Reader-oriented Theories and Their Application to Ernest Hemingway’s Hills like white elephants From the very beginning of the literature people tended to criticize the literary works according to some certain criteria. Some critics claimed that the text itself is important and some other said the author and his style is the thing that should be focused on. Form and content were the other significant elements in the history of the literary criticism. In addition, the social and political influences of the time that the work was written were also considered as important. However the reader who reads the work and his thoughts and his interpretations were not as valuable as the other criteria until late 19th and early 20th century. From then on we come up with a new approach, reader-response. The aim of the present paper is to give some basic tenets of the reader-oriented theories and their application to the work “Hills like white elephants” by Ernest Hemingway. We can say that Reader-oriented theories have no single or predominant philosophical starting point. There are quite different writers that commented on the reader response and they belong to different traditions of thought. They seriously challenge the predominance of the text-oriented theories of New Criticism and Formalism. As for them it is impossible to talk about the meaning of a text without considering the reader’s contribution to it. We see an interesting explanation about reader-response criticism by Tompkins. She claims that “reader response criticism is not a conceptually unified critical position, but a term that has come to be associated with the work of critics who use the words reader, the reading process, and response to mark out an area for investig... ... middle of paper ... ...n and fertile part of the country was a symbol of the productive part of the woman and the barren part is the symbol of the man who did not want the baby. And the other readers stated that these two different parts of the land were a reflection of the inner part of the woman. The reason for the man not to want a baby was considered as an obstacle for him to travel. It was observed that the woman readers were supporting the woman in the story and the man readers were supporting the man’s part of the argument... Finally we can say that the discussion in the class and the differences in the interpretations showed us clearly the differences between the perceptions of the readers on the same work. In the lights of the reader-oriented theories one can claim that there is no single truth or meaning derived from the text, the responses will change as the readers change.
In the article “Reading and Thought” the author Dwight MacDonald provides criticism and disagreement with Henry Luce’s idea of “functional curiosity”. Luce developed the term “functional curiosity” defining it as an eagerness of people to know the latest news happening around the world. On the other hand, MacDonald concludes that functional curiosity only strengthens reader’s practice in reading rather than in providing invaluable information. He underlines that literature nowadays is deficient and insubstantial since there is no deep meaning in the texts. Modern printed literature is simply being skimmed through by the reader as the reader nowadays tends to avoid too much information resisting thinking in such a way. Because of the new nature of the printed materials, MacDonald considers today’s reading behavior and the way people think as flimsy and indifferent. I agree that our thought has definitively changed since we are paying less time to serious critical thinking losing connections with society and awareness of it.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Hills like White Elephants." Responding to Literature. Ed. Judith Stanford. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006. 841-44. Print.
The screenwriter chose an effective way of illustrating the point of attack, establishing the setting and handling of exposition. The first scene of the film was a black screen which had audio of a man and a woman having a conversation. After, the film switches to a grainy video of men being detained by police. The video clip manages to bring the dramatic tension to all time high because an unidentified character is shot by the police. Therefore, this left a sense of uneasiness and tension throughout the whole film. The beginning of the film also did a wonderful job of establishing the setting. The scene of the grainy video clip had a caption box stating it was “Fruitvale BART Station 2:15AM New Year’s Day 2009”. The film then introduces the
The picture Crash, produced by Robert Haggis, features the several battles confronted with the current racial stereotypes, in to a collection of numerous connected, social predicaments fall upon by the picture's multi ethnic forged. Robert Haggis uses the dialogue and physical actions of his characters to illustrate the various racial stereotypes that are pre-assigned to each race by every individual. This movie is an enchanting bodily melodrama that reaches the feelings of spirits and its crowd's minds. Several of the components given by Haggis in this movie are impersonated in intense sets. This design of reversing is communicated opposed figures and by his character, the picture's possibly nighttime or daytime environment, and additionally in the hearth and snowfall moments. In this movie, the varied functions performed by the several contests of contemporary America are revealed to the globe by Haggis. Through coldly racial difficulties confronted by his figures, an intentionally affecting movie that drives his crowd to challenge their own ethical principles is created by Haggis. Each contest is signified through the picture and coldly exhibits ethnocentrism and racialism. Paul Haggis incorporates the use of identification, parallel plots, reaction shots, point-of-view shots, shot/reverse shots, diegetic music, and post-modern film in the film. Through his character development, editing and special effects we are drawn into.
