Kimberly Armogan
Professor Hamm
English 200 F2
May 23, 2012
Paper #2 Rewrite
Life and Death
The setting, which is the surroundings in which something is, can be used in literature by authors to help them explore their theme in their works. In the story “The Specialist’s Hat” by Kelly Link and “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, both use this device to show the theme of life and death. Link’s story talks about two twin girls, named Samantha and Claire, who live in a mansion with only their father after their mother dies. In the story, the girls play a death game with their babysitter, acting like they are dead. They say and perform all the things someone can do if they happen to die. In the end of the story, the game turns serious and the girls are killed by their babysitter. In Hemingway’s story, a pregnant woman named Jig is deciding to get an abortion or not. She has to make the decision with her love for an American man in mind because he encourages her to get an abortion saying that they can go back to the way they were. Throughout the story the girl, who is at a train stop, looks at both of her options about the abortion before making her final choice. Setting is an important element in both Link’s “The Specialist’s Hat” and Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants”; however, Hemingway uses setting better to explore the theme of life and death.
The use of description in the settings of “The Specialist’s Hat” and “Hills like White Elephants” both help the authors with theme of life and death. The setting in “The Specialist’s Hat” is in an old mansion called “Eight Chimneys” that gives a frightening feeling from it. Link writes “Eight Chimneys is as big as a castle, but dustier and darker than Samantha imagines a castle would be” (Link 1).
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The mansion being dustier and darker gives it off as a haunted mansion. A place that is haunted seems to relate to ghosts, which have died there. This gives the mansion a sense that is a creepy place with woods that are nearby and the girls are told to never go in, this gives a spooky feeling like death is in the air and no sign life in the woods. Link also describes the place the girls live and makes it sound more eerie. She states, “With so many windows, Samantha thinks, Eight Chimneys should always be full of light, but instead the trees press close against the house, so that the rooms on the first and second story — even the third-story rooms — are green and dim, as if Samantha and Claire are underwater (Link, 3).
The mansion is said to have many windows, so one would assume that the inside must be bright in the daytime. However there are huge trees surrounding the mansion and blocking the sunlight from entering the house. This make the house appear dark and spooky, since there is no light shining and the girls feel like they are underwater, drowning, dead. “Hills like White Elephants” takes place in the mid-1920s at a train station in Zaragoza, a major city in northeastern Spain. The train stop where the couple is located is described to be an image just like life and death. Jig looks out at both sides of the train and sees different environments. Hemingway writes, “Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro” (Hemingway, 842).
This quote shows what the character Jig is looking at, which is at the end of the station. The banks of the Ebro are used to say that in that area is a river with a beautiful healthy environment. Fields of grain and trees are used in this quote because they are considered lively and it shows growing vegetation, but when Jig looks at the hills she sees the opposite. She sees a dry valley, which is has no developing plants or crops; just an image of death and these descriptions ties back to the theme of life and death. One side of the train displays a lively environment with green land and the other looks very dead with dry land.
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The symbolism used in the settings in Link’s and Hemingway’s stories both helps the authors with their theme of life and death. “The Special’s Hat” takes place in a haunted surrounding and gives off a sense of a creepy and scary feeling. The girls are told by their father to never go into the woods or in the attic because of what is in it. Link says, “They saw something. Samantha thought it was a woman, but Claire said it was a snake. The staircase that goes up to the attic has been locked” (Link, 2).
The attic where the girls go to play symbolizes a place for them to escape the world and to do whatever they want, even play a game about death. The dead game symbolizes the girls not being afraid of death, since there mother passed away. Also Link writes how the trees block the sunlight from entering the mansion. Sunlight symbolizes life and plants use the sunshine to grow, to become alive. There being no sunlight in the house represents that there is no life in that place, only death. In “Hills like White Elephants” Hemingway states that the Jig walks to the end of the station to the other side of the train, she looks at all the fields and tress, which are all green and lively things. Hemingway puts in all these descriptive setting to symbolize what is going on in Jig’s mind. So the lively fields symbolize life, the baby, and a new beginning for Jig’s family. However when the girl to the other side she the opposite of the fields, she sees another option. Hemingway says, “They sat down at the table and the girl looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table (Hemingway, 843).
Here Jig sees the arid side of the station, with dead plants and trees. This place symbolizes in the story death and dissipation, signifying alternative option for the baby in Jig, abortion. Hemingway chose these words in the quote to relate the girl’s choices for her baby to the setting. So she is sitting on the train with her mind wandering which way to go, which choice to make. Jig has to choose either give her baby life or death. This decision of life or death for the baby is putting Jig’s relationship the American man in danger. She is in a predicament because she loves the American man and he tries to convince her to get the abortion, saying that things will go back to the way they were.
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Hemingway does a better job than Link in using setting to convey the theme of life and death. Hemingway uses many symbols in the settings described in his story. The setting in “Hills like White Elephants” gives off more meaning for the reader to better develop what is going with the couple. In Link’s story many questions are left unanswered. For example, the reader never really finds out what the specialist hat is and what is actually in the woods that are described. Link writes, “The caretaker says the woods aren’t safe” (Link, 1).
This quote shows that the girls aren’t allowed in the woods and Link doesn’t actually describe what is in the woods. She just says that it is dangerous to be in. The setting in both stories are pretty clear, however in “Hills like White Elephants” the setting complements the story’s main issue better. This is because the symbolism in the two sides of the train stop represents Jig’s options for her baby, life or death. Jig decision isn’t clear, since Hemingway doesn’t actual say that she had the abortion or not, but Jig tells the man that she felt fine. Hemingway writes, “‘I feel fine,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine’” (Hemingway, 843).
One can undertake that her love for the American man made her preform the abortion in the end. Jig feeling fine can mean that her problem, which is the baby she carried, has disappeared and now she feels better after seeing her options. Her options in the story were nicely displayed by Hemingway in the setting using symbols. Link’s story is mainly about death and revolves around the twin girls acting dead. An individual won’t know a lot about the girls and the babysitter from the story, you can only assume.
In conclusion, both “The Specialist’s Hat” and “Hills like White Elephants,” both use setting to explore their theme of life and death, but Hemingway accomplishes a better job. Link and Hemingway both use description and symbols in the settings of their works to help them explore more on their theme. In Link’s story the darkness and there being no sunlight shows that death is displayed and no life throughout the story in the mansion. Also the sunlight, which is blocked by trees to come into the house, symbolizes that there is no life in the mansion. In Hemingway’s story the train stop has opposite sides that relate to Jig’s decision for her baby. The dry side represents death and the green field’s side represents life. Throughout the story Jig is deciding whether or not to have the abortion, while her relationship with an American man is on the line.
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Works Cited
Link, Kelly. “Kelly Link, The Specialist’s Hat.” KellyLink.net. Web. 14 Apr. 2012.
<http://www.kellylink.net/fiction/link-specialist.htm>.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills like White Elephants.” 2006. Responding to Literature. 5th ed. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1992. 839-43. Print.
