In celebration of the pumpkin spice latte coming back to Starbucks

By Lilly Xie

Today, I walked the grueling journey from the Engineering Quad all the way to the William T. Young Library with a 20 pound backpack on my back and one thing on my mind: PSL.  Now, PSL stands for Pumpkin Spice Latte, the iconic drink of fall at Starbucks. Call me basic, but I love the pumpkin spice latte and I have no shame telling everyone I know about how great it is.

As I waited for my coffee in the ridiculously long line, I started observing the UK students in the café around me. They were all chatting amongst themselves but one particular couple caught my attention. They were sitting at a table for two casually having a conversation and sipping from their Starbucks cups, but it seemed to me that they were probably talking about something a little more serious than the sunny weather, and this sparked my imagination. The scene reminded me vaguely of that one story we read in AP Lit class, “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemmingway.

I thought earnestly to myself, man, it would be so easy to make a film adaptation of that short story. It would be one of those short, dramatic, and strange films, much like the ones that are shown right before a Pixar movie. Hemmingway already wrote the story in a dramatic/objective POV, so turning it into a short film would be a piece of cake, as easy as pumpkin pie. Reading HLWE was basically like watching a movie except I, the reader, got to make up the actors, setting, and other cinematic details and visualize them in my head. The way that Hemingway wrote the story gave me as a reader a lot more control.

So why stop there? My mind kept wandering (the Starbucks line was really really long) and I thought about how I could make a modern spin-off of “Hills like White Elephants.” Ok, my version would be set in an average Starbucks, much like the one I was in, and the couple would be a pair of teenagers. The dialogue would be mostly the same as the original, except with modern lingo embedded in. Also, instead of ordering liquor they would order Starbucks coffee. Instead of the Anis del Torro tasting like licorice (I got that question wrong on the quiz and I am still bitter), the latte would taste like pumpkin spice. They would still be talking about the “procedure,” which really is an abortion.

I am a strong believer in the lessons that can be learned from literature. The “timeless classics,” although they have great lessons to be learned, sometimes are unable to reach the minds of young people of today because they are simply too outdated. The language is unfamiliar, the customs are antique, and it’s just hard to connect to the story. Also kids these days like watching better than reading. That’s why I love modern spin offs of classics, especially film versions. I think they are the bomb dot com. If I made a modern film adaptation of “Hills like White Elephants”, I think it could definitely connect with the teenagers of today, especially since teen pregnancies are becoming more common (Juno, Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant) and this could be a way to talk about the issue without directly taking a stance on one side or the other. Thank you Ernest Hemmingway; you are a genius even to this day.

And now, I can finally sit down, blog, and enjoy my coffee.