Gender Roles

In both short stories, “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck and “The Lamp at Noon” by Sinclair Ross, the theme “Gender Roles” is shared. Both women in each story live on a farm that their husband owns. They are both inferior to their husbands and living lives they are not content with.

Elisa Allen is a 35-year-old woman who lives on a farm with her husband, Henry. She spends much of her time alone, gardening. Her husband is very impressed by her and rewards her by taking her out to dinner at a fancy hotel in town. Though Henry treats her very well, compliments her gardening and how nice she looks when she dresses up, she still feels isolated and unhappy.  Even with his love and affection, she is living a very melancholy life that she is not used to. It is conclusive that she wants to escape this life when she looks at the salesman’s dogs with envy. She wishes she could come and go as she pleased, just as the dogs can. Her husband, being the dominant person in their relationship, says how he wishes she would “work out in the orchard and raise some apples that big” when he looks at her flowers; however, he does not invite her to do so because working on a farm is known to be a masculine job.

Ellen, on the other hand, is living the same type of unhappy lifestyle. She also lives on a farm with her husband and baby boy. Ellen realizes the severity of the storm they are in and believes that they need to move or else they will not have any crops or food to survive on. Paul, however, has a very opposing opinion than Ellen and thinks they are able to grow more crops and continue living in this desert. In the end, Ellen is weak from running and offers to stay, which was what he wanted all along. Since he appears to be the ruler of their household, he was the one to make the final decision to stay, meaning he got his wish: to stay. He feels as though his wife should not worry about things such as the soil or growing crops as these are things that men should worry about. Instead, he leaves her to care for the baby and clean the house while he goes and works in the barn.

Each of these stories demonstrates the theme “Gender Roles” as both women are inferior to their husbands. Both Paul and Henry have immense confidence and appear to be blind to their wives’ discontent. Paul, however, realizes why Ellen felt the way she did when it is too late and she has run away. Luckily, he finds her and carries her home and by this time the storm has passed and she has become willing to stay there on the farm with him. Henry never does realize the unhappiness that Elisa is feeling. Even at the end, he does not know she is hurting because she turns her face away so he cannot see her crying. The husbands are the “rulers” in both of these short stories, which is stereotypical of males in all relationships. 

Hopefulness vs. Hopelessness

Towards the latter end of this course, it was becoming easier to make connections and comparisons between the stories we were studying and ones we had done earlier on in the semester. It was obvious that the characters in one short story had traits and feelings that were analogous to those of the characters from other stories.

One example that stood out to me was when we read “The Lamp at Noon” by Sinclair Ross. In this story, Ellen is a young mother who is living on a farm with her husband, Paul, and their baby boy. Their home is located in the middle of a desert that is experiencing a drought. Due to the strong winds and lose soil, there is so much dust blowing around that they have to light the lamp by noon. Ellen grows very concerned for her infant’s health as he is breathing in a great amount of dust.  She is also very worried about her family as she realizes the soil is no longer useful for growing crops. She tells her husband that he has “plowed and harrowed it until there’s not a root or fiber left to hold it down. That’s why the soil drifts.” Paul has a very opposite attitude toward the situation that they are in and thinks they can survive on this farm with the limited resources they have. Ellen, however, is trying to help him realize that they will not be able to live forever in this vast and isolated place.

As I read this story, I was immediately reminded of “The Chrysanthemums”, a short story by John Steinbeck that we read prior to “The Lamp at Noon”. In this story, Elisa Allen also lives on a farm with her husband, Henry. She, too, feels very alone and isolated longing to leave but unable to due to her husband. He is content on this farm he owns and does not realize the discontent of his wife. When a salesman stops by the farm, Elisa tells him that she has “never lived as [he] do”, which shows her envy of this man’s freedom. Deep down, she wishes she was able to come and go as he does, but instead she must stay and put up with the pain and suffering.

The difference in these two women is their courage. Ellen has the courage to take a stand and leave the farm with her son, yet Elisa does not. Ellen is not used to this type of life and, seeing what damage this storm is doing, realizes she needs to get out of there before it is too late. At the end of the story, the storm passes Paul convinces her to stay on the farm: she agrees to stay, saying “tomorrow will be fine”. This shows her hopefulness for her family and their life on this farm. On the contrary, Elisa shows hopelessness at the end of “The Chrysanthemums” when she discovers that the salesman had thrown her Chrysanthemums from his wagon onto the road. She would never have the courage to run away from the farm, so she stays there and continues to live in discontent. She feels stranded and as though she will never be able to escape her pain as she is weak, “like an old woman”.

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War Changes People

There are both positive and negative effects of going to war. This semester we studied two short stories that showed a negative change in character due to war.

 In the short story “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich, two brothers, Lyman and Henry, share a love for a car that Henry bought the summer before he left for war. When Henry returns, he has changed and no longer has any interest in the car anymore. Lyman notices that the war has changed his brother and states that the “change was no good!” Lyman grows so angry about his brother’s change that he beats up the car to get Henry to notice it. To his surprise, Henry shows concern and begins to spend all of his time repairing the car. When he has finished fixing the damages, he invites Lyman to go for a drive to the beach with him. When they got there, Henry walked out into the ocean until the water overflowed his boots and he drowned. This was not at all expected of the happy and unselfish version of Henry who Lyman knew before war changed him permanently.

