'Hills Like White Elephants' And William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

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In comparing both “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” you find both stories contain a woman repressed by her circumstances. From an emotional standpoint, you could say they are the same, but in reality their situations couldn’t be more different. In “A Rose for Emily, Emily Grierson leads a life of conformity, loneliness, and desperation; while in “Hill like White Elephants,” “Jig”, may too be desperate, but her repression is not caused from loneliness like miss Grierson, but rather by her questionable freedom. Although repression takes on different forms, it is all the same and can eventually leave you consumed and breathless. In “A Rose for Emily”, Emily Grierson lives a secluded, and turmoil filled life which has revolved around inexplicable loneliness characterized by the harsh abandonment of death being that of her fathers. Imagery used at its most vital state is when Faulkner depicts Miss Emily’s mental frame. Being self-imprisoned within the confines of her own home is in coercion, the human embodiment of her house; Faulkner describes it as “…stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps—an eyesore among eyesores.” (Faulkner 516). The…show more content…
“Jig” is a young, woman who is forced to decide between her freedom and the stability of her relationship or embracing motherhood and responsibilities that come with such a title. While It is not to say that motherhood would be imprisonment; it in fact would be the death of everything she loved which could be categorized into two different things: travelling, and the very stability of her relationship with her lover, “the American”. “The American” says, “that’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.” (Hemingway 592) which equally shows that the center of conflict in their relationship is the alleged
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