The short story, “This Way To The Gas, Ladies And Gentlemen” by Tadeusz Borowski and the poem “On My First Son” by Ben Johnson, both deal with death. They are very different types of death and are told in different ways but through some similar approaches, a similar feeling is portrayed to the reader of each.
One of the first similarities of the two is that they are both told in the first person as well as being personal accounts. Ben speaks, as himself, about the death of his son and Borowski tells of events at a death camp that he was in during WWII. They both tell their stories through their own voices which adds a lot to the experience of reading. It allows the reader to except just how real the story is. Once the reader accepts
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The realness and intimacy that the first-person voice gives us makes the reader more able to relate and understand the feelings and ideas being expressed.
Both authors also set a mood with their writing to help the reader understand their feelings on the deaths occurring around them. Borowski set a mood that showed the numbness he developed surrounding death through his descriptions of the events occurring at the station. “The whip flies, the woman screams, stumbles, and falls under the feet of the surging crowd. Behind her, a child cries in a thin little voice ‘Mamele!’-a very small girl with black tangled curls.” (Borowski, 115) This quote seems almost as though Borowski is writing a report about the incident. Actions are simply listed. There is no obvious written feeling in it, even though what is being described is horrible. This shows his numbness to sights of horror and death. Johnson uses mood to show his view on death, which is much more sorrowful and passionate. “Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.” (Johnson, ln1-2) These lines clearly set a mood of grief. Its expressed through the choice of words, like “Farewell”, and phrases like “too much hope of thee, loved boy”.
There is one major difference surrounding death in the two pieces. Both authors have a different outcome on the way they view deaths. Borowski only remains numb to deaths for a small time. By the end,
In some ways both short stories were written with some similarities in mind. In both of the short stories that were told there was a death taken place which is a sad thing in stories that could affect the mood of the reader. After the death there is someone to clean it up and keep it secret so no one would know In both of the stories there is unique writing styles used to add effect to the story. These are some of the things that were used in both stories that kind of put them together as
Two literary pieces, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by, Dylan Thomas and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by, Emily Dickinson are both poems that discuss the topic of death. While there are some similarities and comparisons between the two poems, when it comes to the themes, both poets writing styles are quite different from one another which makes each poem unique. Thomas and Dickinson both use identical figurative language devices and other literature symbolisms as they explain their main themes which contrasts the differences to the concept of death. These distinct variations between poems are apparent in both the form, and how the choice of words is used in the poems. Both of the authors have presented two very different ideas on death. The poems are well distinguished literature devices, they share minor similarities and differences between each other and how they present the meaning of death to a toll.
Having each story been written in a third-person narrative form, the reader knows the innermost feelings of the
In the 1st person point of view the reader sees the story unfold from the perspective of the narrator. Many novels use this convention such as classics like Catcher in the Rye and Treasure Island. This point of view allows the reader to sympathize with the narrator/main character and place themselves in the lives of these characters. Because of this, however, 1st person narration is limited and biased. The narrator can only know what is taking place around them and even then, the narrator can be considered unreliable due to being able to change certain
INTRO:Tadeusz Borowski is a polish poet and short story writer who grew up in a time during the holocaust. He published most of his works for the underground press as they were brutally honest from his personal experience. He struggled in search of good moral values despite his Nazi occupation. In his short story “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen” was set in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. The narrator was a polish prisoner who worked under Nazi rule, we can assume it is based on Borowski’s real life.
Regardless of race, caste, religion, or age, every human has wondered about the one fact of life that unifies us all: What is death? Both poems, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” by Margaret Atwood and “Because I could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson share a common subject of death. Using figurative language, both poems illustrate distinct takes on a similar topic.
The settings of the two stories are similar in that both of the protagonist, which are the boys, live in small towns filled with elderly people. They both feel as if there is not a way out and they have both lived
because through his first person narrative, the reader is drawn to his sensitive nature, his
Thesis: Death is the main theme of both short stories and both authors portrayed this dark and dreary idea as a game the characters are playing.
In both stories there are many similarities like they're both compassionate for their family and brave in different but still similar ways. Ben is compassionate for his family because he risks his life and puts everything on the line to help them and stop
One of the more obvious similarities. Is that one is historical fiction, and one is non-fiction. The book was about a Danish family helping save a Jewish family escape to Sweden. On the other hand, the article was about a Jewish family who went into hiding for two years. And then were captured by Nazis.
Both of these works have very similar narrators. By just reading the works, they seem very different because of who they killed and why, where and with whom they lived, and how they murdered their victims. But, by analyzing the two men, they become more and more alike. They both tell their stories in the first person and write from their jail cells. Each chose to reference an animal in their stories. The two men, both hide the corpses in the structures of the homes. Likewise, the narrators try to defend their sanity by logically justifying their horrific actions based on their mental states throughout the flashbacks of the events.
First-person narrative shows us an inevitable bias that allows us to sympathize with the narrator. By sympathizing with the narrator, we can better understand the message behind the story. Readers can interpret the confusion and frustration that comes along with cultural differences: On top of that, the Easter Bunny has character; he’s someone you’d like to meet and shake hands with. A bell has all the personality of a cast-iron skillet.
The poem is more humanistic as it deals with the question of death. The moment of her death is described rather straightforwardly when compared to the rest of the poem:
The two passages I will be comparing the aspects of death in is the Short Story “The School” and the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” these two stories have some similarities when it comes to the aspect of death. However, I believe that the short story does do a lot more than the poem does in this case. Mostly because of how much longer the short story is than the poem. In the short story “The School” there are so many things literally dying in the story, and the school seems to have bad luck, because most of the things they bring in eventually dies somehow, for example all the trees the kids planted all died, and there were many more things. The Story told you exactly what was dying. What this short story does that a poem doesn’t is, that there are many things more going on in this short story, and if you need to go back, and try to find certain things in this story it would not be hard to tear it apart, and try to understand every line. In the poem it is much shorter, and we do not get to know much about the characters, it is harder to go back, and look at certain points in the poem to be able to understand it 100%. In this Poem a man is on his horse going somewhere, and this poem gives you kind of a dark and mysterious feeling. This man stops in the middle of someone’s woods, and just stares out into it, for a pretty long time before going on his way. What this poem did that the short story did not was confuse me. It was hard to understand what was going on in