comparison and contrast

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Recommended: Social construction of race and gender

Lesser than others Country Lovers by Nadine Gordimers, begins with the main character a young bright eyed young innocent boy named Paulus Eysendyck, and a young innocent girl with hopeful dreams named Thebedi. As this story is presented through its character development and transformations, it is the dialogue that allows the reader to realize that it takes place during a troubling time in South Africa when Apartheid; a system of racial segregation enforced through Legislation was common law. From the beginning of the story they are both presented as having a childhood relationship playing together in the fields with all the children on the farm. As the story develops and the plot is established, Paulus is sent off to school and when he returns, Thebedi his childhood friend is described as one of the crowd now rather than a friend. The tone is set and the rise of the story begins because now Paulus did not seem to realize that Thebedi was “simply one of the crowd of farm children down at the kraal” (Gordimer, 2010) meaning that she was no longer an equal she was a part of the help on the farm. In The Welcome Table written by Alice Walker, it immediately starts describing an older woman on her way to church in her Sunday best. The use of Alice Walkers descriptions suggests that this story takes place in the Southern region of United States post segregation era when the southern part of the U.S. separated blacks and whites into racial groups. As the plot is established, and the woman arrives to the church steps, the people of the church viewed her as an outsider not accepting her as one of god’s children, “Some of those who saw her there on the church steps spoke words about her that were hardly fit to be heard” (Walker, 2010). In ... ... middle of paper ... ...di has created a family with her husband, Thebedi has to go to court and testify against Paulus and doesn’t, suggesting that she has moved on with life. Race and Gender are told from a sociological and psychological perspective each of them drawing you to view each story as it happened in their place in time in history. The race and gender in both stories are that of Black women. The perspective comes from what they both grew up with and how they viewed society. The tone in each story reflects their individual conflict in their areas of the world allowing you to get a concept of what each person had seen growing up in their perspective part of the world. The constant that remains in each of these stories is that the main characters in the stories are discovered in tragedy, and this tragedy in each of the stories creates that turning point that draws in the reader.

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