Responses Two Students
One paragraph for each
https://www.studypool.com/discuss/19838608/discuss-the-modernist-aspects
needs two more responses. Can you please respond to another two students.
Student #2
In “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, there are many aspects of modernism throughout the story. There are multiple narratives and the ending is open or ambiguous. There isn’t really a theme in the story it is mostly just dialogue. There is an operation that the American man wants Jig to go through. This operation is discussed and talked about in the story but the reader never finds out what the operation actually is. The ending of the story is left open like it is with other modernist stories.
“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston is about a marriage between Sykes and and Delia and has some aspects of modernism such as cynicism and faithlessness. Sykes abuses, and beats his wife while also cheating on her with another woman named Bertha. He does not care about her feelings and buys a rattlesnake knowing that she is scared of them and uses it to terrify her and display dominance. Race is also brought into the story as Sykes hates when Delia works for the white people and washes their clothes to earn an income.
There are some differences between both of the stories. Jig from Hills like White Elephants was able to travel freely while Delia was stuck with her abusive husband and didn’t have any freedom. The ending in Hills like the White Elephant was a lot more open then the one in Sweat, a lot of the story was left to the reader’s imagination while the ending in Sweat was more clear. Both couples seemed to be unhappy in both stories but the couple in Hills like the White Elephant were wondering if the operation would bring them happiness while in Sweat, there was no chance for happiness.
student #3
To me “Hills Like White Elephants” is a very good literary element heavy story. Especially when it comes to the setting of the story. The fact that the story took place at a railroad junction and the couple in the story were at a decision junction in their life really complements the overall story. I especially like the fact that the story was told from a third-person objective point of view. This means that the story is mostly fact-based and does not given much into the conscious or sub-conscious of the characters. The events of the story are known only by what is said and heard. I like this version of storytelling because it is direct and to the point with detail. It is also easier to figure out what is going on in the story (at least for me) because of the dialogue.
The Story “Sweat” is a bit more one-sided to me in that it focused more on the woman instead of the couple. It also is more focused around the woman in that she lives and her husband doesn’t. The fact that even before letting her husband die the woman decided to end her marriage took guts which is something that was not only frowned upon by society, but courageous in the view of modernism. She by her bold act was transcending societies view of woman as weak and docile to allowing herself liberation through her bravery and circumstance, the death of her husband.
These two stories differ to me in that “Hills” has an ambiguous ended, although I personally think that she made up her mind to have the abortion. The story “Sweat” is a little more straight forward and the tone I sense is more aggressive in that the author isn’t afraid to lay it out there, so to speak. The woman in “Hills” is wrestling with the idea of the abortion and trying to get feedback from her husband/partner who seems to be quite indifferent. The husband and wife in “Sweat” are clearly at odds with each other and the results of the relationship is really a natural conclusion to their conflict with one another.
______________________________________________________
https://www.studypool.com/discuss/19838852/modernist-story
needs two more responses. Can you please respond to another two students.
Student #2
Winter Dreams DB
Winter Dreams includes many modernist aspects. To start, the time period it takes place includes WW1 and its effect on the character, Dexter Green. We also see the growing industrialization of the world around ant through him as he grows – beginning with his focus on the serenity of the golf course in his youth, to having a business and growing that into multiple locations, and then having many men appear throughout the story who are from many different places and many different levels of success and industry. Industrialization was represented by the people who come and go in both his and Judy’s life.
I feel I see bits of marginalization and alienation through the way Judy and Dexter live their lives too. In each Dexter, against his better judgement, continues to be hung up on the idea of Judy, making choices against his best interest because of this thing that cannot be obtained. Not that Judy is a thing, but I believe it is a parallel for what people aspire to outside of what actually makes them happy. Be it wealth, or class, or love. To chase this thing that doesn’t accept you will only leave you miserable. Dexter, like Judy, self-marginalized and alienated themselves.
This piggybacks into the characters essentially failing to find meaning in their life – another aspect of modernism. Dexter’s journey leaves him a cynic by stories’ end experiencing distrust in society (the wish-washy of Judy throughout, but then a marriage plea that lasts only a month), the chaos of his life and disillusionment over if he could just have her he would be happy. He wouldn’t be. This pattern and obsession of his may even represent something specific as it relates to the inclusions of Freud’s findings. We know his life is doomed to play out this way with it’s open ending as he is still a youthful man with many years to make changes in his life, but he won’t.
Student #3
Dexter, a man who climbs the social status while being relentlessly in love with a woman despite her arrogance and affection later realizes that he was never in love and that was his younger winter dreams he dreamed. Winter Dreams is a modernist story because of Dexter’s disillusionment, his alienation of luxurious life and the breakout of WW1.
Dexter suffers a case of disillusionment by a status he wants to achieve financially and romantically. Before even trying to reach his social goals while working as the caddy almost representation and foreshadowing of recognizing the false sense of status. Dexter “became a golf champion and defeated Mr. T. A. Hedrick in a marvelous match played a hundred times over the fairways of his imagination”. Where in in his imagination it is his goal, rather fantasy that fulfills the thought of high status to when he actually gets to where he “wants to be” to now “Mr. T. A. Hedrick, who was a bore and not even a good golfer anymore.” Realizing that this “status is fake and not as what it seems to be looking outside in to being inside out. Dexter also has disillusionment with judy who he blindly chases with a status filled lust once again filled by society and his younger self filled ideas of success. Not realizing that Judy was a symbol blown up by her parents’ status and her gorgeous looks. Once she lost that the love and idea of her instantly deflated right before him.
A main pillar of modernism is World War One and the impact of it, which is another reason of Winter Dreams being a modernism story. Dexter “had” to leave for war but had “amount of relief, welcoming the liberation from webs of tangled emotion.”. Due to his confusing and clashing ideas and almost status lust of Judy simultaneously engaged to irene he does not know what to do and have found a way to get out through war. Like many people during that time war stopped a lot of peoples lives and changed it drastically for better or for worse all depending on each person specifically.
