Sunday, May 18, 2008

Mrs. Gerber—I was absent the day we discussed this in class, so I also missed the blog assignment, hence the lateness :)

Upon looking at both paintings by Edward Hopper, the first noticeable similarity is the isolation of both characters. Each is the sole person in their environment, seemingly lost in their own thoughts and contemplation. The tight facial expressions and closed body language suggest that each is unhappy with their current position. However, there is a significant difference between “Morning Sun” and “Sunday.” The woman in “Morning Sun” is looking out of her window at the outside world, possibly wondering what possibilities, or people, lay outside her walls. This contrasts with the man in “Sunday,” who has already escaped his walls, yet still sits in isolation. Hopper may be trying to impress the idea of inescapable unhappiness, no matter your environment. In both paintings, the predominant aspect that creates the melancholy is the person, not the house. Although lacking excessive flowery detail, bright colors like yellow and orange are used in both paintings. Yet, the facial expressions and body language convey loneliness. This is similar to Hemingway’s ideas in “Soldier’s Home,” and “A Clean, Well-Lit, Place.” The men in both stories appear to have nothing completely wrong in their lives. Krebs is home from the war with his family and the old man sits in a “clean, well-lit, place.” Yet, both see happiness as unreachable, or do not posses the drive to find happiness. For example, Krebs wants a girlfriend, “but he did not want to have to spend a long time getting her” (Hemingway 2). Just as the environments are not the stifling forces in Hopper’s paintings, the people in Hemingway’s stories, rather than their environments, create their own unhappiness and nothingness through their own mentalities and actions.

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