While the patient’s personal health history is very important to provide information about their allergies, prescriptions, over-the-counter drug use, alcohol or tobacco use, and social drugs it is most effective to obtain the multi-generational health history (Lilley, Snyder, and Collins, 2016). Multi-generational
A family medical history can reveal the history of disease in your family and allow you to identify patterns that might be relevant to your own health. These conditions are influenced by a combination of genetic factors, environmental conditions and lifestyle choices. It is impossible to change family history or genes, however knowing that certain diseases run in your family can be an incentive to decrease any other factors that when put together, further increase the risk.
This "chaos" is also created through the use of frame- a story within a story. Towards the conclusion of the novel, the corners of the story are pulled together and readers are able to close the frame that encapsulated the inner story. The car ride is the result of Ondaatje's ability to transcend time and space- the story ends at the beginning of the novel and begins at the end, as if Patrick has told his story not only to the young girl Hana, but ultimately, to readers.
Throughout the 20th century there were many influential pieces of literature that would not only tell a story or teach a lesson, but also let the reader into the author’s world. Allowing the reader to view both the positives and negatives in an author. Ernest Hemingway was one of these influential authors. Suffering through most of his life due to a disturbingly scarring childhood, he expresses his intense mental and emotional insecurities through subtle metaphors that bluntly show problems with commitment to women and proving his masculinity to others.
These theories, methods, assessments along with the evidence of success in reading at home make it clear that it is extremely important we try our hardest to support literacy in every child. All students can learn. It’s just a matter of making materials interesting and relevant to them, challenging them (but not to hard), and supporting them along the way.
“Hills Like White Elephants” fits with the curriculum of Junior Year by relating to specific values and social conventions, by having literary merit and lastly by transcending time by influencing modern society’s media themes and motifs. It does all this by using a truthful method of writing, dialogic. Hemingway is able to paint a brilliant picture of the Human condition. He does this by incorporating motifs which depict societal qualms. Hemingway was able to influence society today by displaying how identity and autonomy are important to the individual. He was against a single tyrannical power telling an individual what they should do, how they should write. He stood for an individual having a choice, an opinion. He wanted people to be people He wanted to send a message and a message can be sent with just one single, meaningful, four letter
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.
When we interpret a text, we bring our own hopes, fears, joys and beliefs to the forefront, despite our claims of intellectual objectivity, and what is at stake is not just an evaluation of the work itself, but often an evaluation of our political, social, psychological and emotional identities. What we see or read into a text can become a kind of experiment, a literary depiction of the way we see, or would like to see, and interpret ourselves and our world. Often, in the course of interpreting, we feel compelled to name and label both writer and text in order to talk about them in ways that make sense to us, and in order to pinpoint them in relation to ourselves. When we label anything, we attempt to control or own it; we assign values or a set of rules to that person or object. What is lost in that process...
Literacy is the term used when talking about the ability to read and write. It leads to success in K-12 school, post-secondary school, the ability to compete in the job market, and participation in democratic process (Wei, Blackorby, & Schiller, 2011). Teaching young children how to read and write however is a very complex process that requires a teacher to employ a myriad of strategies to help students. When a teacher takes into consideration all the different abilities in a classroom having multiple strategies that help all students become proficient in speaking and listening, reading, and writing, is essential.
The Nobel Prize winning author Ernest Hemingway momentously influenced literature in the 20th century and most of his works are regarded as classics in the present day. The reason why Hemingway’s works gained so much attention is because of his stark, minimalist style and accessibility. In his 62 years in this world, Hemingway created a literary reputation that was unrivaled in the 20th century. Hemingway lived his life to the fullest and his endeavors in life profoundly influenced to his literary career as well as his creativity. As a result, this paper look at the manifestation of the author’s childhood on his story The Sun Also Rises and the effects of women in his life on the moral and ethical relativism in the characters inn the same story. It also analyzes the significance and the influence of World War I on The Sun Also Rises.
This film was written and produced in the middle of the Great Depression, and the depiction of the poverty and unemployment is very evident throughout the entire film.