Close Reading: “Hills Like White Elephants”

Maria Victoria Di Mario

Ingl 3011-402

Prof. Cynthia Pittmann

12 October 2018

Close Reading: “Hills Like White Elephants”

“‘I'd better take the bags over to the other side of the station,’ the man said. She smiled at him.

‘All right. Then come back and we'll finish the beer.’

He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station to the other tracks. He looked up the tracks but could not see the train. Coming back, he walked through the barroom, where people waiting for the train were drinking. He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train. He went out through the bead curtain. She was sitting at the table and smiled at him.

‘Do you feel better?’ he asked.

 ‘I feel fine,’ she said. ‘There's nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.’”(Hemingway, Ernest. Pg 280)

This is interesting and confusing because you finally find out what they were talking about before which is leaving there bags at the station but it still leaves you wondering what is in the bag, will it stay there forever, will harm people, and if it’s for someone. One of the main words for this story, although not said in this part, was “White elephants.” It means “a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of” which makes everything about this story makes sense.

What is the purpose of the bag?

The characters not giving you any real information about themselves makes the story leave you wondering and wanting to find out what’s in the bag. I don’t think the bag has a bomb or is meant to hurt anyone specifically because the two characters kept saying it was easy to do and they didn’t seem like sociopaths so I would imagine if it were a bomb it would be a lot more difficult for them to leave just like that but at the same time the girl seemed very anxious. After looking up the definition of “White elephant” it immediately all made sense that the “bags” had things that were causing them issues and I assume since it is difficult to remove it from your life that is why the girl was so nervous but why at the same time it was easy to get rid of emotionally because it is actually a burden.

Work Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.” Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, & Sense. By Greg Johnson, and Thomas R. Arp, 13th edition.

Life Compass

Maria Victoria DiMario

Prof. Pittmann

Ingl 3011 - 402

15 November 2018

Life Compass

The total score was 248 out of 288 which averaged out to be 10 (rounded down from 10.3) which is funny because if you round out each individual area my average was three for all of them. The exact numbers I got were: 2.6 for awareness, 2.54 for physical and 2.58 for mental and emotional. It makes sense that mental and emotional have the same average because I feel like they are pretty similar in my mind. In reality and when looking at the pie chart below, the areas were all pretty close in number. I think, besides my numbers being the same, this might of been a similar case for others because the range of numbers was small. There was only 1, 2, and 3 and there is no problem with that because if there were a longer range people would probably spend more time trying to figure out what exact number correlated with how they were feeling.  

I’m a little shocked awareness was the highest because I thought it would be the lowest number since I felt that it was a little difficult to understand how exactly I would feel aware or spiritual. When looking back at my reasoning for why I felt a three belonged there I noticed if I was feeling awake, particularly good or had a three for another area I would put it for awareness as well. Another thing that surprised me a little is how happy I would be even after writing a journal entry of all the work and things I needed to do that day. My lowest score was physical and I know it was affected by the temperature of the classroom which was always freezing and occasionally I would get hungry at the time of the class. I know the other two areas (mental and emotional) were affected by upcoming events in both good and bad ways. It would be bad if I had a lot of work or an exam coming up and good if I was doing something with a friend of my family.

I already knew I was a generally happy person but this assignment confirmed it. What I did learn as a student is that when I’m productive with my school work I feel amazing and energized but I also learned that when I have a heavy workload with homework, exams and quizzes it makes me feel awful. In general, I learned a couple other things that make me happy and since I know those things know I can try to do or include them in my life more often so I can hopefully live an even happier life.

Closer Reading Essay: “A Worn Path”

Maria Victoria DiMario

Prof Pittmann

Ingl 3011-402

31 October 2018

Closer Reading Essay: “A Worn Path”

Passage: “Phoenix spoke unasked now. ‘No, missy, he not dead, he just same. Every little while his throat begin to close up again, and he not able to swallow. He not got his breath. He not able to help himself. So the time come around, and I go on another trip for the soothing medicine’...  ‘My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself,’ Phoenix went on. ‘We is the only two left in the world.’” (Welty, Eudora p. 233)

When reading “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty a second time around an interesting question came to my mind when I got to this part (passage above), is the grandson even alive or is it just Phoenix’s old imagination getting to her so she still feels she has a purpose? The only time Phoenix mentions her grandson is in the waiting room where she doesn’t even seem to remember him at first. When she finally does remember him, she describes what happened and the condition he’s in which doesn’t seem like he’d be okay. Of course, the answer to whether he’s living or not isn’t obvious; Welty makes that clear in her response to the question but she also uses a lot of symbols of death and things throughout the story that more specifically shows the grandson might be dead.

Personally, I think the grandson is alive but only in Phoenix’s mind, in real life he isn’t. Phoenix made this obvious in my opinion by not mentioning him throughout the entire story and then forgetting about him when she was asked. His condition, I believe is also a way to severe for a little boy to survive for so long especially if he’s left alone for such a long time. The answer to whether Phoenix’s grandson is dead or not I think is completely just based off of opinion since Welty tells us there is no actual answer and it is all up to the imagination. If the grandson is dead, or even the idea of him possibly being dead makes the story more interesting and although Welty says it wouldn’t change anything I think it would. It goes from being a grandmother running an errand for her grandchild to a tragedy and seeing that she uses so many symbols of death it seems more like a tragedy

Works Cited

Welty, Eudora. “A Worn Path.” Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, & Sense. By Greg

Johnson, and Thomas R. Arp, 13th edition.  Accessed 29 October 2018.

Welty, Eudora “Is Phoenix Jackson’s Grandson Really Dead?” Critical Inquiry, vol. 1, No. 1

Sep., 1974, p. 219-221.  Accessed 29 October 2018.

Bartel, Roland. “Life and Death  in Eudora Welty’s ‘A Worn Path’.” Studies in Short Fiction.

Vol. 14 Issue 3, 1977, p. 288-290. University of Oregon. Access no. 7150807