greed. The Tuskegee Syphilis study and The Stanford Prison Experiment are experiments indicative of how research and an individual’s ethical values can become distorted.

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Throughout their conversation, you can decipher a tone where the conversation sheds light on his feelings towards the procedure and her feelings. He says “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig. It’s not really an operation at all” (Hemingway 124), in an effort to persuade her to in fact have the abortion. She, on the other hand, seems silent at first, but then questions how their life will be better after this procedure. Her uncertainty shows in her responses, and in other findings “… the sensuous beauty of a love relation that is quickly deteriorating, now that she has become conscious of her lover’s selfishness” (Maynard 273).

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Lane Jr. who's struggling with his faith will support and stand by Sheri and her decision concerning the pregnancy. Ernest Hemingway's" Hills Like White Elephants” allows his readers to come to the conclusion as to whether the couple in question will terminate or keep the unborn child. As Jig, and the American are

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Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants" and David Foster Wallace’s “Good People,” are respected, yet controversial text within American literature. In Both works they confront the hard-hitting reality of how couples face the struggles of an unwanted pregnancy when it occurs. These stories deal with realism at their cores but deal with them in their very own ways. Both stories share similarities and differences with each other and it’s all based on the authors Ernest Hemingway and David Foster Wallace views on these themes as well as their relationship.

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Throughout the short story (1), “Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway is speaking about a seemingly unwanted pregnancy and a woman’s uneasiness with going through an abortion. However, Hemingway never explicitly says in this work of fiction (2) that it is about abortion or that the woman, Jig, is uncomfortable with it, but uses symbolism (3) to present this to the audience. At the time “Hills like White Elephants” was published, in 1927, abortion was illegal in most places and a very taboo subject that wasn’t to be openly discussed in public. Thus, Hemingway relied greatly upon the use of symbolism to get his message across for this reason as well as the third person narrator (4) that did not give insight into the character’s thoughts within this piece of literature (5) . He uses symbols such as the train station, white hills, the baggage, and the drinks to point towards the underlying internal conflict (6) of Jig’s decision that is being heavily influenced by the American man, who wants Jig to get the abortion.

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It is a sensitive topic and may even not be accepted in society. The woman is apprehensive and does not know what will happen next if she does decide to get an abortion (Norton). The relationship between the characters shows that the woman depends on the man’s approval but also seeks acceptance and

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The conflict between the two characters is the issue of abortion and whether or not the girl will go through it. Hemingway does not tell us that the girl is pregnant but hints it throughout the story referring to “the operation” as having an abortion. From the start, you can take

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Important parts of the story are not discovered instantly. In the story, Hills Like White Elephants, symbolism is used to describe an unstable relationship between a man and women. Symbolism is portrayed in Hills Like White Elephants through the couple’s consumption of alcohol, the setting and mood of the story, the white elephant, the elephant in the room and the number two. When reading Hills Like White Elephants, it is obvious that drinking alcohol is a large part of their relationship. Alcohol is not portrayed as a good thing.

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The dialogue in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” reveals a man’s and a woman’s incongruent conflict on abortion, and the author’s fundamentally feminist position is visible in the portrayal of the woman’s independent choice of whether or not to keep the baby she is carrying. The plot is very simple in the story which is less than 1500 words long. A woman and a man spend less than an hour on a hot summers day at a Spanish train station in the valley of Ebro as they are waiting for a train heading for Madrid. Their dialogue takes up most of the space and only few major actions take place.

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If taken literally, Hemingway’s story is one in which very little happens. The story takes place in a train station in Spain where a couple argue about a vague event over drinks. From the very start of the short story, there is an overbearing uneasiness felt in the text as the unnamed male and the girl, Jig, hold what seems to be—on the surface—an innocent conversation. By using a limiting third person point of view that consists mostly of dialogue, Hemingway creates an obstacle in the way of understanding as there is no clear insight to what is going on inside of either party’s head. The conflict that the pair seem to be discussing is never named and it becomes the metaphorical elephant in the room much like the white elephants that Jig sees in the mountains.

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In the short story "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway the central idea is people sometimes don't appreciate something special when it's in front them. This story can put in the category of Drama because at the end the reader is left with a open ending unlike other dramas that have a closing. The story is about a couple who is waiting for a train at a railroad junction in Spain they decide to have a beer then have a conversation of whether to go through the abortion of their child. Next, the bartender tells the couple that the train arrives in 5 minutes so the American moves their bags onto the other side of the train station and gets a drink at the bar while Jig sits by herself. The theme of the story is people sometimes don't appreciate what's in front of them and is shown through characterization, point of view and symbolism.

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Kenan’s story also helped me understand the magnitude of being overpowered by a lover or a husband like the woman was by her husband in Hemingway’s story. The woman in Hemingway’s story did not want to go through an abortion, but her man convinces her to do it. Hemingway states, “‘...I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to. I’m perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you’” (362).

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In his story “Hills Like White Elephants”, Ernest Hemingway points out the couple's inability to make the decision: whether to abort the unborn child or not. The reader finds that the story deals with couple's miscommunication through the conversation and the emotions that they express. One can observe that no descriptions are given to the characters, thus, Hemingway creates universal dilemma to focus on the crucial issue. In this way, Hemingway leads the reader to identify with his female character that undergoes a struggle.

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As the plot unraveled, it became evident the main character, Jig, was pregnant, but her significant other, the American man, wanted to persuade her to have an abortion. The man first mentioned the abortion when he stated, “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig. It’s not really an operation at all” (Hemingway). Jig did not respond, therefore the man continued to persuade her to get an abortion by oversimplifying the operation. She questioned what they would do post-abortion, so he explained that they would be happy, just like the couples they knew.

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