Bullying – An Inexcusable Act

In my opinion bullying is an inexcusable act performed by weak individuals. These teasers torment their victims to the point of no return. They hone in on the one thing that is different about a person and do everything in their power to make the person miserable.

I despise bullying. Usually someone who bullies is lacking something in their own lives. Misery loves company and this is how I envision someone who bullies other people. They are sad individuals who must take their own internal frustrations out on other people. A much sadder case is the person who bullies people in order to belong to a certain group or clique. I do not understand why a person would want to belong to a certain social group if they have to become a bully in order to do so.

Bullying has become a way of life in society. It is excused by parents and school officials. No one should be subjected to any type of harassment. When a parent or school official does not stop bullying by giving appropriate consequences they are teaching children that it is acceptable behavior. Children should not be allowed to get things through force and intimidation. Additionally, they should not be allowed to hurt other people. As these bullies grow into young adults the bullying becomes more vicious and dangerous.   

The person that suffers the bullying can be scarred for life. Some individuals fall into a deep depression that they are not able to escape from. It sickens me to hear of young children committing suicide because they have been bullied so severely. I can relate to these people who suffer from depression as I have been known to get depressed myself.  Unfortunately, not everyone has an outlet for their pain like I do with my writing. I take my pain and incorporate it into my novels.

Society has to stand up to these bullies. Parents and school officials must punish this behavior starting at an early age. The longer the person is allowed to bully the less chance we have in changing that person and perhaps saving a life.

A Little Less Conversation

Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” is a brief and simple story that says a lot in a minimal amount of words. It is brilliantly written and embraces the journalistic style of writing that Hemingway is best known for. The sparse writing style that is evident in this story captures the true essence of a Hemingway novel. Additionally, it captures the autobiographical elements that Hemingway is so well known for including into many of his stories. His lifelong difficulty in building meaningful relationships with the women he loved is woven into this piece of art. This short story is considered one of Hemingway’s masterpieces.  

The plot of the story revolves around an American man and a woman, affectionately called Jig, struggling with the decision to get an abortion. The word abortion is never spoken in the story yet the dialogue between the couple alludes to it. The tension between the two characters is palpable. The man is adamant that he wants no one else in his life except the woman. Jig on the other hand must reconcile her mixed emotions and this causes the conflict that drives the wedge between the two lovers. This potent moral struggle is the beginning of the end for the couple.

Hemingway’s exquisite use of metaphors throughout the story adds another layer of intrigue to the life of the man and woman. The hidden messages allow the reader a glimpse into the more personal side of the couple’s relationship with each other. The unspoken truth weighs Jig down. The beautiful relationship is now a cancer that is eating away at the love the couple share. The reference made at the beginning of the story about the hills looking like white elephants is one of the most prominent metaphors in the story. The elephant represents the one thing the couple does not want to talk about or acknowledge, the unborn baby.  The baby is the obvious white elephant in the room that no one is willing to mention aloud. It is almost as if the couple believes that if they do not mention the baby out loud it will not be real. Another metaphor is the curtain made of beads. When Jig takes hold of two of the strands of beads it appears she is praying with a rosary. Due to the limited dialogue present in the story each new gesture and reference takes on a meaning deeper than what it is on the surface. Hemingway did a brilliant job of incorporating hidden messages in the lines of this magnificent work of art.

The setting of this short story also adds to the dilemma the couple is trying to come to terms with. To begin with, the story takes place in Spain which is a predominantly Catholic country. The Catholic church absolutely does not tolerate abortion. The few brief sentences dedicated to describing the scenery make a huge impact in the development of the story. As Jig scans the horizon she sees the brown and dry land where there are no trees or shade. Everything is dead which reminds her of the impending death of the child she is carrying. Each detail of the couple’s surroundings is a small glimpse into the conflict they are struggling to overcome.

The subtle and dramatic dialogue that takes place between the American man and Jig is one that reveals how much of a gulf there is between the two of them. The man is selfish and wants his life to remain unchanged. Jig is torn between the possibilities of what a baby will do to her current life and romance with the man. The casual conversation between the man and woman reveals so much about them and the issue they are trying to resolve. Hemingway provided the reader with the bare essentials that would allow them to develop their own interpretation of how the situation between the characters and the story ends.

