Two Couples:One Situation

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In “Good People” by David Foster Wallace and Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” two young couples are faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Sheri Fisher may be sympathetic because Lane Dean Jr. gives her little input in a decision within their discussions, he is unsure as to whether or not he loves her, and because Sheri has made big plans for her life ahead before the unplanned pregnancy. I contend that Jig deserves more sympathy because the American is persistent in his persuasion toward the operation, his love is unjustified, and because Jig has not made plans for her life with or without the child.
Sheri Fisher, on the other hand, has little idea on how Lane Dean Jr. feels toward her decisions. gaining some sympathy. She has little clue because he is unsure, therefore he tells her nothing. Lane Dean Jr. “did not know what to do” (218) which is understandable because he is young. Both families (Sheri’s and Jr.’s) come from very protestant religious backgrounds. Sheri and he have prayed on numerous occasions about the abortion, yet still, he was unsure. Lane Dean told her again and again “that he’d go with her and be there with her” (216). But after reassuring her a second time she laughed because he could not actually be there in the operating room; he would be in the waiting room the entire time. This is the one part of the story where Lane Dean makes it apparent that he wants the abortion. But “he pretended that not saying aloud what he knew to be right and true was for her sake, was for the sake of her needs and feelings” (217). Sheri has made plans for her future and he is afraid the bringing a baby up in their lives will ruin her chances of becoming a nurse. Because Lane Dean Jr. does not speak up on his opinio...

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...she doesn’t want to. She tells him that she will have the operation done because she doesn’t care about herself (592). Jig for her unsaid want for the world (593) and her desire to not be alone, but because she feels she can not have both, I sympathize for her.
Although Wallace and Hemingway envision two young couples facing an unplanned pregnancy, only one couple gains my sympathy. Wallace’s Sheri Fisher in “Good People” is making her decision based off little insight from Lane Dean Jr., a feeling of lack of honest love from him, and her plans for her future of success. Jig, in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” is making her decision based off a persistent American who claims he loves her, but it appears otherwise, and because she hasn’t made plans for her future other than being with him. Being the naive young girl that she is, Jig deserves my sympathy.

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