Chemistry by Graham Swift, Snowdrops by Leslie Norris, and finally

1401 Words3 Pages

Chemistry by Graham Swift, Snowdrops by Leslie Norris, and finally

Superman and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit by Sylvia Platt.

How do the authors of the anthology deal with the subject of change?

In this essay I am comparing three stories together.

These stories are ‘Chemistry by Graham Swift’, ‘Snowdrops by Leslie

Norris’, and finally ‘Superman and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit by

Sylvia Platt.’

I will investigate how the stories are similar and different, and also

how they come across to the reader.

I will explore the techniques they use and how each author deals with

the subject of change.

‘Chemistry’ is about a boy recalling his childhood and that sees an

‘invisible’ bond between himself, his mother, and his grandfather. He

uses the boat to symbolise the bond, and when the boat sinks, the bond

is broken.

We see things as the boy saw it, recall the boy’s thoughts and

emotions of how he felt towards his mother’s lover Ralph.

‘Snowdrops’ is from another boy’s memory, where it outlines two

different worlds, the adult world, and the child world. The boy is

excited by the thought of seeing snowdrops that his teacher Miss

Webster was taking them to see. He is excited of seeing the flowers as

he believes they are magical. The boy finally sees the flowers and

feels depressed because they are not exciting at all.

‘Superman and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit’ is set from the eyes of a

girl, who always thought her Uncle Frank was like superman, and has a

lovely life until a few incidents ruin it for her.

The poor girl is heartbroken as she is blamed for an accident that

happened which she had nothing to do with. She finally realises that

her Uncle Frank (her Superman) will not always come to her re...

... middle of paper ...

...fying statement

‘Today Miss Webster was going to show them the snowdrops growing in

the little three cornered garden outside the school keepers house,

where they weren’t allowed to go.’

This makes us think ‘Who is narrating?’ ‘Who are them/they?’

In Superman and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit the poor girl is shown the

real images of war, and her own mind would not let her look away ‘I

blocked my ears to muffle the sound of the men groaning, but I could

not tear my eyes away from the screen.’

In conclusion I believe that the authors are very successful in

writing these stories and in my opinion each story is well structured

and planned.

Each story was very easy to read, quite short but informative.

These stories were very interesting to read; the authors give a whole

new aspect to “Short Stories” and have shown me a new way to write

short stories.

Open Document