Male Characters Treatment Of The Female Waitress example essay topic

1 Earnest Hemingway is one of Americas foremost authors. His many works, their style, themes and parallels to his actual life have been the focus of millions of people as his writing style set him apart from all other authors. Many conclusions and parallels can be derived from Earnest Hemingway's works. In the three stories I review, ? Hills Like White Elephants?

, ? Indian Camp? and? A Clean, Well-lighted Place? we will be covering how Hemingway uses foreigners, the service industry and females as the backbones of these stories. These techniques play such a critical role in the following stories that Hemingway would be unable to move the plot or character development forward without them. In? Hemingway utilizes the waitress as a method to help develop the character of the lead male.

His interaction at the beginning of the story with the waitress in her native language show his intellectual superiority which is also emphasized in the following line, ? The girl looked at the bead curtain. 'They " ve painted something on it,' she said. 'What does it say?' ? (Hemingway). This setup is a crucial transition from the blank slate we start at with both characters.

The story of course unfolds following what the interaction with the waitress and bar setting created for us. One in which the lead male character is dominant, controlling and a person who provides information and answers not available to the female character. Additionally the male characters treatment of the female waitress creates the building blocks for our understanding of how he interacts with females. He never mentions please or thank you 2 when ordering or receiving their first drinks and by the second round acts in the follow way, ? The man called 'Listen' through the curtain.? when addressing the waitress (Hemingway). It is only a few lines later he begins semi-jokingly and in condescending manner scolding his female partner.

The condescending remarks start with, ?' Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything. ' ? the man replies to her assertion that he hasn't seen white elephants (Has hmi). Besides being hot in this story, the males only burden is that he is trying to persuade his female partner to his views as he tries to coach her through the remaining portion of the dialog manipulative lines such as, ?' Well,' the man said, 'if you don't want to you don't have to. I wouldn't have you do it if you didn't want to. But I know it's perfectly simple. ' ? (Strychacz).

In? Indian Camp? the roles we see in? Hills Like White Elephants? are reversed. The primary characters are now those in the service sector with the Indians filling the rest of Hemingway's equation as the foreigners.

As the father figure tries to gently bring his son up properly his moral lessons and further introduction to reality are solely facilitated through their traumatic experience in the service industry dealing with a female who is a foreigner just like as in? Except here it isn't explicitly stated that the Indians speak a native language, English, another language or a combination as the waitress in the previous story. It's through the apathetic treatment of his patient that Nicks father first develops a new depth to his character. In telling statement to the son when he begs the father to do something about the Indian woman's 3 screams, 'But her screams are not important.

I don't hear them because they are not important? (Hemingway). As in the above story the female comes in as the main point of distress. In the obvious sense given the story line of the laboring Indian they must service in the early morning ours but also in a secondary sense when the Indian woman bites George and he proclaims, 'Damn squaw bitch!? (Hemingway). In looking at the story?

A Clean Well Lit Place? it almost appears as if the qualities of the foreigner and the female are lacking. However further investigation shows the same mechanism take place just in a subdued and alter fashion. Like? Indian Camp? our vantage point in this story is from the service sector by way of our waiters conversations.

Initially the old man appears to be the point of contention in this story but half way through we being to develop all the characters on a deeper level with, 'He's lonely. I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me. ' to which the older waiter replies, 'He had a wife once too. ' (Hemingway) It's in this repeated mention of the wives we can see there must be significance to the female aspect of this story when Hemingway writes, ?? No, it is not, ? agreed the waiter with a wife.?? (Hemingway).

No other personal references about the old man or wait staff are given but after a brief exchange we see that the old man is wifeless but has plenty of money. Even though the old man isn't explicitly described as a foreigner it is eluded to as an a possibility in the exchange involving the younger waiter and the old man, ?? Finished, ? he said, speaking with that omission of syntax stupid people employ when talking to drunken people or foreigners.? No more 4 tonight. Close now.?? (Hemingway).

Regardless whether or not the old man is truly a foreigner, something we can not discern from the details Hemingway leaves us with the foreigner attribute is captured in a sense by the fact that even though the old man speak English like the wait staff he is deaf. This brings us back to the situation in? Hills Like White Elephants? in which the waitress native language is not that of the main characters but she also speaks their native language. It is not until the end of the story where the lines attributed to the older wifeless waiter show that the lack of a wife like, a quality he shares with the old man is one of the attributes leading him to what he concludes to be insomnia, ?

He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it's probably only insomnia. Many must have it.? Through comparing and contrasting in this story the image becomes more clear. The younger waiter with a wife is ready to rush home and retire for the night where as the older waiter and the old man both lacking wives seek places to escape to in the night, a clean well lighted place to pass time at during their sleepless hours (Fantina). If the three stories above didn't include all three attributes of the service sector, foreigners manifested to varying degrees and females and domestic issues as the primary point of distress or trouble they would not be possible (Nagel).

The mechanisms form the entire crux of the stories. Even though the vantage point, roles and specific attributes of how each of these mechanisms is used changes when they are compared and contrasted it becomes clear that Hemingway places special value in the use of these three tools are 5 critically important to his ability to tell a story. It could be that his detached and abrupt style or writing forces him to adopt these types of mechanisms in order to properly convey his story and develop character depth. These mechanisms serve as a way to slip a personal aspect into the story other wise unavailable because of the other types of mechanisms he creates. 6

Bibliography

Primary Sources Hemingway, Earnest. ?' A Clean, Well-lighted Place'? The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Ed. Martin Kohn. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966.
The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. R.V. Cassell. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990.
Indian Camp? Ed. Martin Kohn. Secondary Sources Nagel, James.? Earnest Hemingway: A Centennial Assesment? Online web Nil ofer. 'Hills Like White Elephants': The Jilting of Jig. ' Hemingway Review Vol. 23 Issue 1; fall (2003): 72.