JOURNAL 3 - White elephants in September
The title of Hemingway's short story, Hills Like White Elephants, remarks me of the expression: an elephant in the room. We say it when there is something embarrasing tension, an unspoken problem between the talking people that they do not want to discuss. At first the story seems to be about an everyday and simple conversation between a couple. But you can feel the tension through the whole story, you know that there is something disturbing thing, something unvoiced problem between the characters. Eventually we can conclude that the problem is the pregnancy of the woman. The man does not want the baby, he tries to persuade the woman that the abortion is their best option if they want to continue their relationship in the same way. While she is hesitating the man tries to persuade her that a child does not fit in their lifestyle and tries to dominate his wife or girlfriend's feelings. They are having a conversation in the surface but in fact they do not understand each other, they cannot hear each other.
In my opinion, William Faulkner's Dry September is the perfect story of prejudice and frustration. Prejudice against black people. The white men in the story are determined to kill a black boy, however nobody knows that he insulted and raped the spinster, Miss Minnie Cooper. Prejudice about spinsters, because Miss Minnie is lonely, she goes out with younger people, she wants to remain an appealing, attractive woman in the surface but inside she is frustrated and furious. A prejudice about veterans because the former military commander is violent, arrogant with his mates and with his wife. Minnie and McLandon want to run away from their frustrated life. Minnie escapes into her lies, McLandon escapes into killing. In my view, the boy was not guilty, the woman just fabricated a story to be in the centre of attention. We do not know actually whether the boy was murdered or not but I think that the writer wants to foreshadow it with the vocabulary of the story: 'bloody September', 'lifeless air', 'the sound died away', 'the day had died', etc.
Eventually, both stories focus on a killing an innocent human being, an unborn baby and a black teenager. I like that kind of stories which do not contain precise information and accurate description of the events. It is gripping when the reader have to conclude the happenings from hints and inklings. You can feel the tension like watching a psycho-thriller movie.