Blog Post 1- Elephants and College

This week in class, we began our unit on modernism by focusing on a few short stories. One story that stood out for me was Hills Like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemingway. In the story, an American couple is in Spain, waiting at the train station with some drinks that they are happy to try for the first time. On the surface, this couple seems perfectly happy and the reader can not be sure where they are going or what they want to do. Hemingway does not give the girl the ability to speak Spanish, and he also only refers to her as "the girl." This gives the reader the sense that the man is the authority in this relationship. That notion is reassured as you read along and get the sense that the girl is in no rush to go where she and the man have planned to go. When you fondle the details, you can see that this couple is not quite as happy as they appear, as the girl ask the man things like, "you think then we'll be alright and be happy," or "if I do it, then it will nice again." After in class instruction, I now know the "elephant in the room" that caused the argument that went absolutely nowhere was over an abortion.

             I found a connection to this story in my own life through looking at the big elephant that sits in my very bedroom; a mountain of college application related documents on my desk. Looking at the blank common application, I feel like the girl and the man must feel as they sit waiting in Spain, just wanting it to be over so I can go back to focusing on what I hope will be a great senior year before I really have to get my life going. My mother constantly yells at me to get a jump on all of this stuff, and she is frustrated with the slow pace I am currently going at. I understand that I am certainly in the wrong and that I definitely have to treat this process with much more urgency than I am. Our fights never really go anywhere, just like the two in the story. Mark Twain said “if you eat a frog first thing in the morning, than nothing worse will happen to you all day.” Now the sun is setting and the deadline for the common application looms large, and I still have a lot of frog left on my plate. Unlike in the story, if I just hurry up and do what I need to do, thereby ending the occasional circular arguments I have with my mother, happiness will follow. In the story, it seems more like these too simply wont be able to see eye to eye when deep down, the girl knows the man has been wrong all along. For me, I know my mother has obviously been right all along.