The definition of objectify is according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary it is “to treat as an object or cause to have objective reality” In both “Hills Like White Elephants” and “A&P” there is an instance of objectification. This paper is a comparison of “Hills Like White Elephants” and “A&P”. They both have some pretty strong similarities and some obvious differences as well. In “A&P” it seems a little more harmless than “Hills Like White Elephants” but nonetheless it is still a part of the story. It is also interesting to see how the two main female characters react to the objectification and how the objectification itself is portrayed. In either story they seem to be objectifying women. In “A&P” it is for simply their looks the whole …show more content…
The American man acted like he did not care at all what she wanted. In either story there is discussion about the female body. In “Hills Like White Elephants” the American man did not seem to care much about what she wanted. Whenever he would ask her about what she wanted it seemed to be more of an afterthought. In “A&P” he acted like he cared about the main girl’s feelings. He felt bad when the store manager yelled at her but the only reason he cared about what the girl being embarrassed was because he thought she was attractive. He only cared about her feelings because he expected something in …show more content…
She seemed like the lead even though the American man was trying to lead her. As stated in previous paragraphs at first she was almost looking to him to lead her but towards the end you start to get a sense of her wising up and making her own decision although the decision is unclear. “the woman is much more mature than the man and that her character develops while his remains static.” (Bauer, 2003). In the same article where that quote came from, it discusses the different layers that help you connect with the fact that she is the lead character. Some may want to disagree with that because in the beginning she does seem to be trying to please the man but really she is the one asking all the important questions. She is looking at the situation realistically while he just wants to go back to his carefree life. She inevitably knows things are going to change. A main character should develop they should feel the weight of their decisions if not there no climax and really no
She defines objectification by simply meaning that women portraying their body parts, which I personally think that it’s a very swallow explanation. Objectification doesn’t mean that a person focuses on your body, but it means that a person is treating them simply as an object for sexual desire. The problem with pornography is that it defines women into an object for pleasure not just because of its sexuality. She went on to say that no one will get upset when women are presented as “brains” or as spiritual beings. I personally believe that her choice of
The protagonist/narrator of John Updike’s short story “A&P”, is a Caucasian, heterosexual, nineteen-year-old male, by the name of Sammy. The story takes place in the summer, on a Thursday afternoon, in small town north of Boston, Massachusetts. The story is told over a short amount of time, when three young Caucasian women parade into the local A&P Grocery Store wearing only their bathing suits. Throughout the story, Sammy 's emotions shifts from lust in the introduction of the story (when the three young women parade into the local A&P wearing only their bathing suits), to judgmental (when he begins to ponder about the type of people employed at the store), and the story concludes with him sympathizing for the young women after they were embarrassed by the store manager, Lengel.
Themes are central to the plot of any story. In fact, themes are the purpose to an author writing anything. By definition, a theme is the subject or topic of a work. Some themes, like that in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” are more obvious, while others, such as, “Hills Like White Elephants” are less clear and require readers to do some deep reading and critical thinking in order to identify the purpose of it, and through strong reading techniques, audiences will find valuable lessons embedded within the themes can enlighten and even revive our thinking.
In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” it is important that we know the couple is struggling with the decision of an unwanted pregnancy; although, we are not directly given this information within the story without analyzing it first. In the first part of the story The Americans girlfriend is willing to discuss possibly having an abortion. An example of her though process would be “They look like white elephants” which is what the Americans girlfriend said to him about the clouds. I believe that she was trying to point out to him that the pregnancy would be a costly lifetime event that they both didn’t want at that point in time. This couple struggles to talk about the pregnancy throughout the entire story. Instead of talking about
Early on, the man orders “two Anis del Toro” (Hemingway, 390). This is used by many, especially writers, as a method of sweeping your problems under the rug. In this case, the American was doing was potentially anchoring the girl down with him. The man is not paying attention to her and could just be trying to forcibly mesh her into his life. This consequently leads to the girl getting annoyed of the man saying that all they do is “look at things and try new drinks” (Hemingway 397). There is something more to this life is what her mind tells her, but the at-ease attitude of her boyfriend doesn’t coincide well with that. To be blunt, the girl craves change, and it is uncertain whether or not the American man can provide that now or ever. The man just sits there and says that all will be good once this issue is taken care of, so this annoys the girl. She is tired of this cultural mirage and living in another person’s fantasy. The man sees a child being born not as the next step in his life but a methodical bump in the road. We can confirm this when he says that the clouds do not look like white elephants and then “drank his beer” to further ignore the obvious shot at him for continuing to ignore the fact that there is a creature inside her
What would literature be had every author used the same perspective for every single story? Literature would not be as well received as it currently is received. Take three American short stories, “Hills Like White Elephants,” “A Rose for Emily,” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” for example. These stories, by Hemingway, Faulkner, and Gilman respectively, each utilize a different a point of view. The perspective of a story heavily influences the impact of the story on a reader and that impact varies based on the content of the story.
