Theme Discussion Board
Through the different resources introduced this week, you learned about themes in a literary week. Reduced to essentials, the theme is the main idea of the story. As you learned this week, a theme can also be expressed as “the underlying meaning of a literary work, a general truth about life or mankind” With this in mind, identify and discuss a theme embedded in one of the four Hemingway stories assigned this week. Also, find a parallel with another theme in one of the other stories. How can those two themes be connected? The 2 stories: The Killers And Hills Like White Elephants.
ANSWER
Theme Discussion Board
In Hills like White Elephants, the freedom of choice is evident as one of the main themes. The American man and the girl who is assumingly his girlfriend are having drinks while waiting for the train. The man continually repeats to the girl that she does not have to go through with “the operation” if she does not want to. Although he wants her to do it as he refers to it as “an awfully simple operation…” and they can go back to how they were before the elephant came along.
The girl on the other hand has a choice to keep the elephant or not. She has the freedom to choose but is conflicted between the man and the elephant. In the end it seems like she decides to choose the man.
Choice also portrays itself as a theme in the Killers. Al and his friend Max had a choice on what to eat in Henry’s lunchroom, Sam advises Nick not to get involved but George tells him he does not have to if he does not want to and lastly, Ole Anderson has a choice to leave his room and town but he chooses not to.
In both the short stories, the Hills like White Elephants and the Killers, expectation versus reality stands out. The man expects that after “the operation” everything will go back to how it was, which in reality it will not because their relationship is founded on insincerity and doubt. The two hit men, Al and Max are rude, arrogant and unprepared as they expect everything to work out perfectly but reality catches up on them and they leave their job uncompleted.
