Compare and Contrast Essay on Short Stories
Dragons, witches, princesses and knights. These are the imaginary friends in so many children's lives. For young adults, those fairy tail characters give way to darker characters and more realistic situations. However, what do they all have in common? They live in short stories. Two short stories that are interesting are "Indian Education" by Sherman Alexie and "Thank you Ma'am" by Langston Hughes. "Indian Education" is about a boy who learned a lot from everything that happened in his life. "Thank you Ma'am" is about a boy who makes a mistake and in the end he learns from it. While there are some obvious similarities, both authors approach these stories, specifically the characters, tone and point of view, in different ways.
The main characters of both stories are similar because they both brave. When the Indian boy was in the first grade, he punched a kid in the face for being mean to him. "Held his head against the snow, and punched him." The Indian boy was only in the first grade and he punched someone. He was standing up for himself. Also, when the Indian boy was in the fifth grade, he started playing basketball. "I picked up the basketball for the first …show more content…
The author shows this because the Indian boy got into a fight. On the way down to the office the boy chants "It's a good day to die!" (Alexie). The Indian boy was in the first grade when that happened. He must have been tiny. It is funny to imagine a little boy chanting "It's a good day to die!" all the way down to the office. In "Thank you Ma'am" Roger fell instead of running away with the purse. "The boy fell on his back on the sidewalk." When he intended to get away with the purse, he fell. He did not run anywhere. "continued to drag him up the street" (Hughes). It is funny that the woman is dragging Roger all the way to her house. The Roger probably never expected that to