Elizabeth’s blog

After first reading this story, I was confused and didn’t really understand it. Yet after a second and even third reading, I was able to grasp the concepts portrayed and understand what it was about.  Throughout the story, I noticed a pattern of not only miscommunication, but also lack of communication thereof. Not once in the entire story do the characters mention what the “operation” which sparked such heated conversation between the two travelers was, though through context clues we can deduce the operation is an abortion. Such context clues include the hills resembling a pregnant belly, and the girl mentioning that the hills look like white elephants, which symbolize a gift no one asked for or wants, which in this case is the unwanted baby. Neither of the characters ever put words to the elephant in the room, or in this case, the elephant in the “womb.” Another important detail is the contrast between the male and female characters. The main female protagonist, later revealed t...

From the first few sentences, I immediately assumed that “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin would be a typical story about a woman’s journey of grief and loss. Yet slowly as the story progressed, it was revealed that this is a very different story than I expected.  Mrs. Mallard’s husband has allegedly been killed by a railroad accident, and her sister is cautious to break this information to her because of Mallard’s heart condition. From her first reaction upon hearing the news of the loss, Mallard seems to be acting in a peculiar way for a woman whose husband has passed away, but not in a noticeable way yet. It isn’t until she is alone in her thoughts, looking out the window and relishing the little things in life—patches of blue sky in the clouds, the trees and birds outside—that she is overcome with a sudden burst of emotion. This emotion at first appears to be extreme anxiety which overtakes her, and perhaps it starts out this way, but eventually she is overcome with a wash ...