In Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation”, she writes “the modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs “behind” the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one.” When interpreting this quote I got the idea that Sontag was saying that people naturally read between the lines to get the “bigger and better” meaning. We “destroy” works of literature by analyzing it in the many lenses that it can be looked under.
When reading Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” the first thing that stuck out to me was its structure. The fact that majority of it was written in a dialogue form, made it difficult for me to keep up. I caught myself having to look back to see who was speaking with the occasional “he said” or “she said”, something I am pretty sure many others have to do while reading this specific piece. Throughout the entire piece I was forced to continuously wonder what the hell the American man and girl were arguing over doing. Even after having finished reading the story once, I had to read it again to figure out exactly what was happening. In the beginning I thought that both the man and woman were going to decide on something to do as a couple but then I realized that the woman was the only one that would really have to go through with what they were arguing about. After a while of analyzing what exactly the woman was going to go through with, I decided that it had to do with having a baby or having an abortion.
“When one door of happiness closes, another one opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us…” (Helen Keller)
This quote is one that I personally like and happen to live by. I thought it relates to Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” because it seems like the man and woman are holding on to their past happiness and they fail to see that by having an abortion they could be missing out on a new happiness and chapter in their lives.
The only thing I significantly despised was the fact that Hemingway chose to technically chop the story in half and have it end without a decision being made.
I find myself to enjoy reading stories over essays or book chapters. Whenever I have to read an essay or book I usually sit with a highlighter or pen in my hand ready to scrutinize to the fullest, but when reading a story I tend to forget about analyzing that much along the way and I just try to keep up with what is happening by visualizing. I also believe that visualizing a piece of literature is a significant part to me actually understanding its meaning and when reading essays of book chapters I find it hard to do so.
