preview

Compare/Contrast of Two Short Stories - River Nemunas & Things We'Ll Need for the Coming Difficulties

Good Essays
Open Document

The River Nemunas by Anthony Doerr and Things We’ll Need For The Coming Difficulties by Valerie Vogrin are primarily related by a common theme of isolation. Isolation is certainly the main link between the stories but there are other parallels that can be drawn as well. On the other hand, there are things that the two authors did differently while still staying with this common idea. Along with analyzing the theme of isolation, this paper will also serve to compare and contrast the writing style of the stories as well as the way the two authors used images, character development, and conflicting/post-modern ideas within the stories.
The overbearing theme of both stories is isolation, however this is an idea that the two authors took …show more content…

This is great post-modern technique used to reaffirm the idea of isolation. Again, the difference between their isolation and Allie’s isolation is that they voluntarily created this life for themselves. The reader of the story is never actually told why they took themselves out of society but we are given hints and clues that it may be out of (primarily Mason’s) neurotic sense of survival. For two stories with such a similar primary theme they have very different writing styles. First of all, Things We’ll Need For The Coming Difficulties is told from the point of view of a limited third person narrator, a common technique of post-modern writing. A limited narrator contributes to the fact that the reader is just as much in the dark about Wayne’s appearance and intentions as Shay and Mason are, giving a feeling that the reader isn’t getting the full picture of what is going on. Vogrin writes from the narrator’s perspective “[Wayne] had left no clue, no note. There would be no answers about the radio or the riders. Here he’d gone, whether he’d return” (Vogrin, 390). This technique is interesting, sort of like reverse psychology by Vogrin on the reader. She is telling the audience “you don’t know what any of that was about” in a way that almost provokes the audience to then have to discuss what they think everything meant (as we did in class). Even though The River Nemunas was not

Get Access
Related
Get Access