Literature Review

Literature Review

Introduction

In this paper, two short but very famous stories are analyzed, compared and contrasted. The first story is “The Birth-Mark”, which is a short romantic story written in 1843 by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Like many of his stories, this one is also related to sexual relations and psychological impact. The second story is basically, the first chapter of a very famous novel, Invisible Man. This novel was published by Ralph Ellison, famous for writing against racial segregation of African Americans in America, discrimination between blacks and whites and putting forward the sufferings of blacks in a psychologically impacting and emotionally touching manner. The novel was published in 1952 and won several awards in the following years. The first chapter, entitled “Battle Royal” describes a scenario in which, drunk white men force several black men to fight with each other while the whites pass embarrassing comments about them. The protagonist of Battle Royal fights the battle so that he is allowed to give a speech afterwards (Dunn et al, 2010). In this paper, the two stories are compared with respect to the setting and impact of the time they were written in, characters, different perspectives, symbolism, theme, fair, discrimination and final thoughts are they presented in the end in a logical and cohesive manner.

Thesis Statement

This paper contrasts, analyzes and compares the stories, Battle Royal and The Birth-Mark with respect to different aspects.

Discussion

The Effect of Eras on Each Story

The Birth-Mark

It was the time, when the advancement in the scientific world was at a high pace. People would imagine the capabilities of science and its power to change the nature. Similarly, in this article Alymer found a natural flaw in her wife and being a scientist decided to implement science to remove this natural flaw. Alymer being the main character had only two passions, science and love for his wife. He devoted himself to develop means to remove her beautiful young wife (Hutchinson et al, 2005). In this era, the debate and discourse about the perfection of science was on a high and therefore, the author takes the side of those who believe that science is not perfect, and it is for the same reason that he shows how science failed and killed his wife even though it removed that birth mark.

The Battle Royal

The novel, Invisible Man was written in the time when atrocities by communist leaders were on a high. It was the time just following the World War II, during which extreme incidents of miserable and atrocious treatment took place. African American faced racial segregation and ill treatment even in the military. Ellison, the author shared his views with a fellow novelist as follows, "If they want to play ball with the bourgeoisie they needn't think they can get away with it.... Maybe we can't smash the atom, but we can, with a few well chosen, well written words, smash all that crummy filth to hell." (Yorinks et al, 2011)

Characters

The Battle Royal

The character of the grandfather is used to ...