Yellow Womanand Hills Like White Elephants Essay

Yellow Womanand Hills Like White Elephants - Essay Example Leslie Silko, in her short story, â€Å"Yellow Woman†, has tried to explore boundaries between tradition and modernity, and between myth and reality. The narrator is a young, married woman, who enjoys a brief affair with a strange man named Silva in a faraway place near the waters. The myth of the Yellow Woman and the katsina spirit of the mountain is brought into question, as Silva calls her his Yellow Woman, luring her into going with him. When the woman returns to her home in Peublo, she finds herself meeting the reality, but she still waits for Silva to return to her one day and take her with him, like the katsina spirit of the mountain took the Yellow Woman with him. Silko has described how the modern day woman is in search of her sexual and gender identity, and how she uses her imagination to feel in love with a man dominating her, as we read, â€Å"You don’t understand, do you, little Yellow Woman? You will do what I want,† says Silva to her (Silko 370). T he woman is in search of a man who loves her, but comes back to reality much sooner than she realizes that it is all over. Earnest Hemingway, in the short story â€Å"Hills Like White Elephants†, has also made use of symbolism, like Silko did in her story. Silko symbolized the modern woman with the Yellow Woman, and the stranger named Silva with the katsina spirit. Likewise, Hemingway symbolizes the mountains with elephants. For the heroin of the story, Jig, mountains seemed like white elephants, slow and stable. She wanted to have the child so that her stable married life could start. The man did not want the child, as for him, life would become slow and stagnant just like the mountains. Jig was in search of her new identity as a mother, and the man wanted to reject this new identity by having the child aborted. Hence, we see that the two characters are faced with the dilemma of either choosing or rejecting their new identities as parents. But, Jig admitted to the man’s idea of abortion because