Hemingways Hills Like What Elephants - Research Paper Example

full Three Stories (an English research paper) 30 November Introduction The world of literature whether autobiographical or fictional is a mirror of life. It is in literature that people can find the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of all the previous generations and in this regard literature serves both as a lesson for life and also entertainment. In the next pages, three stories are discussed to illustrate this perspective and how the authors had used literature to advance their own ideas about how people should live their lives. The three authors are famous in their own right and they are Ernest Hemingway in “Hills Like White Elephants,” Amy Tan with her “Two Kinds” narrative, and Lacy M. Johnson with her “White Trash Primer” which is a sad stereotypical portrayal of poor white people. Discussion Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) wrote a number of remarkable novels that had sharp and vivid portrayals of scenes and unforgettable characterizations of the main characters in his short stories and novels. A few of these novels stood out such as “The Sun Also Rises” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” as classic examples of his unique sparse writing style accentuated with his trademark understatement. Among his other memorable works are “The Old Man and the Sea” and “A Farewell to Arms” that ensured his reputation and legacy as a foremost writer of the twentieth century. Many writers imitated his writing style of spare dialog, vivid characterizations, a preference for understatement, and wise use of simple prose that won for him the much-coveted Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Fiction was his favorite genre but his writings have a strong resemblance to reality because he had chosen to write mainly from his own experiences in life. If he wrote it, he had also done it before. Hemingway was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois. He was barely out of high school when he applied for work in a newspaper. This job as a journalist honed and sharpened his writing style of brevity and mastery of details and facts about a story. He soon joined in the First World War as an ambulance driver and at various times during the war also reported the wartime events as a war correspondent. After the war, he became a foreign correspondent of various newspapers and acquired varied experiences while filing his news stories. He had been married four times, went on a safari to Africa where he met accidents twice, and later on suffered from various ailments as a result of those accidents and a lifestyle of drinking and smoking. He was depressed, paranoid, hypertensive, and committed suicide in 1961. Hemingway strove hard to be different from his father Clarence who had committed himself. In a sense, Hemingway had many insecurities and fears which were often unfounded. He created an image of machismo to hide these fears but he eventually succumbed to the same depression that killed his father (Berman 108). Like his father, Hemingway suffered on a variety of ailments like insomnia, nervous breakdown, diabetes, and hypertension. A usual theme in his writings is the culture of death like in bullfighting stories (Bloom 112). In the short story “Hills Like White Elephants” Hemingway used the metaphor of white elephants for the concerns of everyday life, in particular the growing awareness of womens rights. The arrival of the birth control pill in 1960 gave women a right to control their bodies and contributed to a growing permissiveness and assertiveness. In the story, a man and a woman were discussing about the woman having an abortion because the man was not prepared to be a father (Bishop 122). The man wanted to see the world but a pregnancy was a hindrance to their future travel plans. The reference in the title to white elephants is to symbolize anything that is not wanted, in this case, the pregnancy. The theme in this story is the early signs of a gender war as the woman wants the baby but cannot decide for herself. Amy Tan (b. 1952) is a Chinese-American writer whose common theme is the usual mother-daughter love-hate relationship but with a twist from the perspective of a Chinese girl who was born and raised in America with a strong Chinese family cultural tradition as both her parents were Chinese immigrants to America. She has a notable portfolio of published novels of which The Joy Luck Club is the most famous as a bestseller (later made into a film). She also wrote other engaging stories like The Kitchen Gods Wife, also The Hundred Secret Senses, and then later, Sagwa, the Chinese-Siamese Cat. A recurring theme in Tans novels is the clash of Western and Eastern cultures, the generational conflict between a mother and her daughter, and in general, the different values and beliefs engendered by a cultural divide. Tan had worked at various odd jobs while still in college. She later on focused on her writing career first as a business writer for known American firms like Bank of America, IBM and Pacific Bell. She then decided to become a professional freelance writer with her first novel which incidentally also became a bestseller which is a rare feat for any aspring writer. The Joy Luck Club is actually a collection of several short stories telling the life experiences of four pairs of Chinese-American mothers and daughters. Amy Tan learned only later in life the real life story of her own mother who had a family back in Shanghai and left behind a son (who died early) and three daughters from an abusive husband. The background of her mother serves as an inspiration for The Joy Luck Club to which she returns frequently as theme. Her short story “Two Kinds” is a close parallel of her mothers true-to-life story when Tans mother left behind a family despite the heartache she felt initially. This ambition to be a success in life was what drove Tans own mother to leave everything in China to start a new life in America with all its opporunities for a better life and to attain the American Dream as there are few constraints in America compared with the oppresive cultural practices and rigid social hierarchy back in her homeland in mainland China (“The Bonesetters Daugheter” 25). In “Two Kinds” the relationship of the mother to her own daughter was strained due to the mothers insistence on hard work to attain success in life. The mother saw her daughter as insolent and complacent because she grew up in the American culture wherein everything is easy in life. The mother grew up in China and saw the terrible misfortunes of her family as she witnessed the deaths of her parents, her husband, and her twin daughers due to the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. She lost her home and