Contemporary Literature: Style and Themes
A contemporary literature is very well known for its overall stylistic simplicity, complex themes, experimentation and the revolutionary approach. Such writers as Ernest Hemingway and Jhumpa Lahiri were active in different time periods of 20th century, however, they both have managed to maintain these main concepts of the modern literature, differing majorly in their writing styles and approaches to the complex themes. Despite such numerous stylistic differences, both Hemingway in his “Hills like White Elephants” written in 1927, and Lahiri in her “Temporary Matter” written in 1999, have managed to share a common theme and a strong literary device of iceberg theory.
As the stories were written by different writers with around 70 years of time between them, they indeed have many stylistic differences and writing approaches, such as the length of the dialogues, difference in the internal monologues of the main characters as well as the descriptions of the events. The main characters also have diverse roles in the stories. All these differences accumulate into one great complex stylistic difference being the difference in the strength of the iceberg theory used by the authors. “Hills like White Elephants” lacks many descriptions and internal monologues of its main characters, however, is intended to create a much stronger impact and impression after reading than Lahiri’s “Temporary Matter,” which reveals more information progressively throughout the story through the author’s descriptions and internal monologues.
Both stories seem to be quite different from the first reading, being diverse in the length of the author’s speech, length of the dialogues, and descriptions. In “Temporary Matter” Lahiri describes the situation from the very beginning, giving a clear setting of the routine daily life of a young adult American Indian married couple. The roles of the characters of Shukumar and Shoba also seem to be inverse to the stereotypical image of the married man and woman with Shoba constantly working overtime and spending her free time at the gym, and Shukumar spending most of his time home preparing his scientific works. These differences affect the stylistic approach of the author making a story appear quite diverse from Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants,” which is constructed majorly as a dialogue between a stereotypical man’s man, the American, and his very feminine, insecure and indecisive girlfriend, whom the American addresses as “Jig.” The story lacks any kind of internal monologue or the description of the characters’ thoughts or the overall setting, which makes the story harder to understand from the first reading.
Using many symbols and hidden themes, “Hills like White Elephants” seems to take a much deeper look to the problem similar to “Temporary Matter.” The whole setting of the Hemingway’s story, the train station the main characters pass by, symbolizes a hard time of the relationships between the characters and the choices in life they face at the time of the story. This is being quite diverse to Lahiri’s “Temporary Matter,” where the reader progressively watches the arising conflict between the …
