Acceptance of Loss in Eveline and Hills Like White Elephants

The End of Love and Acceptance of Loss in “Eveline” by James Joyce and “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway

At least once in a lifetime, most people will experience the end of a love and have to deal with the difficulties of moving on. The end of a romance can occur either through choosing to leave your other half or being the one who is left. In the short stories “Eveline” by James Joyce and “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway there are particularly good examples of the end of love and acceptance of loss. The end of a relationship should not be looked at as the end of the world, but as a chance to grow from the experience. The women in these stories both felt pain from their losses but in the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson, “tis' better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all”.

In the story “Eveline” by James Joyce, a young woman, Eveline, is torn between leaving for a new life in Buenos Aires with her fiancé, Frank, or staying home and taking care of her father. Although Eveline loves Frank, she knows that her father needs her. At home she knows everyone and everyone knows her, but in Buenos Aires there would only be Frank. “Frank was very kind, manly, [and] open-hearted” and Eveline knew that life with him would be wonderful and exciting but she also had a duty to her family (Joyce 659). “The promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could” was the only thing keeping Eveline from leaving (Joyce 660). Her father had a terrible mean streak and they fought constantly but now that he was growing old she knew she could not leave him. As Eveline and Frank waited at the dock for their boat these thoughts were going around and around in her head. At the las...

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...er this loss of love, but in the end we can hope they were able to move on. This is what should be taken from these stories; that although the end of love can be painful, it is important to move on and grow from these experiences.

Works Cited

Dilworth, Thomas. "THE NUMINA OF JOYCE'S 'EVELINE'." Studies in Short Fiction 15.4 (1978): 456.Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 24 Apr. 2011.

Hashmi, Nilofer. "HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS": THE JILTING OF JIG." Hemingway Review 23.1 (2003): 72-83. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 24 Apr. 2011

Joyce, James. "Eveline." 2009. Legacies. By Jan Z. Schmidt, Lynne Crockett, and Carley R. Bogarad. 4th ed. Wadsworth Cengage Learning. 658-61. Print.

Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.” Legacies. By Jan Z. Schmidt, Lynne Crockett, and Carley R. Bogarad. 4th ed. Wadsworth Cengage Learning. 664-67. Print.