A Man’s Life: It’s a Complicated Subject

Ernest Hemingway was a part of the modernism literary movement. His works embraced the style and structure of that movement. Much of Hemingway’s work was shaped through his life experiences. It is believed that he used autobiographical details as framing devices for his stories. He would use his experiences and build upon them. Hemingway strongly believed “a writer’s job is to tell the truth” (Bloom 85). It has been said that “no other writer of our time had so fiercely asserted, so pugnaciously defended, or so consistently exemplified the writer’s obligation to speak truly” (Bloom 85).   

Hemingway’s style is fresh, “it continues to make us see more clearly” (Bloom 9). He used a spare and tight journalistic prose style. According to Lisa Tyler, Hemingway himself told an interviewer that on the Kansas City Star he learned how to write simple declarative sentences, a skill that would be helpful to any young writer (Tyler 15). Hemingway often wrote about “how best to cope with suffering and defeat, how to live with dignity in a world that is racked with violence and loss” (Tyler 25). The recurring theme of loss can be seen in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” as well as “A Farewell to Arms”. The characters in these two stories suffer the loss of a life and the love they thought they knew.

Hemingway incorporated an objective and detached point of view into his books. This worked well with his spare and tight journalistic style. He would often tell the story without stating more than he had to.  The reader would gain their knowledge from the story’s action and dialogue.  A great example of this style can be found in “Hills Like White Elephants”. Hemingway never comes out and directly says the couple is seeking an abortion but it is inferred through the dialogue that takes place between the man and woman.

Hemingway was a genius who influenced a plethora of writers. His influence can be found in many literary styles not just modernism. He was a trail blazer who opened the door to a more real and honest style of writing. Hemingway was adamant “writing should be based on personal experience” (Tyler 26).   

Works Cited:

Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Major Short Story Writers Ernest Hemingway. Broomall: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999.

Bloom, Harold. Modern Critical Views Ernest Hemingway. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985.

Tyler, Lisa. Student Companion to Ernest Hemingway. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001.

Art Imitates Life

Ernest Hemingway was a man’s man whose tragic existence produced some of literature’s greatest works. He influenced writers around the world. Hemingway lived a boisterous and passionate life. Many of his novels reflect his hard-living life.

Born on July 21, 1899, Ernest Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, Illinois with two talented parents, Clarence and Grace Hemingway. Hemingway was extremely close to his father while growing up and developed his lifelong love of action and adventure from the many camping and hunting trips he took with his father. It is believed that he also inherited a genetic predisposition to manic depression from his father. Hemingway was married four times and had three sons.

He was the editor of his high school newspaper and later became a reporter for the Kansas City Star. It was during his time spent as a reporter that he refined his style of writing which was to “use short sentences, write with action words, and to never use an adjective when a vivid verb will relay the event” (Bloom 11). Hemingway eventually volunteered to be an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross where he was injured and fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, an American nurse.  This experience provided him with material for his novel A Farewell to Arms. After the war, Hemingway established himself as a writer, however “it was not until the publication of The Sun Also Rises in 1926 that he received the critical and popular acclaim he enjoyed through most of his career” (Bloom 12). In 1953, Hemingway earned a Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea. However, “his greatest triumph awaited him in 1954, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for The Old Man and the Sea, which the awards committee lauded for its powerful style-forming mastery of the art of modern narration” (Bloom 13).

Hemingway “was perhaps the most influential writer of his generation and scores of writers, particularly the hard-boiled writers of the thirties, attempted to adapt his tough, understated prose to their own works, usually without success” (Contemporary). “Apart from his style and his emphasis on the concrete detail, perhaps Hemingway’s most noteworthy contribution to literature is his theory of omission, which he practiced even in his earliest work” (Tyler 22). Hemingway’s hard-living eventually caught up to him. Papa Hemingway, as he was known by his friends, suffered from high blood pressure and depression. Sadly, “on the night of July 2, 1961, he could stand his weariness and weakness no longer and killed himself with a double-barreled shotgun” (Bloom 13). In his book Hemingway: Life Into Art, Jeffrey Meyers sums up the man best when he states, “Hemingway was not always an attractive man, but his faults were an essential part of his character and he would be a far less interesting and exciting writer if he had been, for example, as perfectly polite as Archibald MacLeish” (Meyers 167). Hemingway’s life is reflected in his many writings and his influence on other artists is still going strong. Kenny Chesney’s most recent album is named “Hemingway’s Whiskey” and Brad Paisley’s song “Alcohol” includes a reference about Hemingway’s use of alcohol.  

Works Cited:

Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Major Short Story Writers Ernest Hemingway. Broomall: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999.

Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2005. Gale, 2010.

Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway Life Into Art. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000.

Tyler, Lisa. Student Companion to Ernest Hemingway. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001.

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