Love and Relationships in Love Stories - Research Paper Example

“Hills with the White Elephant” and “Araby” Araby is a love story written by Joyce James an Irish The narrator is a young boy living a carefree life in the Dublin neighborhood before he falls in love with a girl who is a sister to his friend by the name Mangan. The narrator is infatuated with the girl, but he cannot approach her to express his feelings, instead, he watches her every morning until one day the girl spoke with him. However, an attempt to buy a present for Mangan’s sister at the bazaar to express his love fails, as arrives when it is too late to buy anything. The story Hills like white elephant is a fiction written by Hemingway. It talks about a couple, who quarrel as they are waiting for a train. The woman is pregnant, and thus, the couple is traveling to Madrid for an abortion. This is the cause of the conflict, as a man is for the idea while the woman is against the idea of abortion. From the two stories the, authors have represented the themes of love, family and even close family relationship. Consequently, the two stories demonstrate how through love, family, and close relationship characters search for completion, and how finding or separating from a loved one brings a change in a person by making them new. In the story of Araby, the author brings out how the boy who is also the narrator, uses love to search for completion. The boy is just a young man who is in the process of transitioning from adolescent to adulthood. Thus, he experiences love for the first time, but because of several obstacles, fulfilling this love is almost impossible, for example, he cannot even talk to the girl he has a crush on; instead, he watches her steps every day until the girl one day talked to him. Deep inside, the narrator believes that making the love burning inside him is the only way to make him complete. This is why he takes a trip to the Bazaar very seriously where he plans to buy the girl a present, which he would use to confess and express his feelings. As a result, the narrator is highly frustrated when his uncle fails to return on time for him to go to the bazaar and buy the present. This trip is very important to him because he believes it would alleviate him from his lonely and miserable love life. Thus, the boy uses love to search for completion, which he tends to assume, lies in expressing his love to the girl. Moreover, the intense feelings that the boy has for Mangan’s sister shows how much he believes this is the most important thing in his life. The feelings are so much so that when praying, he finds himself whispering the girl’s name instead saying God’s name. He narrates, “Her (Mangan’s sister) name sprang to my lips at the moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand My eyes were often full of tears(I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into bosom” (Joyce 274). Therefore, the love is intense, and in it, the narrator is searching for completion. Similarly, disillusionment in love also expresses how people use love to search for completion. For example, the narrator is disillusioned with the love for the girl; however, this is diminished with it, revealing a disappointment with life. The author is showing a boy who was in love, but never finds it since he could not express his love for the girl. The love that the narrator had for Mangan’s sister was just an illusion (Conboy 373). Moments of illusion are represented throughout the story. However, it is shattered by the narrators’ dark epiphany. In the narrators search for love of Mangan’s sister who is also his supposed second half, he goes through a lot. Furthermore, as the author finishes the story he tells how the young bow is disappointed, as he could not find a gift for her. The fact that he was not able to find a gift so that he can use it to please a girl and find his love makes the boy frustrated and disillusioned. This disappointment brings him to the reality of life that he cannot attain the completeness that he is searching for. Family relationships are manifested in “Araby” by James Joyce, this according to the narrator, he lives with his relatives, and the relatives are the uncle and aunt. “I’m afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of our lord,” aunt said (Joyce 277). This statement reveals that he was leaving with his aunt. However, the family relationship reveals constant routines, which trap the characters in frustrations of everyday life. As a result, they have the desire to escape in search for completeness. This frustration is well demonstrated by the narrator who is desperate for love, and his uncle who goes to the pub to drink away his frustrations before coming to the house. In general, this demonstrates the Dubliners’ desire to escape, and their longing for adventures in other countries (Christopher 54). However, the characters are confined in Dublin, and they are unable to escape, as they would wish because of the inability to gain enough courage to escape the life. In the end, they continue living in repetitive traps that prevent them from seeking out new experiences and happiness. Nevertheless, there seem to be limited open conflicts among the family members showing that they have good relationships. Thus, the desire for escape in search of completion has nothing to do with family conflict, but arises from societal elements