I decided to do option #2 and write about my interpretation of Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”.
Susan Sontag once said “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.” I think she means that when we read, we already have an image that our mind subconsciously goes to when we see phrases that we have already experienced before. For example, if we read about a girl who is accident prone we may sometimes imagine a person we know in actual life that’s the same way, or a character in a movie that is accident prone as well. Our minds always have some sort of preselected setting. When we first read literature we don’t necessarily see the main points, we see the things that stick out the most to each individual person. We read and interpret the literature in our own ways until we find something suitable.
When I first started reading the story “Hills Like White Elephants”, I could tell that the girl, who I think is called Jig, and the American were travelling together, because they were waiting for the train. As I kept reading on, the American started describing an operation that Jig should go so that they both could live happy lives. He kept saying that Jig would only need some air and after that they would be able to live normal together like so many people they knew. As I kept reading a few images popped into my head like if Jig was blind, or maybe deaf. There was one instance where the waitress comes out from the curtains and says “The train comes in five minutes.” and Jig asks the American what the woman had said. When I read this section, I thought immediately that Jig might be going deaf. Also the title itself “Hills Like White Elephants”, Jig says this to her beau at the very beginning and it seems to worry him, to me this seemed like if Jig could not see properly hence I thought she was going blind.
The very end confused me, I still could not get the story. I couldn’t predict what was wrong with her. I could only tell that he loved her and she loved him enough to only get the operation to make him happy.
Wow, I liked how you took a few phrases from the story and used that to interpret the girl as going deaf and blind. I also felt that she was having some sort of problem but I couldn’t picture what it was. After reading your response, I could tell that that might be a possibility also! Your reading was pretty good and you saw something that I complete thought was unnecessary conversations.