Hills like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemingway
A story full of symbols, I'll try to interpret one of them which is the title. Let' s go!
"Hills like White Elephants":
White elephants, mountains, belly, pregnant women, we can surely see the link between the round form of the hills and the women's belly being pregnant. Then, I could say that the color white symbolizes the innocence and purity of her unborn child. Seing the fields around, we could also interprete it as the fertility that permited her to have a baby. In another point of view, a white elephant is something that wont work, wont be alive successfully, a littel like the baby if she's being aborted.
I found it funny because I could not have imagine the ending this way, I mean talking about abortion all way long. It's only when someone told me that I founded it maked sense, but I kept asking myself if it could have been something else the author was talking about and what could it be applied to? At first, I tought they were talking about plastic surgery, then, about commiting a crime ar not. It could also be as simple as hidin g something. Maybe it was something really absurd, without sense and we're making something big out of it...
Who knows?
Well,well,well, so many questions in my head, I'll finish my Reading journal asking myself all those questions...imagine the repercussions!
lundi 8 octobre 2007
Reading journal #2
The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson
How can they be able to process to such a ceremony?
What is the trip of killing someone?
If I was part of this communauty, would I have the courage to diagree about this coutume?
What was based on this ritual?
At first, for sure, I don't agree with the idea of sending somone to death just because it has always been like that, but if I thougt about the reasons of such an abominal rite. I started to do researches to known if it was true, if it really existed and I learned that it happened before in Mississippi, in the post-war years. When Shirley Jackson's short story was published during the late 1940s, it sure created controversy; some people even said that we was just someone who liked to twiste the old values and trditions of small towns of America into pure violence. In this manner, he was interviewed and he answered: "Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."I guess publishing this story was a way for him to denounce those rites. Anyway, even knowing it was done because of believes, I still have trouble understanding how convictions can be strong enough to stone or kill someone.
In order to understand why people in the story didn't disagree about this tradition, except for Tessie who screams "It isn't fair." when she "wins" the lottery. Once again, she reacts only when she's chosen, this is kind of ugly when we think of the legendary egocentrism of humans. The hypocrisy of the society is well illustrated; it also proves that people can believe strong enought to let their lot into the hands of magic or destiny. Am I like that, I would not pretend that in a similar situation, I would've doo something because I don't know, but I can say that I found it out of sense.
I'm working understanding it!
How can they be able to process to such a ceremony?
What is the trip of killing someone?
If I was part of this communauty, would I have the courage to diagree about this coutume?
What was based on this ritual?
At first, for sure, I don't agree with the idea of sending somone to death just because it has always been like that, but if I thougt about the reasons of such an abominal rite. I started to do researches to known if it was true, if it really existed and I learned that it happened before in Mississippi, in the post-war years. When Shirley Jackson's short story was published during the late 1940s, it sure created controversy; some people even said that we was just someone who liked to twiste the old values and trditions of small towns of America into pure violence. In this manner, he was interviewed and he answered: "Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."I guess publishing this story was a way for him to denounce those rites. Anyway, even knowing it was done because of believes, I still have trouble understanding how convictions can be strong enough to stone or kill someone.
In order to understand why people in the story didn't disagree about this tradition, except for Tessie who screams "It isn't fair." when she "wins" the lottery. Once again, she reacts only when she's chosen, this is kind of ugly when we think of the legendary egocentrism of humans. The hypocrisy of the society is well illustrated; it also proves that people can believe strong enought to let their lot into the hands of magic or destiny. Am I like that, I would not pretend that in a similar situation, I would've doo something because I don't know, but I can say that I found it out of sense.
I'm working understanding it!
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