Literary Analysis Of Hills Like White Elephants

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Recommended: Narrative about freshman year

Kent Steinberg

Mr. Race

English 373

16 May 2014

Hills Like White Elephants: Transcendence Unto Modernity, Curriculum Values and Social Conventions

Life is a series of crossroads, major and minor, and each decision plays a key part in analysing the character of a person. In “Hills Like White Elephants” Ernest Hemingway tears back the curtains and exposes one of these moments in full ingenuousness. A man and a woman, named Jig, are at an impasse. They have to decide whether or not they are going to abort their child. The man wants no change in his life, and so he wants no child. The woman wants a change in lifestyle, but in order to keep the child she has to break the autonomous lifestyle that has surrounded her for her entire life. She, in essence, must change her identity in order to follow her aspirations. By juxtaposing the character’s perceived identity to the character’s hopes, Hemingway provides the reader with certain axioms of life. These axioms that Hemingway presents fit into the curriculum of Junior Year by relating to specific values and social conventions, by having literary merit and lastly by transcending time by influencing modern society’s media themes and motifs.

To analyze a stories efficacy one must first scrutinize an author and their background. Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” was first published in 1927. The book and the author bear indelible similarities. “Hills Like White Elephant’s” is about a couple at odds over the construct of their relationship. They are at a bypass, the man wanting the woman to get an abortion in order to avoid change, the woman wanting to have the baby and accept that life come in stages. Hemingway projects aspects of his life unto the life of this couple. ...

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... identity.

“Hills Like White Elephants” fits with the curriculum of Junior Year by relating to specific values and social conventions, by having literary merit and lastly by transcending time by influencing modern society’s media themes and motifs. It does all this by using a truthful method of writing, dialogic. Hemingway is able to paint a brilliant picture of the Human condition. He does this by incorporating motifs which depict societal qualms. Hemingway was able to influence society today by displaying how identity and autonomy are important to the individual. He was against a single tyrannical power telling an individual what they should do, how they should write. He stood for an individual having a choice, an opinion. He wanted people to be people He wanted to send a message and a message can be sent with just one single, meaningful, four letter

word.

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