Compare and Contrast

Compare and Contrast

Introduction

“The Welcome Table” by Alice Walker and “Country Lovers” by Nadine Gordimer are two literary poems that have similarities and differences. They are very different in their style, character and format. I think the most common thing that these two literary poems share is they both have a strong and excellent characterization. “Country Lovers” has events and circumstances of behavior and situations that “The Welcome Table does not have. Emphasizing the similarities in an essay defines its comparison and when you emphasize the differences in an essay you are defining the contrast. As I discuss these essays in my writing, you will note that there are some similarities but they are totally different. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast two literary stories, “The Welcome Table” by Alice Walker and “Country Lovers” by Nadine Gordimer.

Thesis Statement

These two stories overall message is “engages the reader in inter-racial issues from a sociological and moral perspective” in “The Welcome Table”. When we look at the “Country Lovers” I think the message “engages the reader in the same inter-racial issues from a sociological but the perspective is psychological.” (p.69)

Discussion

These two pieces are similar in that they are both written in third person and they both have an effect of social and racial discrimination involved in them. As the author of both pieces intentions are to show the audience that separation of color was illegal when these stories was written, but they were not written to destroy lives or relationships. The writer reveals in these literary elements that living back in those days, love was not unconditional and the life of an individual could be very stressful. In “Country Lovers” we learn that the black girl and white boy have been friends all their lives and were involved in a sexual relationship, but they keep it hidden because it was illegal during that time. As we look at “The Welcome Table had the same similarities because the black woman approached the steps of a white church and when she went inside the preacher of the church stopped her as she entered the lobby and said “Auntie, you know this is not your church?”. (Clugston 2010 p. 40) The differences in the two pieces are the characters' and their perspectives regarding finding happiness. Alice Walker's “The Welcome Table” has a pleasant ending as the old lady encounters her time with Jesus after she was thrown out of the white church. She was singing songs of joy and at one time began singing out loud old spiritual hymns that she enjoyed to sing. “The Country Lovers” by Nadine Gordimer had a totally different ending. (Celean 2009)

Thebedi, the poor black girl, married a poor farm worker Njabulo who she was not very happy to be with. As we see in both literary pieces, they both reveal similarities of racial discrimination and one story has jubilant ending and the other one ends dispiritedly.

The content in ”Country Lovers” in ...