Category Archives: DG13E



“The Birthmark” and “The Hills like White Elephants”

Despite the different message that these two stories portray, both story convey the same concept that women are inferior to men. Both stories show the female characters, Jig and Georgiana as females whose happiness is achieved through satisfying their husband’s demands. The reason behind this has to do with the time period of the story. “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne was written in the 1800s where females had no rights. They were only housewives whose goal in life was only to bore children and tend to their husbands, which is obviously wrong! “The Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway was written a lot later, in the 1900s. At this time, women were beginning to fight for their rights and equality.

I believe Georgiana and Jig have a lot in common despite their different characteristics. Georgiana, regardless of what other people say, decides to remove her birthmark because of her husband’s constant criticism and insults. Jig decides to get an abortion because she wants her life to be the same with her “husband”. It feels as though both stories are trying to say that women’s only means of happiness is through satisfying their husbands desire.

Now I can’t really understand the concept of achieving happiness through satisfying others. Would a person really be happy in their life if they kept doing what other people told them to do? I understand that some people feel happy when they are able to make other people happy but is sacrificing your own body necessary? Was Georgiana happy after she removed her birthmark because she can finally be seen as beautiful and perfect in her husband’s eyes? Was Jig really happy to hear the train arrive because she was finally getting an abortion?

ANYWAYS, while searching for pictures of birthmarks, i came across this cartoon. I thought it was cute.

In the two short stories we read “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Birth-mark”. Characters Jig and Georgiana do depict a uniform view of how people experience happiness that is to attain happiness by making their love ones  happy.Both characters are willing to do anything,even though it is something they don’t enjoy doing, to please their love ones. In the “Hills Like White Elephants”, Jig does not want to have abortion from the facts that she keeps drinking to calm herself down and keeps asking if she really has to do it to make her “boyfriend” happy. And in the end of the story I believe that she would do it if it would make him happy.

In “The Birth-mark” Georgiana is afraid to do the experiment knowing that there is a danger, but she wants to make her husband happy.Since her husband despises the birth mark on her face and wants to get rid of it, Georgiana would take the risk.

Another similarity is both stories took place in the nineteen century when women didn’t have much power in society. Because women were inferior to the men, they were depended on the men both mentally and financially. So women wanted to please their husband and they would do whatever it takes to make the men happy. In both story, Jig and Georgiana care more about their love ones’ opinion than their own, and they are afraid to resist.

The difference between Jig’s happiness and Georgiana’s happiness is Jig’s happiness is attain when her “boyfriend”loves her. She is willing to get abortion because she believes that is the only way the her “boyfriend” would love her again and this is selfish love. Georgiana’s happiness is attain when her husband is happy. She doesn’t care if she is risking her live, Georgiana wants her husband to be happy and ask for no other return.

                       I’ve always believed that the best stories are those that get you thinking long after you’ve read the last page. The beauty of writing is that you have complete control over the fate of the reader. Most successful stories leave you with a feeling almost as if you are lost in a literary forest at dusk, where you see only glimpses of your surroundings. It is up to you to interpret the details and hints given, get your footing, and find your way to the end. Luckily, this forest has multiple paths, multiple ways to escape. For the most part, I feel that Raymond Carver follows his own advice in “Cathedral.” We don’t really know what is going on in this house, what will happen to the visitor and the almost dreamlike, blurry mood and tone of the ending leaves the reader with some discomfort, but the kind that makes you want to find out what’s wrong and explore.

                        We feel immediate tension between the husband and wife. The story also hints at marital troubles because although we are told that the narrator’s wife writes a couple poems each year when important things happen, he makes no effort to find out about this poetry or what it might mean to his wife. From what we see, every time the couple speaks to each other, it’s usually in a snippy, terse, or annoyed manner. Most importantly, how the narrator tells us his story and his choice of words tell us a lot about what type of person he is. He seems to joke all the time, and hasn’t matured emotionally. One of the main causes of tension between husband and wife is that he is very unhappy to find out that her blind friend Robert is coming to stay with them. He has these misconceptions of blind people and even pities Robert’s deceased wife for having to have lived with a husband who cannot even see her.

