Comparing and Contrasting Literature

Comparing and Contrasting Similar Literary Writings

Preeti Plaha

ENG 125

Kyla Hammond

June 5, 2012

Comparing and Contrasting Similar Literary Writings

The literary critic Wayne Booth states, that “even the life we think of as primary experience is rarely experienced without some sort of mediation in narrative” (Frank, A. 2010). “The transition from what we think of as more primary to the experience of stories about it is so automatic and frequent that we risk losing our sense of just how astonishing our story worlds are, in their power to add life upon life, for good or ill” (Frank, A. 2010). Stories are expressions the authors using different literary forms to connect the reader to the story, to life, to his or her own thoughts. Authors can have their own uniqueness when presenting a story or a poem. Understanding these similarities and differences makes the reader create different feelings towards their works.

“Country Lovers” by Gordimer and “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by Thurber are two great short stories based on a similar theme of love and marriage. They are both short stories. The authors use various literary forms which are similar in some ways and differ in some. These differences and similarities are what make them both interesting and draw the reader into them. Both the stories are close to real life. Thurber’s style of writing is more imaginative than that of Gordimer. In both the stories, however, the characters are shown to accept the norms of the society and though they have different deeper feelings, they suppress them because that is what is expected of them. The following paper compares and contrasts the two stories by analyzing them one at a time.

The story, “The secret Life of Walter Mitty”, is written by James Thurber. The story has been written in a third person point of view. The form is limited omniscient as the author mainly follows and describes one character, Walter Mitty (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008). “The story is set...