Hills Like White Elephants

Hills Like White Elephants
by Ernest Hemingway

"Do you feel better?" he asked.
"I feel fine," she said. "There's nothing wrong with me." (Hemingway 555)

This type of ending to a story leaves you to wonder what is actually going to happen with the characters lives. What I think the couple wants to get rid of is a baby, an abortion. Throughout the story the man questions the girl and wonders whether or not she really wants to have an abortion. The girl, feeling guilty for being pregnant, agrees that she doesn't care about herself and wants to get the abortion so the man will love her. Then, after reading the last two lines, it seems as though she has decided that she will not get the abortion afterall. By the girl saying, "There's nothing wrong with me." (Hemingway 555), the girl seems content with the fact that she is pregnant, maybe even content enough to have the baby. I think at the end of the story the girl has made the decision to keep the baby.

Young Goodman Brown

"Young Goodman Brown"
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now ye are undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind." (Hawthorne 546)

I find this quote a little disturbing because it makes it seems as if you cannot find any happiness in the world. In the first sentence the devil takes away mankinds faith in the fact that there is some sort of good in the world. He is telling the people that now he will tell them the truth, mankind is evil. To call all of mankind "evil" is to say that even in our best intentions there is still some hint of wrong doing. If a person were to think this way about mankind they might never trust someone or even enjoy their presence because a secret evil may always be hiding in the corner. I do not agree with the devil when he says this because I do not want to always be thinking about the bad in people, I want to be able to be aware of the bad but trust in the fact that there is a lot of happiness to be spread in the world.

A Rose for Emily

"The Yellow Wallpaper"
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby!" (Gilman 489)

This sentence stood out to me because before I read it I had no idea why the protagonist was sick. After reading this sentence I realized that it could be post- pardum depression. There are hints that this is why she is sick because in the whole story she only mentions her baby twice. Usually after women have children they are all that the women can talk about but that is not the case with Jane.
Although I think that it is this depression that initially makes her sick, I think that her sickness intensifies because of the way that her husband was trying to "cure" her. She is basically locked in this horrible room, with ugly yellow wall paper and bars on the windows. Her husband won't allow her to write which is something that I think can inevitably cure her.