          I felt the “sense of menace” from the beginning. I mean, the guy DOESN’T like blind people. One of his wife’s oldest friends is blind AND is going to be sleeping in his house! This didn’t add up from the start so I was intrigued to find out what would happen once Robert arrived. Would the narrator be mean? Rude? Kick him out or get in a fight? I also worried that the wife might have deeper feelings for Robert than just as a friend because… I mean come on. You read how she was describing him. Even I would feel a tinge of jealousy if my spouse was telling me how it felt to have someone’s hands on them, blind or not (does that make me a bad person?). From what we’ve been reading so far, I was expecting Robert to drop dead or for the wife to have an affair, but “Cathedral” had a surprisingly feel-good ending. I think it made even more of an impact because of the stereotypes the narrator had about blind people and the discomfort he felt of having to see this man.

                  Despite the relatively happy ending, I was left with a sense of, “what just happened?” It felt as though I had also been drinking and smoking with Robert and the narrator. Raymond Carver slowly weaves you into the story and you don’t expect for the two men to have physical contact and to bond. The fact that Carver left out why the narrator didn’t open his eyes or what happens afterward only strengthens the story. Once you’re done with the physical pages, you come up with your own interpretation of how you’d want it to end and the story continues to live on.

                I remember an elementary school teacher, the grade slips my mind, who would always say, “I know you’re hearing me, but are you listening to what I’m saying?” This was usually followed by an exaggerated rolling of the students’ eyes. Years later, it still sticks with me and I realize the significance of this statement. The same is true in “Cathedral.” It takes a man without sight, Robert, for the narrator to realize that all along he has merely been looking but not truly seeing. Is the narrator truly happy at the end or is he intoxicated? How do you think this idea of “looking but not seeing” is related to happiness?

the two readings that i am writing about are the story of an hour, by Kate Chopin and hills like white elephants by Ernest Hemingway. these two stories have very different methods of expression towards happiness.

the first short story was about a women that was told her husband had died in a train accident. the women at first appeared to be weeping for the lose of her husband but turned out to be because she was feeling overjoyed that she was free. the women said even though she loved her husband at times, she still felt as though he was taking her life in a way, she felt free because she would be able to live for herself rather than devote her life to husband or marriage. the happiness felt by Louise was derived from a tragedy so it can be considered somewhat selfish.

the second story, hills like white elephants has a different way of achieving a sense of happiness. this story is about a couple on a train to get an abortion done. the women in this story almost seems to be the opposite of Louise. where Louise received joy in a selfish fashion, the death of her husband, jig was more concerned over whatever her husband wanted of her. this need to please her husband made jig’s appear sort of immature but selfless.

these two women have little in common other than the fact that they are both wives. Louise received happiness in a selfish manner which makes me wonder if that means it is genuine, or if jig’s happiness was genuine because all she was doing was trying to make her husband happy. is this just being content?

“I like it when there is some feeling of threat or sense of menace in short stories. I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it’s good for the circulation. There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion, or else, most often, there simply won’t be a story. What creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way the concrete words are linked together to make up the visible action of the story. But it’s also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things”

I agree with Carver. I agree with him absolutley 100% because even though a short story is only a few pages it should still have the same effect for the reader, and should stir up emotions, same  as a long novel does.  People dont read works of litterature just to pass the time, people pick up books because they want to be affected in some sense, they want to know that what they are reading has a point. Really now, if we humans wanted to fill ourselves with something that gives us no true meaning or value, we would just stick to filling our days watching ‘Jersey Shore’.

I think of it this way, a book is a movie that hasnt been filmed yet. And movies that have little to no plot certainly arent award winning films. Why waste your time writing something as an author, if it makes no difference in anybodys life. And why waste your time reading something as a reader if it makes no impact on you, and doesnt toy with your emotions at all. It is human nature to want to be surprised, and to want to be stimulated in some way. I think it is safe to say that we dont want to life boring lives.

I think that Carver follows his own advice with cathedral because with each sentence you read, you question the narrators sanity. Not in a way that you would think that he needs to be locked up, but in a sense that it arises questions within you, internally. Why does he keep jumping from topic to topic. Anyways i really enjoyed reading “cathedral.”

Russell Brand 🙂

When presented with short stories such as Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” it is very easy for us to come away with the notion that there is a price for happiness, and that price is change. In neither of the stories was the protagonist originally happy. It was only after a drastic change in the plot of their lives that the characters found their happiness.

In “The Story of an Hour” the change was a drastic one, death. As bizarre as that may seem, happiness can be attained through a tragedy. This tragedy would radically change her life, apparently to one she much preferred over the one she was currently living. Once this newfound happiness was acquired, she could not live without it… and she did not.

