Normal people and Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

2 weeks ago 11

Obligatory English is not my first language disclaimer. I'm a bit late to the party, but I just finished reading Normal People. I must admit I loved hating it. I wanted to open a discussion about a chapter of the book that instantly made me think about Hemingway's novel "Hills Like White Elephants".

I couldn't find anything linking them on the internet, but when I read the end of the chapter "April 2012", it highly reminded me of the short story, and I wondered if it was foreshadowing the end of the book, and now that I have finished it, I think it did.

First, Connell and Marianne do talk about abortion before the conversation I am mentioning. Later, Marianne says (not about abortion) "I would have done it if you wanted, but I could see you didn't." And Connell tells her "You shouldn't do things you don't want to do." To which she answers "Oh I didn't mean that."

Here is an extract from Hemingway's short story:

"Then I'll do it. Because I don't care about me."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't care about me."

"Well I care about you."

"Oh yes. But I don't care about me. And I'll do it and then everything will be fine."

"I don't want you to do it if you feel that way."

Later in the same conversation Marianne asks Connell to stop talking about what is actually unspoken between them, just like in the short story.

After reading that, I thought about this part of the short story:

"We can have everything."

"No we can't. It isn't ours anymore."

"It's ours."

"No it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back."

"But they haven't taken it away."

"We'll wait and see."

I came to the conclusion that it did foreshadow the end of the book, since after Connell tells her "You know I love you" (an exact sentence that is in the short story) one of the last sentences of Normal people is "What they have now, they can never have back again."

If we take a step back from the texts, and think about the general stories, both are stories where the two characters keep avoiding talking about the elephant in the room (hehe, see what I did there?), with the woman refusing to express what she wants, and the man wanting her to say what she wants.

Anyway, what I wrote is more thoughts than a universitatian analysis, but I curious of your opinions.

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