Author Archives: aferdita.bogdanovic

The Hills like White Elephants and The Birthmark
After reading both short stories, “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “The Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, both the women in the stories had superior men in their lives. The men they care most about in their lives seem to be the source of if they are happy or not. By making their husbands happy with their appearance, Jig and Georgiana are happy. Both Jig and Georgiana were happy listening to what their husbands were saying and telling them to do.
Georgiana and Jig seem to go to the extreme to satisfy their husbands regardless of the opinions of others. It seems that whatever their husband tells them to do, is what makes them happiest. In Hills like White Elephants, Jig agrees to get an abortion. She doesn’t want a baby to interfere with her life with her husband as is. She constantly says, Will you still love me? Assuring herself that they will both be happy. Georgiana despite everyone else’s opinion of how beautiful she is, she removes her one flaw, her birthmark. This one flaw was pointed out by her husband, which in others eyes, that birthmark was beautiful.
There are many people in this world, which will try to make others happy. Doctors for example, are happy when they are able to cure a person from and illness. Teachers and tutors feel a sense of accomplishment and happiness when they are able to successfully teach a person something. Both Hawthorne and Hemingway seem to make a point that happiness comes from the result of making others happy. It seems that for Jig and Georgiana they become happy when their husbands are satisfied. However, for their husbands to be satisfied, it requires them to go to drastic measures.
It makes sense that the women want to make the men they care most about happy. It happens everyday in our lives even today. But I have to disagree with both authors in the fact that they take a risk in their lives to make them happy.  If a person is happy with their own selves and lives, they shouldn’t have to change. You can make a person happy without taking any risks. Jig and Georgiana should have been happy with their own image instead of making themselves beautiful in their husbands’ eyes.

Best in Show is a mocumentary of several dog owners followed prior and during the Mayflower competition. The owners all share the quality of loving their dogs.  Because they love their dogs, they strive to have possession of the blue ribbon given to the winner at the competition. They all treat their dogs as their own children, whether it was therapy sessions or providing toys for them to play with.
It seems that the reason the dog owners entered the competition was so that they could win. Winning, to almost everyone, will make him or her happier than they already are because it gives them that extra self-confidence. Each owner groomed his or her dog to become best in show. After several rounds, like in every other competition, there are winners and there are losers. In the end, even after many struggles, Gerrie and Cookie Fleck are awarded the ribbon to go home with. They won the competition.  The remaining dog owners, even though they lost show no sign of being upset. This in fact proves that, it wasn’t the idea of winning that made them happy, but rather their dogs that gave them the happiness they needed.
Happiness doesn’t come from winning anything. But it comes from something you love doing or being around. Watching this movie made me think about my cousin’s dog and how much we all love her.

Aferdita Bogdanovic
In Chapter 2 of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”, Freud expresses the theory through an 18-month-old child and his actions. The game was known as “fort-da”, also known as the game of “disappearance and return”. The child repeatedly throws a wooden reel tied with a string around it over his crib. Freud related this game to that of his mother leaving and returning whenever he would throw the toy unattached. This is the pleasure and pain theory. When the 18-month-old child would throw the toy over the crib, it resembles his mom leaving which is a painful experience. However, when the child would retrieve his toy, it showed that his mom returned which was a pleasurable experience. By the toy having a string attached to it, it shows Freud’s pleasure and pain theory. This game relates to the ideas of Freud because it shows that people seek pleasure and avoid pain. In doing this they take control of the situation.
Freud’s Pleasure and Pain theory is comparable to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” because they both have to face reality in one-way or another. The 18 month old, realizes that his mother is not always going to be around for him to experience pleasure. He also realized that with pleasure comes pain. The men in the cave realized that their imagination of life outside the cave wasn’t what they expected. He experienced life outside of what he was used to. The man who went outside the cave was upset because his expectations werent met, but at the same time experienced pleasure because he was seeing life outside of what he was used to.