On a lighter note, the change in “Hills Like White Elephants” is… still death. This death, however, was of a fetus. The couple believed that the abortion of the child they were about to bring into this world was worth their happiness. In order for Jig to be happy, she had to be loved by the American, and in order for the American to love Jig, the fetus had to be killed.

Do you see how happy this all sounds? Death, abortion, lust-based love? Apparently the means are all justified by the ends as we will most likely follow in the paths set by these characters… in a “lighter” way of course.

While I was writing this at work, this song was playing at the storefront. I had such a hard time concentrating that I had to watch the South Park clip. As I watched it for the 1,000th time, I remembered the episode was actually about aborted fetuses. How conveniently coincidental.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/153158/the-heat-of-the-moment

Because the story did have a threatening tone, and a suspenseful plot, it got my attention from the opening paragraph.  The story opens up with a couple conversing about a friend of the wife’s coming to visit.  Robert, the wife’s friend, is blind and has not seen her in roughly ten years.  As the reader, you get the sense that maybe in the past, the wife and Robert had some sort of altercation.  The assumption of  this, is what made the wife’s husband uneasy about Robert’s stay.   He even says, “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward too.”  The husband clearly does not think before he speaks.  I put myself in his shoes, and I understand if my husband invited a random woman over to stay at our house.  But he was wrong to react the way he did, and approach Robert the way he did.  He should of acted in a mature, respectful manner, not a foolish, inconsiderate one.

Throughout the short story, Raymond Carver does a phenomenal job at keeping the reader interested. In fact, after reading the short story, all I wanted to do was read more.  For the most part the narrator sounds irritated, and sometimes hostile.   Knowing how bothered the narrator is by Robert’s blindness I made an immediate connection to Aylmer in “The Birth-mark”.  It was interesting to see that the things that bothered these two men the most, were things that were uncontrollable.  You can’t control whether or not you will be born with a birthmark despite the size and shape.  Similarly, it is fair to say that people who are born blind, do not chose that fate.  In fact they are born with a disability that should never be questioned or ridiculed.  Another similarity between Aylmer and the husband or narrator is although they seem relaxed as the stories progress; they both still challenge the imperfections of others.  When the husband asks Robert to turn on the TV, clearly he is looking to test him.

If Robert hadn’t helped the husband draw the cathedral, I probably would have lost all hope for the husband.  Before this, I saw him as a hostile, argumentative, disrespectful person.  This experience helped him learn about not only himself, but communicating with someone who earlier believed, was incapable of anything.

Out of all the short stories we have read this semester, this one seemed to intrigue me the most.  I liked the fact that at the end of the story, he learned something from someone who he believed was inferior to him.   That interested me the most.  There are too many people out there who believe they are better than everyone, and capitalize on others flaws, instead of reaching out and in the end, ultimately bettering themselves.   

It doesn’t occur often that a person follow’s his/her own advice, but for this particular text Raymond Carver does. When I read “Cathedral” I felt absolutely threatened. More than a sense of suspense, the reading gave me a feeling that something was going on and I wasn’t able to pick it up at the moment. Something was going to go wrong, very wrong.

From the very first lines of the story he speaks of the blind man in a very mysterious way, somehow despising his condition. This strange hatred and fear towards him creates a lot of tension for the reader, who is not able to understand the source of his cold feelings. Personally, the way in which he detailed some scenes made me feel really tense, like waiting for something terrible to come. For example, all the times he repeated to describe how the blind man touched his beard and let it fall.

I am not certain if I picked up any of the things implied, but there certainly are many, for a story written so carefully and with such a confusing ending is meant for us to discover something about it. It probably has to do with the cathedral. What I am sure of is that the “sense of menace” of this text made me think a thousand things while reading it. I wondered about if the woman was in love with the bald man, if he was actually faking and was not blind at all, and even if the main character was actually the blind one and had been speaking about himself all the time. It definitely played with my perception of things, making the words mean three different things at a time.

As soon as I finished reading the first thing I did was looking at this picture I received yesterday in order to let go of all that tension. This are two of my sisters back home in Venezuela (I have five sisters in total). They told me the little one with the curly hair was behaving terribly, and so the older one said: “Let’s meditate like Manuela taught me a while ago”. This picture makes me HAPPY.

Manuela Toro.