that chain the citizens into lives of loneliness and frustrations. In the story of Hills like white elephant, Jig believes that, through love, she can be complete, and this is what defines her relationship with the American. This is evident when The American manipulates her to agree to perform an operation, which probably is an abortion, and consequently, she agrees to do it on condition that the American will still love her, and together they will live a happy life. This shows that the Jig only cares about The American’s love, as she believes that losing it would be like losing a part of her. Thus, through love, she searches for completeness in the American. Moreover, she is too focused in what would happen afterwards, that is, if the American will still love her or not, that she does not notice how he manipulates her into agreeing to the operation (Weeks 75). For instance, she emphasizes that he cannot force her to do, and it is her choice, but at the same time, he asserts that it is the best option, and also that it is safe, and other people have done it before. Therefore, the girl though has a choice, with those reasons she is left with no otherwise, but to agree to do the operation. Below is how the conversation goes. “And you think then we‘ll be all right and happy.” “I know we will….I’ve known lots of people that have done it.” “so have I… and afterward they were all so happy.” (Hemmingway 27) Similarly, in the short story Hills like white Elephant, the relationship between the American and Jig ends after she does an abortion. The author by giving this episode on how the relationship ends just after the abortion, he is trying to show a man who does not want to have any family relationship with a woman whom he has impregnated. The American persuades Jig to abort the baby, and when she agrees to do an abortion, he now sees it as an opportunity to separate himself from Jig and this makes him a new person. This separation makes the two become new people, as it reveals that they have different ideologies about a relationship and family life (Hamid 77). For instance, while Jig wishes for a committed relationship in which they can start a family with the American, the American does not want any commitment, and certainly a family. For this reason, he urges Jig to carry out an abortion so that he escapes any responsibility that would come with raising up a child and tying him to a family. The fact that the American wanted to leave Jig, he still urges her to carry out an abortion. According to critics, this implies that as much as he wants to leave her he still cares about Jig and he wants her to suffer with the child alone. The American in this case is showing some characters of a friendship. However, it also shows that he wants to free himself from the obligations of marrying Jig. The American is now free from the financial obligations towards Jig, and he is free from the relationship he had with jig. This is represented in the story as the American goes to drink of himself when he foreshadows the end of his relationship with Jig. The end of this relationship makes the American a free man who can now live his life the way he pleases. The author of Hills with the white elephant according to Fekonja and Petrič, show how the American man does not value family relationships, the show how the American man is happy to be separated from jig, this separation makes him very happy (67). The happiness is seen when the American goes to drink just to celebrate the separation that they will have and this is when they were waiting for the train. In both stories, the authors show the how people search for love, but they do not find it. The story by James Joyce is an example where a young boy was in love, but was disappointed he did not find a gift for the girl hence he could not express his love for her. In addition, the boy believes that this love is capable of releasing him from chains of loneliness and completes him or makes him whole. Similarly, in family relationships, the author reveals the desire of Dubliners to escape from their repetitive and frustrating daily lives to attain new experiences and adventures that would complete them. Likewise, in Hills like White elephants, Jig’s search for love hits a dead end after getting pregnant and the American coerce her into performing an abortion, and then breaks off their relationship. She did not go through the operation because she wanted, but because the man promised to continue loving her afterwards. However, her search for completeness in a happy life with the American fails to bear fruits. In addition, their separation brings out how ending a relationship may make a person new. Works cited Christopher, Wang. The Constant Vanity in Araby. 2001. Print. Conboy, Sheila. "Araby." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005. Print. Fekonja, Petra and Jerneja Petrič. Iceberg Theory in Hemingways Short Stories hills Like White Elephants. Ljubljana: P. Fekonja, 2007. Print. Hamid, Syed Ali. Men with Women: Hemingway ‘Love Stories: The Short Fiction of Ernest Hemingway. New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1985. Print. Hemingway, Ernest. Hills Like White Elephants:Transition. 1927. Print. Joyce, James. Dubliners. London: Grant Richards, 1914. Print. Weeks, L. "Hemingway Hills: Symbolism in Hills Like White Elephants." Studies in Short Fiction (1980): 75. Read More