Acceptance of Loss in Eveline and Hills Like White Elephants

1303 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Women in literature

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...

... middle of paper ...

...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.

Show More
Related

  • Woman Hollering Creek Compare And Contrast Essay

    972 Words  | 2 Pages

    Disillusion is defined as “the condition of being dissatisfied or defeated in expectation or hope” especially in the case of love (“Disillusion”). This is the case for the two protagonists in the written works “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros and “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway. The two short stories share a similar theme of the protagonists’ suffering from disillusions, their resolutions are extremely different due to the epiphanies.

    Read More

  • Roman Fever and Hills Like White Elephants

    2111 Words  | 5 Pages

    “Roman Fever” and “Hills Like White Elephants” are two stories that on surface seem very different from one another, but through careful analysis the two are quite similar. Their similarities are mainly evident through the significant use of the dialogues in the both stories. “Roman Fever” has a third person omniscient narrator which the author allows to know the inner private thoughts of both characters, Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley. In contrast, “Hills Like White Elephants” is composed in a third person limited narrative where very little is known about the thoughts of both Jig and the American. At first Ernest Hemingway’s short story can clearly be viewed as the most ambiguous out of the two. With its simplistic style, written mostly in straightforward dialogue which leaves the readers to contemplate over the ultimate outcome of the story and forces them to ...

    Read More

  • Theme of Love and Marriage in The Storm by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman

    589 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Like a river flows so surely to the sea darling, so it goes some things are meant to be.” In literature there have been a copious amount of works that can be attributed to the theme of love and marriage. These works convey the thoughts and actions in which we as people handle every day, and are meant to depict how both love and marriage can effect one’s life. This theme is evident in both “The Storm” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman; both stories have the underlying theme of love and marriage, but are interpreted in different ways. Both in “The Storm” and in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the women are the main focus of the story. In “The Storm” you have Calixta, a seemingly happy married woman who cheats on her husband with an “old-time infatuation” during a storm, and then proceeds to go about the rest of her day as if nothing has happened when her husband and son return. Then you have “The Yellow Wallpaper” where the narrator—who remains nameless—is basically kept prisoner in her own house by her husband and eventually is driven to the point of insanity.

    Read More

  • Clash of Male and Female Differences in Hemingway

    1807 Words  | 4 Pages

    O'Brien, Timothy D. Allusion Word-Play and the central conflict in Hemingway's "Hills like White Elephants". West Flordia, Pensacola, Flordia: United States Naval Academy, 1992.

    Read More

  • An Analysis of Ernest Hemmingway's Hills Like White Elephants

    1128 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants” tells the tale of a man and a woman, who at first might seem to be having a normal and rather dull conversation at a train station, but it is only when you look closer into what is actually being said by the characters and find the small clues that Hemingway cleverly knit into the story, that you realize how heavy the conversation actually is. Unlike many authors, Hemingway leaves it to the reader to delve deeper into the story and decipher the situation for themselves, and a seemingly simple story can become something so much more. The woman in the story is contemplating whether to stick to the life she knows or begin a brand new chapter in her life that could change her relationship with the man forever. Sometimes one’s true intentions are not always clear.

    Read More

  • White Elephants Symbolism

    1101 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Hills Like White Elephants” depicts a private discussion between the American and Jig over a touchy subject to where a vital choice must be made. Normally, Ernest Hemingway does not give sensitivity to his female characters, yet Jig is distinctive for this situation. Hemingway’s utilization of symbolism to hint Jig’s choice is made evident in numerous ways.

    Read More

  • Searching For Independence In Dubliners

    1683 Words  | 4 Pages

    James Joyce is the author of Dubliners, a compilation of Irish short stories that reflect on the feelings he associates with the city of Dublin, where he grew up in a large impoverished family. After he graduated from the University College, Dublin, Joyce went to live abroad in Paris, France. This action indicates a sense of entrapment that led to his desire to escape. The situations in his stories differ significantly, but each character within these stories experiences this sense of escape that Joyce had. In “An Encounter”, two boys make their first real move at being independent by skipping school to explore Dublin. In “Eveline”, the main character has a choice between taking care of her unstable father or leaving him to lead a new life with a man she has been seeing. In Joyce’s story, “The Dead,” a young man is thrown into deep human assessment, becomes unsure of who he is, and soon after is frightened of this newly discovered truth. The stories in Dubliners implicate this need for independence through characters in different situations and experiencing the feeling of entrapment.

