Isolation In J. D. Salinger's Hills Like White Elephants

Writers in literature assert the suffocating presence of society in American lives by exploring how pressure to conform ultimately creates isolation. Society promotes the concept that individuals should all get along and all be exactly alike, there should be a “norm”, an “average”, that everyone can fit into. This imposes pressure to conform to this “norm” as is seen from society’s point of view. American authors depict how these norms negatively affect individuals and leave them alone in the world with no one to understand nor sympathize with them. They create their works in an effort to open the readers eyes to the traumatic consequences of societal standards and how society negatively impacts those in it. Tim O’Brien, in his novel about soldiers at war, relates, “He'd found himself lying on a

No two individuals are exactly the same. This makes the “norms” of society seem a bit ludicrous. Forcing people who are so different from each other to all be exactly the same only prevents people from being their true selves. Nevertheless, these standards set by society play a considerable role in the American experience. From J.D. Salinger’s point of view, the individual who does not fit in with their surroundings either is forced to conform or will ultimately find themself alone. Resurfacing in Ernest Hemingway’s short story Hills Like White Elephants, this notion is prevalent through much American literature. Hemingway creates two characters, an American male and an unnamed woman. The estranged couple discuss an unspecified operation the male character wants the woman to have, assumed by the reader to be an abortion. A particular line reads, “[The hills] look like white elephants,’ she said. ‘I've never seen one,’ the man drank his beer. ‘No, you wouldn't have (Hemingway, 457).” The woman uses the hills to hint at the topic of the baby without actually saying it aloud, afraid doing so will anger