Response Paper 4

Happiness has to be found by a person by themselves and for themselves. This is a point that I will continue to stress. I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t share our happiness w| others, but I’m saying that we can not rely on others to be happy. Not only this, but we can not experience another person’s perception of happiness. We need to live in our very own happiness, because if we don’t we will be unhappy, or just sitting in a pool of fake-happiness.

In both “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Birthmark” we see two women who let men manipulate them and lead them down a road that was going to a place that was far from happiness. I would say that the only difference between these two women is that Jig was actually changing herself and Georgiana was letting herself be changed. In all honesty, Georgiana was worse off than Jig. She gave up all rights to her happiness completely. The saddest part was their reasoning. They obviously let these men manipulate them to try to make the men happy. But you can not expect to help somebody else find happiness if you have not found it yourself. As humans, we need to realize that happiness is individual. At the end of the day, when we lay in our beds only we know what goes on in our hearts and heads. Letting go of your own happiness to please others is never worth it.