Flight/Your Shoes: A comparitive essay -- English Literature

Flight/Your Shoes: A comparitive essay In this essay I will be comparing ‘Flight’ by Doris Lessing and ‘Your Shoes’ by Michà ¨le Roberts. The content and style for both stories are similar in some ways and different in other ways. For example, the main problem in both stories is the daughter leaving home for the first time. Another example of a difference is ‘Flight’ is written in third-person whereas ‘Your Shoes’ is written as an interior monologue. The difficulties about the daughters leaving are: in ‘Flight’, the grandfather is reluctant to let his granddaughter go off and marry. This is because she is his favourite granddaughter and his last. ‘He confronted her, his eyes narrowed, shoulders hunched, tight in a hard knot of pain which included the preening birds, the sunlight, the flowers. He said: â€Å"Think you’re old enough to go courting, hey?†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ He also does not like Steven, the postmaster’s son, and is maybe jealous of him and how he can win over his granddaughter better than he can himself. ‘â€Å"Waiting for Steven, hey?† he said, his fingers curling like claws into his palm. â€Å"Any objection?† she asked him lightly, refusing to look at him.’ In ‘Your Shoes’ the mother has a bigger problem because her daughter has already left and she does not know where she is. To justify this she goes mad and pretends that she is talking to her daughter through a pair of white trainers, the most expensive and perfect item that the mother bought her daughter before she left. ‘I’ve tied the shoes’ laces together so they won’t get separated or lost. White laces, that I washed and ironed.’ These shoes represent what the mother would like her daughter to be, perfect. ‘I locked the wardrobe door on those rebellious shoes.’... ...d to ‘Flight’, the Justin Liu Maine A English AXS Flight/Your Shoes (cont†¦) mother’s condition clearly gets worse and lapses into madness at the end. ‘Laces like strings of white liquorice. They taste sweet.’ Again there is the symbolism of the shoes and again it represents the way the mother would like her daughter to be. I prefer ‘Flight’ to ‘Your Shoes’ because the story is much clearer and you get to see everyone’s point of view whereas in ‘Your Shoes’ the storyline is not so clear and harder to understand because only one person is speaking. However, ‘Flight’ has less detail than ‘Your Shoes’ because there are many more people to focus on. For example, in ‘Your Shoes’ you know who is still alive and who is not whereas in ‘Flight’ it is not as clear. However, I enjoyed both stories and thought that they had more similarities than differences.