Response to "Hills Like White Elephants"

I like Ernest Hemingway's style of writing.  I think his style is beautiful because he is willing to turn normal stories to interesting experience.  He is a thought provoking writer; he gives his readers the chance to rethink and question their perspectives about those usual repetitive relationships. It is easy for us to think what if I was in this situation and how I am going to react. 

Reflection on Ernest Hemingway’s “ A Very Short Story”

The story is about a man falls in love with a nurse during wartime.  He has to say goodbye for her for a while to build good promising life when they get married. However, his love is not faithful; she finds new love and wrote a letter explaining her reasons and gives him her seiner wishes.  The story is a typical short love tail occurred during war.  Personally I did not like it, I think it represents many of us who are victims of their circumstances and fragile personality. 

Perhaps many people seek affection during hard times, and I think he has no option rather than falling in love with her during his service in the front line. But I couldn’t understand why he destroyed his life in the end.  It was very short story written beautifully and ends badly. Hemingway did not take or mislead his readers to any side.  Therefore, I guess as readers we are free to come up with our own analysis and judgments.

Hills Like White Elephants setting

Ernest Hemingway in his short story “ Hills Like White Elephants” was perfectly validating his quote “ The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one eighth of it being above water”.  Hemingway employed a brilliant technique to reveal the content of his narrative; he is totally dependent on both the settings of the story and the dialog between his main characters. Through these two elements along with deliberate sprinkled hints readers are able to guess unwritten details. 

Yet, the setting of the story has played a vital role in conveying inner thoughts and emotions of the characters.  For instant, Hemingway utilizes the landscape that surrounds the train station. As he describes it, it is a valley that divided by the train rails.  One side of the valley is representing the fertility and the other side portraying the dry side.  The author by using this picture he wants to reflect on the ongoing struggle between the two characters; the girl wants life and reproduction and that is by keeping the baby. So in the story she wants to move from the dry valley to the grain fields’ valley. On the other hand, the American wants to take the train from the dry valley that ends up in Madrid where the abortion will take place. 

The writer also gives another picture when he describes the valley of grain covered by the shadow of cloud. It is also an illustration of threat of death or troubles over live or peace.

General Tien's Character in "Red Thread Maiden"

General Tien's character as portrayed by the author Yuan Chiao in "Red Thread Maiden" has changed and developed in coordination with the progression of the story’s events. Yet General Tien ‘s nature was not very different from other warlords such as General Hsueh …. both are warmongers.  They feed their egos by making constant troubles and wars. But General Tien showed different traits and behavior, which varied according to his capacity to control his surroundings.  For example at the beginning of the story General Tien was very arrogant because he has a new well-trained army. Having this in mind, he thought he could start a war against General Hsueh and invade his state. However, after the incident of the “Golden Box” General Tien thought that only a “Magical Knight” is able to sneak into his well-guarded residence and take the “Golden Box” from beneath his pillow. The Magical Knight was an illusionary character that General Tien has created in his imagination because he is a superstitious person who believes in the spirit world.  Therefore, due to his beliefs in the super natural powers his entire attitude has totally shifted from a strong fearless Governor who was all setup for a war to a warlord who willingly pointed himself as a servant. This shift in General Tien’s personality illustrates that he is a coward man who was hiding behind his soldiers to kill and destroy a city of innocent people for senseless desire.

 

Trip to Queen Elizabeth Park

I have a friend from Canada who invited me to go out with her last weekend for a scenery walking trip.  We have started our day by having lunch in a Japanese restaurant in Kitsilano and after that we went to Queen Elizabeth Park.  That was my first visit to the park, I heard about its beautiful gardens and yet I never imagined how gorgeous it is. I saw many beautiful flowers with different colors which were planted in a very artistic manner.

My friend was like a tour guide. She explained that the Park is a trendy place for weeding ceremonies.  Couples nowadays book the park to celebrate their union with family and friends.  Park visitors can easily walk by and witness the ceremony, I found this new and interesting. She also told me that the season’s restaurant which is located in the Park is very busy and needs to be reserved in advance. Another thing about this restaurant is that its recognized by people as a place to celebrate special occasions. So if you see or hear that someone was in Seasons, you can guess that it is a speacil event.

My impression abut the park that it is good place for a family picknic or small walk. It is good place for good friends, family gathering and older couple.  I enjoyed it and I was thankful for my friend to spare time to take me out for a small and lovely walk.

Reflection on "The Gold Mountain Coat"

When we first started reading The Gold Mountain Coat story in the class…. I thought the focus of the story would be in the narrator, the little girl. So as we read line after line I was anticipating that the course of events would shift any time to bring the little girl in.  Nevertheless, the little girl wasn’t the main character and the story was all about Sam Sing and his sons.  It is an interesting twist thought; perhaps the writer wanted it to be this way as a sort of a hook. And the story I think is the best description of the Chinese way of living at that particular era. So the story through its proceedings described the hard working, thrifts, and family unity in spite of the personal differences. In fact, it is an ideal reflection of the Chinese culture, which is unlike the Canadian. It is hardly to find grown men in Canadian culture who will be blindly obeying their parents never the less being so submissive and out of character. We can see this clearly when John went to visit the little girl’s mother and he was so upset and scared that his father might not allow him to buy a new coat.  Although he was aware of his rights and he mentioned in that visit “this isn’t China”, later on when he was actually in front of his father he could not get rid of his obedient nature. Therefore, the description of Chinese families was authentic and most probably this credited to the writer’s background.

What Writing Means To Me

Writing is a vehicle for contemplation for many. They claim it helps them to reflect on their life. Even more for those it is a method of recording their thoughts, emotions and most importantly it allows them to keep track of their life’s events. It is more likely as capturing memories and time.  Then again, for me it is totally different. It is not that I disagree with writing lovers but I am a poor writer. The thought of it is terrifying me.  I tired couple of times to keep a dairy where I can reflect on my daily activities, I considered it to be a way of meditation. I supposed by keeping a dairy this would help me to get outside myself and act as a neutral trusted friend who can foresee the flaws, gently point them out and advise remedies. However, I wasn’t able to write a complete beautiful thought or even worse describing a typical routine.  My writing came out as scattered words, chronically wrong. As a result, I was discouraged and I decided that writing is not my field of interest.