Formalism In Pilon, Hills Like White Elephants And The Sleepover

Formalism The short stories Pilon, Hills Like White Elephants and The Sleepover all focus on the relationships of females to males in various stages of life. By analyzing similarities and differences of the setting, characters and symbols from a formalist standpoint, one can conclude that formalism is able to accurately convey the struggle women face throughout their lives.

The setting of the three stories serves to emphasize the tone of the passages. Both Hills Like White Elephants and Pilon have bright settings that make the scenes that occur feel hazy and dream-like. In Pilon, author Sandra Cisneros nostalgically remembers herself as “a ball of light floating across the planet” as she walks among the streets of Mexico.While light is …show more content…
The girl in Pilon is a child whom is still oblivious to the male species. She has yet to realize that her body is “causing men to look at her.” The girls in The Sleepover are teenagers who are obsessed with males and intrigued by the idea of being with them. While in Hills Like White Elephants the female is an adult woman and has learned to fear men and is intimidated by the man she is currently with. From the formalist view, looking at each story individually and coming to the conclusion that women are intimidated by men would be too broad. But when the three stories are put into relationship to each other the reader can see the progression of the male superiority over the women throughout all stages of life. Even through a formalist lense it it obvious to see the lack of respect that women, from adolescence to all the way through adulthood, have from men. The characters in all three stories struggle with how to feel comfortable in their own skin. The young girl from Pilon reflects on a time when she was gender-neutral and did not comprehend the different sexes. A time before she realized she was going to be eye-candy for men. The teenagers in The Sleepover relish in having the attention of a male and would do almost anything to get it. The author of The Sleepover hones in on this as she makes the whole ordeal seem very simple and robotic with the use of simple sentences sporadic thoughts. Throughout Hills Like White Elephants, Hemingway does not provide the reader with background knowledge of the characters in order to emphasize their impersonal relationship and to contribute to the reader’s understanding to the female’s confusion. The female character ‘Jig” is nervous about the operation that the man wants her to have, but the man continues to push and has no consideration for her feelings. This undermines the woman and breaks her down to care less about herself and more about him. This is