The two stories “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Story of an Hour” depict happiness in ways that are unimaginable for the normal human being to understand. The normal human understands. In “The Story of an Hour”, written by Kate Choppin, the wife learns that her husband has just died in a horrible train accident. She of course feels sorrow at first along with regret but she cant help later feel happy that she is finally alone and independent from her husband. granted that woman at his point in history didnt have all the rights and freedoms that they do today, but no human being in the right mind would feel happy when they just found out that their spouse was killed in a train accident. Also in “Hills Like White Elephants”, there is a couple who are in between two train stations (going in opposite directions) which is symbolic for the couple making a decision on whether to have and abortion or not, it could go both ways, just as the trains can. the story ends without a known decision to the reader however.
neither of these stories depict what any human being sees as happiness, at least not in the right state of mind. in order for people to be happy, they have to be problem free and evidently, the characters in these two stories are deciding to deal with their problems in the most positive way. there is nobody that can be happy with the death of a spouse and while deciding whether to get an abortion or not in our society today.