Another short story that we studied was “Stones”, by Timothy Findley. This story was told from Ben Max’s perspective in flashback form. Ben is telling readers about his childhood and how dramatically his dad had changed when he returned home from war. Prior to going to war, David, Ben’s dad, was a happy and outgoing young man who was very kindhearted and deeply involved with his family. When he returned, years later, he was an entirely different person. He was very depressed and had become both physically and emotionally abusive, spending most of his time inside the house, alone, drinking his pain away. Ben says that there was “not a mark on his body, but – far inside – he had been destroyed.” One night David came into Ben’s bedroom and lifted him out of his bed, resulting in a broken collarbone. He even tried to kill his own wife with a hammer. All of this was due to David’s guilty conscience after surviving the war. Since all of his men died, and he was the only one to survive, he felt as though he should have died with them and wants to be punished.
In both of these short stories, the two people that went to war were changed and affected eternally. It is unfortunate to see the pain that not only those who have gone to war must go through, but also that of their loved ones. Both families in each of these stories suffered emotionally as they lost a person they once knew. Though Henry and David are still alive, physically, they have died internally and there is nothing their families can do to get back the Henry and David they once knew.

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The Evil and The Innocent

In this course we studied two poems by author William Blake, including “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”. "The Tyger" is from “Songs of Experience" while "The Lamb" is from "Songs of Innocence". This which would lead readers to think that the two of these poems are related to joy, love and a righteous relationship with God; however, this is not the case.

“The Tyger” is a serious and dark poem questioning the nature of the creator: it is asking who could create such a terrifying and twisted beast of an animal. The writer is basically questioning the creator’s sanity when he says “What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?” comparing the creator to a blacksmith. Tigers are often associated with aggressiveness and the evil in the world. The whole poem keeps readers alert and focused like one would be if they came face to face with a tiger. The poem leaves us in awe, as none of the questions are answered.  It questions how a God that made this physically frightful, evil animal, the tiger, could also create a beautiful, innocent little lamb.

“The Lamb”, on the other hand, is the opposite of “The Tyger”. The writer has a very relaxed and gentle tone in this poem as he talks about a “little lamb”. He does not leave readers with any unanswered questions and tells how “he is meek and he is mild”: words that are associated with quietness and peacefulness, which is exactly what lambs are known to be like. The word “lamb” reminds me of the children's nursery rhyme, “Mary had a little Lamb”, where the lamb was innocent and did no wrong with intention. This poem is reflecting on the questions that “The Tyger” asks about their creator. Words that are used in the poem are often words that are related to innocence and gentleness, including “God”, “little child”, “softest” and “delight”.

The two of these poems are questioning the creator of both the lamb and the tiger. Though two very opposing animals, the writer reminds us that they were both created by the same God. This shows us the magnitude of God’s power as he can create two extremely different types of creatures. “The Tyger” symbolizes strength and power, which contrasts with “The Lamb” and its symbol of weakness and innocence. You would expect all contents of “Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience” to be about innocence and positive experiences with God, however  it is ironic to see the writer question the nature of God, who is the creator of both the aggressive tiger and the innocent little lamb.

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Childhood Innocence

When we read the short story “To Set Our House in Order” by Margaret Laurence, some of the aspects of the plot reminded me of J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”, one of my favorite novels that I studied in twelfth grade. Vanessa, the main character of Laurence’s short story goes through a change where she loses her childhood innocence. Likewise, Holden Caulfield, the main character in “The Catcher in the Rye” is obsessed with preserving childhood innocence and refuses to believe that Jane, a childhood friend, is no longer the innocent child he knew. He also does everything in his power to protect his little sister, Phoebe, from the phoniness of adults. He says he wants to be a catcher in the rye so that he can save innocent children from falling off a cliff into the phoniness of the world. 

In “To Set Our House in Order”, Vanessa is an innocent little girl who lives with her parents and Grandmother MacLeod in a small, isolated town in Manitoba. Though she has a family with a new sibling on the way, Vanessa feels very alone and alienated. Her mother and father tell her as much as they think they can as she is still a child, young and innocent. She is coming of age and has a lot of questions she cannot get answers to. This is when her transformation happens: she overhears what really happened to her Uncle Roderick. She realizes her uncle did die at war, but he also tried to get killed. This is when she becomes aware of the imperfectness of the world and loses her innocence.

