Essay #3 – “1919” & “The Red Convertible” Comparison and Contrast

There are many similarities between the short stories “1919” and “The Red Convertible”, mainly relating to the two main characters Shadrack and Henry. Both of the stories focus on the return of the two main characters coming home from war. Shadrack from WWI and Henry from the Vietnam War. Both of these wars were extremely brutal, WWI having over 100,000 US casualties and the Vietnam War having just over 58,000 US casualties. These astonishing amount of casualties allow us to see the reasoning behind the problems that each main character finds themselves with in their respective stories. Both Shadrack and Henry suffer from what would nowadays be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. PTSD is an anxiety disorder which is caused by very stressful, frightening or distressing events and is very commonly diagnosed to war veterans. Shadrack’s PTSD was the result of seeing one of his fellow comrades shot in the face whilst stood next to him and Henry’s PTSD was the result of being captured by Vietnamese soldiers and held captive for 6 months. You can see that both Shadrack and Henry are severely affected by the events that they experienced at war, both of their personalities and behavior are clearly changed. Another similarity between the two stories is that both Shadrack and Henry are ethnic minority soldiers, Shadrack being of black ethnicity and Henry Native American. Although during the time period where both stories are set place there was a bad prejudice towards ethnic minorities in America, neither Shadrack or Henry are treated negatively as a direct result of their skin colour.
Although there are similarities between the short stories “1919” and “The Red Convertible”, there are also many differences between the two stories as well. One of the major differences between the two