everything dear in life but she emigrated to America to start a new life despite her many broken dreams while still in China. She had promised to herself to work very hard to attain success and so she always insisted on her own daughter to try hard in learning the piano lessons as these could be her success. The tile of two kinds refers to the two vastly different cultures of the mother and her daughter. These two people are vastly different in outlook, in temperament, and in mentality. The mother sees everything in life as an intense struggle and only those who strive hard are to be rewarded with success whatever it is they aspire for. This intense desire to be successful is translated to her own daughter whom she wanted to be a success unlike her who failed in life. However, the daughter is much too Americanized already and does not see things that way or the way her own mother sees things as a death-and-life struggle. The daughter wants to take things easy because she had not experienced hardship yet. This is why she resented her own mother for always telling her what to do and always trying to be in control of everything. The mother wants her daughter to practice daily and become a piano prodigy. In fact, she believes anyone can become somebody like be an entrepreneur by opening a restaurant, or be self-employed in some business, or even work in government with a good salary and a nice retirement package too. The mother believes that everything is possible in America if only a person works hard but the daughter dislikes her mother for being a control freak. In her eyes, they have vastly different worlds, her mother in China and she in America (“Two Kinds” 3). Lacy M. Johnson came from humble beginnings. She once worked as a cashier at a Wal-Mart store and also sold various items door-to-door in an effor to survive her poverty. In her blog site, she mentioned some of her works including The Other Side (2014) which is the memory recalled in living in a rural area so far removed from the town center that no one in her family can see the street lights. This story details her experience of getting kidnapped by a former boyfriend who had planned to kill her after raping her (Werris para. 2). She also wrote Trespasses: A Memoir which is her best known work so far. She had been awarded many writing grants and fellowships from various universities and foundations which were quite impressed with her prodigious literary output (Johnson para. 1) and presently teaching art. In her “White Trash Primer” Johnson tells in great detail what it was like to live in a poor rural household. It is a monotonous existence of living with Papa, Mama, two sisters, two horses, three dogs, and twelve cats (“White Trash Primer” para. 1). There is very little else except go through life in the same manner everyday with no hope of changing anything. This is the very kind of home life that poor white people like her family go through each day. The household chores hardly vary and it becomes deadening in a way, thumbing down. In her story, Johnson tells how rural life is associated with hopelessness and extreme poverty. These poor white rural people are often referred to as “rednecks” and this has a bad connotation. Being called as “white trash” is adding insult to injury or like rubbing salt on a big wound because it also insults the intelligence of poor people and erodes their spirit. Many in America live quiet lives of desperation while in abject poverty especially those in the rural areas. Many people, even foreigners, have a wrong impression of Americans being uniformly rich and that every citizen is livng the good life but this is very far from the truth. This is what Johnson tried to portray in her “White Trash Primer” with the word “primer” referring to the cheap paint used as first coat to cover up any dirt or unsightly things on the wall of a house. White trash is a relatively modern phrase that is at once both derogatory and also in a way very condescending because it implies poor people who are white are no good at all. The implication is they only have themselves to blame for their sad predicament because they did not do everything to better themselves when opportunities abound in America. Even newly-arrived immigrants from distant sometimes make it to the good life and achieve the so-called American Dream of owning a house, or owning a business, and becoming rich altogether. The theme in Johnsons work is to make people realize that using the term “white trash” as urban lingo is meant to demean and degrade an entire population segment in social stigma. It should be avoided because using “white trash” robs poor white people of their dignity. Conclusion Writers and authors serve a purpose in society and that is to preserve, record, and in a way re-tell the stories of people to make a better understanding of humanity. Literature is both educational and entertaining as what was said earlier. Hemingway in his “Hills Like What Elephants” documented through the conversatio of a man and his girlfriend the new trends in his time which was an incipient awareness of feminish with the introduction of birth control pills which allowed women a voice about their own bodies but the woman in that story was in a way still unsure of how to express herself and her sentiments. Amy Tan likewise showed in “Two Kinds” the immigrant experience of many Asian-Americans, and especially Chinese, on how to grapple with cultural issues that often divide parent and child in generational conflicts. A mother who had experienced hardship tries hard while her daughter takes things easy. “White Trash Primer” is an eye-opener for most people because the story is told from a first-person account of rural poverty especially in the South. It shows why it is not good to generalize all American citizens as rich people because there are also many white Americans who are actually poor but hidden from public view and away from political discourses. Works Cited Berman, Jeffrey. Surviving Literary Suicide. Amherst, MA, USA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. Print. Bishop, Margaret. Single Scene Short Stories. Layton, UT, USA: Gibbs Smith, 2007. Print. Bloom, Harold. Ernest Hemingway. New York, NY, USA: Infobase Publishing, 2005. Print. Johnson, Lacy M. “About Lacy M. Johnson.” n. d. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. . Johnson, Lacy M. “White Trash Primer.” Memoir Journal 2.1 (2009). Print. Tan, Amy. The Bonesetters Daughter. New York, NY, USA: G. P. Putnams Sons, 2001. Print. Tan, Amy. Two Kinds. New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2009. Print. Werris, Wendy. “Voicing the Unspeakable: PW talks with Lacy M. Johnson.” 27 June 2014. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. . Due: December 01, 2014 @ 3:22 a.m. Read More