Sherleine Metayer
When authors are writing a story one of their main goals is to keep readers on their toes.
They want their audience to be fully engaged and think outside of the box to understand or
pinpoint the moral or main message of the piece. When we read we are usually flooded with
various thoughts, opinions, and inferences, figuring out why the characters do what they do and
what is the reasoning behind all the events that goes on in a story. However, when a story is
purposely formatted in an unclear manner, it can lead to a reader’s buildup of frustration and
annoyance. Being oblivious to a storyline can make the reading experience unpleasant to
continue. In fact, this experience happened to me as I was reading short stories, “Hills Like
White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway and “Popular Machines” by Raymond Carver.
Let me begin by saying that both of the short stories, overall, were ambiguous. On the
other hand, “Hills Like White Elephants” was VERY vague! The dialogue is too VAGUE, the
description of the characters is VAGUE, the plot is VAGUE, might as well call the short story “
Too difficult to understand”. I had difficulty figuring out the plot of the story so much that I was
beginning to wonder if this short story had a plot at all!!? Also, the title of the story, I don’t see
how this correlates with the story in any form! The little pieces of communication between the
characters is not enough to catch on to what they’re discussing but, maybe for some, just
enough to make multiple inferences on what the characters might be discussing about. To put
an end to my clueless mind , I decided to google up this story to find out the meaning behind all
of this. As I meticulously searched, I come to find out that the story is about a girl who is in a self
debate with her significant other about whether should get an abortion or not. The setting of the
story is around a time where abortions were illegal and extremely dangerous. In respect to that,
it was hard for the girl to acknowledge whether she was in the wrong for this action or not. If it
wasn’t for google, I can honestly say I would’ve NEVER, in a million years, come to that
realization. That is how confused I was. I came to recognition that both stories revolve around
plights of couples and their offspring. Children are always the top of discussion in a relationship
for some reason, it never fails.
←------Literally me today !
In Carver’s short story, it is easier to get a sense of what is going on.
It seems as if the characters are going through a breakup,
but they are in a plight due to the fact that a baby is included into the situation. It’s not like you
can rip a child in half and each parent takes a piece. The dialogue presented represents the
stress and tension built between the couple. There seems to be a lack of communication and
understanding between the two couples as they can’t seem to approach a final solution to their
differences. Even though this short story wasn’t too descriptive in its elements, the symbols
given were enough to figure out what is occurring in the passage. However, in the ending of
Popular Mechanics, “​ In this manner, the issue was decided” ​ is unforeseeable. We are left
out of the loop to whether or not the baby is okay, we don’t know who won the quarrel, we are
unaware of the outcome of the couple’s relationship status, etc. Despite the omniscient
narration, I was still unclear about the feelings going on in the character's mind. Many questions
are bound to arise not only throughout the text but simply due to the abrupt ending, and it made
me very frustrated! It was like another cliffhanger, and I genuinely hate cliff hangers because
they temporarily drive me mentally insane! Overall this short story was very interesting in a
peculiar way, despite the fact that a big chunk of info was left out. I feel as if the indirectness
that the two authors utilize in their stories paves the way to a discussion of controversy between
readers and a MAJOR headache! I guess good literature always leaves us begging for more
answers…. you feel me?