She is a seventeen year old in her prime who feels immortal because she has a long life to live, therefore decision making are not based on careful planning but emotions, peer pressure and fantasies. Risk taking from a teenager normally comes from poor judgement, why would America take the decision of leaving the comfort of her home to go to a country which is mainly travelled by the men in her town? Why did she leave with the most unlikely candidate, her brother-in-law? In adversity her first yearn was for her mother’s touch, her food and her home, the fragile little girl in her cries for a mother touch when times are hard because that’s what she is used to, mom handling the
In the “Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway, the pregnant girl, Jig, that drinks alcohol tells her boyfriend, American, that she is going to aborts the fetus. In a sense she just tells him this to get him to shut up because he is nagging at her to get an abortion. Jig and the American, her boyfriend talks about her having an operation and he emphasizes how much he cares for her and how much he loves her. The man tells Jig that the best thing she could do is have the operation. Jig wants to drink different types of alcoholic beverages and have a baby too. She has not come to reality that she is hurting the fetus. The man knows she is hurting the fetus by drinking alcohol that is why he wants her to have the operation to have
In John Updike's short story, "A & P," the main character, Sammy, is a cashier at a small grocery store. He is seen by many to be a sexist pig, describing in detail how he sees the three girls that walk in to the store. Sammy is in fact a sexist pig by what he says about them. With evidence and quotes from the story, Sammy can be determined to be a sexist pig. He describes the first girl he sees walking in the store as "a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it..." (421). Although the comment was kept to himself, in mind it is a sexist comment. Though the girl was in a bathing suit and there was no beach around, she probably wasn't trying to get the attention of young guys. She was just there to "pick up a jar of herring snacks" (423). Describing the girl's "can" (421), meaning her backside, gives Sammy some credit of being a sexist pig. Sammy slowly begins to see the other two girls follow the first. He notices not only what they're wearing, but what the little clothing that they have on covers up. "This clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light" (421). With this quote, he is describing how the bathing suit was slipping off the girl, but in a more demeaning manner. "With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and top of her head except just her..." (421). Sammy describes that he just sees the girl, a one-nighter type. He doesn't see that she's a human, but just a plaything. One other quote/thought that Sammy has while these girls (whom remain nameless throughout the story), is when the one he calls Queeny takes her money from "the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top" (423). He begins to get excited as he uncreases the bill as "it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla [he] had ever known there were" (424). Sammy seems to be more of a sexist pig, as the reader proceeds through the story.
John Updike's A & P and James Joyce's Araby share many of the same literary traits. The primary focus of the two stories revolves around a young man who is compelled to decipher the difference between cruel reality and the fantasies of romance that play in his head. That the man does, indeed, discover the difference is what sets him off into emotional collapse. One of the main similarities between the two stories is the fact that the main character, who is also the protagonist, has built up incredible, yet unrealistic, expectations of women, having focused upon one in particular towards which he places all his unrequited affection. The expectation these men hold when finally "face to face with their object of worship" (Wells, 1993, p. 127) is what sends the final and crushing blow of reality: The rejection they suffer is far too great for them to bear.
“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.
In “Hill Like White Elephants”, the story is about the conversation about the baby and getting abortion between a couple, the American man and his girlfriend. The story begins with the scene of them having a drink. Alcohol plays a big role in this story. They order two big beers and they think that beer will helps them to avoid the problems and fill their free time with anything but discussion about the matter. After a while, at one point, the girls says, “I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?” (Hemingway 30). This is not a statement that someone would say if they are in a healthy, happy relationship. The girl, in fact questions
According to “The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language”, the word “feminity” is defined as “the quality or condition of being feminine or a characteristic or trait traditionally held to be female.” Further speaking, feminity is formed by various socially-defined and biologically-created gender roles played by women influenced by a number of social and cultural factors. For example, the traditional gender roles of women include nurturer, birth giver, homemaker and caregiver. However, marked by a series of women's rights movements starting from the 19th century, women’s gender roles, as well as the ways how society and men perceive women, have been largely changed. This significant change, described as a process of female awakening, was widely reflected in many contemporary literature works. This essay will specifically focus on the construction of feminity in two short stories, “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway and “The Stoy of an Hour” by Kate Chopin through examining how the authors define “feminity” in their treatment of female characters.
The story "Hills Like White Elephants" is a conversation between a young woman `Jig' and an American man waiting for a train at a station in Spain. The author never names the topic of their discussion but as their dialogue progresses; it becomes evident that Jig is pregnant. The man wants Jig to abort the unborn child but she is unconvinced and wants to become a mother. Hemingway has brilliantly written the story's dialogue which "captures the feel of a private conversation while at the same time communicating the necessary narrative background" (O'Brien 19). At the end of the story, it is unclear as to what decision has been made; however, Hemingway gives the reader several clues regarding what Jig feels, and what she wants to do. Jig's private thoughts are illuminated by Hemingway's description of the setting, the character, and the conflict. Stanley Renner suggests that, as a result of the couple's discussion, "Jig has become able to make a more clear-sighted estimation, and perhaps a better choice, of men" Wyche(59). The couple's inability to communicate effectively their true thoughts and emotions makes their dialogue very appealing. The story examines the gender differences and miscommunications as they influence the decision whether to abort the unborn child or not (Smiley). In his book on Hemingway, published in 1999, Carl P. Eby points out that "[f]or the past two decades, Hemingway criticism has been dominated by a reconsideration of the role of gender in his work" (Bauer 125).
Ernest Hemmingway uses time, place, and symbolism in "Hills like White Elephants" to intensify the central dilemma in a story about a man and a woman deciding on whether to go through with an abortion. Although a literal reading of the title may not seem to have any relation to the story, the title is rich in implications. Critics suggest that "Hills" refers to the shape of a woman's stomach when pregnant, and Webster's 21st Century Dictionary defines white elephant as: "[An] awkward, useless possession." The term is also defined in Webster's as an item that is worthless to some but priceless to others. According to Victor Lindsey, the child in the story is a white elephant in the view of the man, who is trying to convince the girl to get rid of it. Hemingway hints about how the man and the woman each feel about the unborn child, but he never tells us why they have such different views on the prospect of an abortion. The man in the story, referred to as "the American," claims that the abortion is necessary because it would save their relationship, whereas the woman, Jig, has doubts as to whether or not she should have an abortion at all.