    Read More

  • Pure Love in Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood

    766 Words  | 2 Pages

    Love, however, is not the only factor that creates and maintains a relationship. Love has the power to bring people together, but can also break them apart. In addition, it can lead to irrational decisions with terrible consequences. In this short story Margaret Atwood shows the powerful effect that love has on people’s lives. At first glance, the short stories in "Happy Endings" have a common connection: all the characters die.

    Read More

  • Love in The Lady with the Dog and Hills like White Elephants

    898 Words  | 2 Pages

    Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway both convey their ideas of love in their respective stories The Lady with the Pet Dog and Hills like White Elephants in different ways. However, their ideas are quite varying, and may be interpreted differently by each individual reader. In their own, unique way, both Chekhov and Hemingway evince what is; and what is not love. Upon proper contemplation, one may observe that Hemingway, although not stating explicitly what love is; the genius found in his story is that he gives a very robust example of what may be mistaken as love, although not being true love. On the other hand, Chekhov exposes love as a frame of mind that may only be achieved upon making the acquaintance of the “right person,” and not as an ideal that one may palpate at one instance, and at the another instance one may cease to feel; upon simple and conscious command of the brain. I agree with Hemingway’s view on love because it goes straight to the point of revealing some misconceptions of love.

    Read More

  • Comparing Where Are you going, Where Have You Been and Hills Like White Elephants

    1329 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gale. Weeks, Lewis E., Jr. "Hemingway Hills: Symbolism in 'Hills like White'" Elephants. Studies in Short Fiction. 17.1 (Winter 1980): 75-77.

    Read More

  • The Symbolism in “The Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway

    564 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The Hills Like White Elephants” is a short story that is about an American man and a girl called Jig. They are sitting at a table outside a train station, waiting for a train to Madrid. While they wait they order drinks and have a heated ongoing conversation over whether or not Jig will have an operation that would be of great significance to their relationship. “The Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway has two important symbols in the story, the hills and the drinks both of which help to give us a better understanding of what is going on between the American and his girl.

    Read More

  • Symbolism in Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

    1113 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ernest Hemingway is an incredible writer, known for what he leaves out of stories not for what he tells. His main emphasis in Hills Like White Elephants seems to be symbolism. Symbolism is the art or practice of using symbols, especially by investing things with a symbolic meaning or by expressing the invisible or intangible by means of visible or sensuous representations (merriam-webster.com). He uses this technique to emphasize the importance of ideas, once again suggesting that he leaves out the important details of the story by symbolizing their meaning.

    Read More

  • Life and Death

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.” Literature Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. DiYanni, Robert. 2nd ed. New York. Mc Grew Hill. 2008. 400-03. Print.

    Read More

  • Modernism: Hills Like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemingway

    1592 Words  | 4 Pages

    The art, literature, and poetry of the early 20th century called for a disruption of social values. Modernism became the vague term to describe the shift. The characteristics of the term Modernism, all seek to free the restricted human spirit. It had no trust in the moral conventions and codes of the past. One of the examples of modernism, that breaks the conventions and traditions of literature prior to Modernism, is Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants”. The short story uses plot, symbolism, setting, dialogue, and a new style of writing to allow human spirit to experiment with meaning and interpretation.

    Read More

  • Love In Nicole Krauss's 'The History Of Love'

    702 Words  | 2 Pages

    Love can take many shapes and forms. There are many different kinds of love between human beings. Though it is often overlooked, intentionally or not, loss comes hand in hand with love; it is the second face of love that no one wants to see or experience. With love comes the potential to lose it as well. Nicole Krauss’s book, The History of Love, is really about loss.

    Read More

More about Acceptance of Loss in Eveline and Hills Like White Elephants

Open Document