“The Catcher and the Rye” is a little different than this as Holden, the protagonist, is aware of the imperfectness of the world: he just wants to protect Jane and Phoebe from it. He gets very upset when he hears that his roommate, Stradlater, has gone on a date with Jane because he thinks Stradlater is a “phony”. He tries to protect his little sister from the obscene language he sees written on the wall at the museum as she is very important to him and he wants to preserve her innocence. Initially, he doesn't tell her why he was kicked out of Pencey Prep or where he has been because he doesn't want her to know anything that could potentially damage her innocent mind or her opinion of the world. At the end of the novel, Holden comes to accept that Jane is no longer the “good” girl he loves and respects from his childhood. He is aware that there is nothing he can do now because her innocence has been lost.  When he is watching Phoebe on the carousel, he feels as if he might cry from happiness. He knows Phoebe has not lost her innocence and feels immense gladness because of this.

Both of these plots show a child losing their innocence as they grow up and become of age. Though Vanessa undergoes a transformation that we can see, Jane also undergoes a similar change through Holden’s thoughts and realizations. Vanessa loses her innocence when she realizes the world isn't the perfect place she thought it was while Jane transforms without Holden seeing this change. When the novel ends, Holden still has hope that Phoebe’s childhood innocence will remain preserved for a little while longer. I think this is what kept Holden as sane as he did in this novel because he still had confidence in Phoebe, even if she was only one child.  In both of these stories we can see how children will eventually come to realize the imperfectness of the world and that, unfortunately, no child’s innocence will last forever.

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Books > Movies

Is it just me or does it seem that once you've read a book, no movie could ever be comparable? Speaking from experience, I have found myself having much higher expectations after watching movies that have been developed based on novels. One example is the Twilight Saga. Before watching any of the movies, I read all four of the books by Stephenie Meyer: including Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. I understand there is difficulty in portraying mythological characters, such as vampires and werewolves, but I was extremely disappointed when I watched each of the five movies after reading the books. While trying to keep the movie suspenseful but also somewhat convincing, the director was also attempting to keep a similar plot to that of Meyer’s novels. It was unfortunate to see so many scenes from the books completely left out of the movies. This included parts that I felt were very significant when reading the novels. Even the best movie (based on reviews), Breaking Dawn Part 2, was not nearly as good as the book. Keeping in mind how hard it is to film the birth of a vampire baby, I thought that the book did a much better job at creating an image of what this experience was really like in Meyer’s mind.

I’m sure there are some exceptions, but every book I have ever read prior to watching the movie has been the better of the two. I think this is because it is impossible to enclose every detail of a book into a motion picture that will keep viewers attention while remaining a reasonable length of time. It is also difficult to try to reproduce a version of a plot that an author has already created. Everyone has different opinions and visualize things differently, so it is not easy to recreate exactly what an author could have been trying to say when he/she was writing the book. As well, it would be impractical to try to fit every single part of a one-thousand-paged book into approximately two hours of on-screen time.

Unfortunately, it seems as though reading is the best route to take if one is interested in getting all the details and internal feelings of a character. One thing a movie cannot do that a book can is demonstrate exactly what an individual is feeling or a personal description of an important experience. Breaking Dawn, the last book by Stephenie Meyer, is extremely effective in showing how the characters feel internally, as it switches back and forth between Bella and Jacob’s points of view. Though it takes much longer to read a book than to watch a two hour film, I think it is much more worthwhile for one to take the time to read the book as opposed to sitting and watching the movie.

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"Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway

“Hills Like White Elephants” is a short story by Ernest Hemingway that takes place in a train station overlooking the valley of the Ebro. Though the characters in the story do not notice their location, it becomes apparent to readers that they are seated directly across from the centre of two very opposing sides of a hill. The story begins where two people are casually chatting and drinking as they wait for their train. Ironically, this “casual” conversation they are having in public is actually a very serious discussion about whether or not they should get an abortion. As we read further on, it is illusive that the girl is much younger and far less experienced than the man is.  She questions everything, such as when the woman at the bar asks if she would like her Anis del Toro with water. The girl responds, “I don’t know… is it good with water?”

Hemingway was very creative in how he used the setting to reveal important details and help us understand the situation the characters are in. There are so many symbols in this short story that show readers the options they have and the choice they make in the end. The man and young woman are sitting in a train station, which is often symbolic of where people go to run from their problems. With the girl being so young and inexperienced, it seems that they may be trying to run away from having a baby and have found themselves at a train station not knowing where they should go: neither geographically or with their futures. Readers can sense tension between them, and it appears that they may have different opinions as well as their own interpersonal questions due to their different lives.

Another huge symbol to readers in this story is the two sides of the hill that the station is facing. One side is barren, with no trees, vegetation or life, while the other side is green and fertile, “like white elephants” as the woman describes, with a river flowing and vast mountains in the background. As they sit admiring the two sides of the hill, little do they know that these two sides symbolize the two options they are deciphering between.

At the end of the story, we know that they make the decision to have the baby. The side with no life or vegetation represents the choice to have an abortion while the lush, green side represents having the baby because of the flowing river: a river symbolizes the birth canal and birth. The woman also compares this side to “white elephants”, white being the color that represents growth and fertility, and elephants representing wisdom on the eve of birth. We know the man and woman have agreed to have the baby because the man gets up and moves their luggage to this side of the station.

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