“She loved you more than she loved me.”
The Narrators daughter is similar to the granddaughter in Flight, as she wants to experience new things by herself; this troubles the two characters as they are seen as possessive.
Both short stories have a similar theme as they both deal with troubled teens and how the mother and daughter relate with each other. Both mothers in the story are very fond of their daughters and feel they have a good relationship with them.
The style and language is similar as they both describe in detail actions and passages of conversation.
Your shoes, “If I wrap my arms around myself and hold tight it keeps the pain in.
There is both a good use of symbolism between the both stories in Flight Alice is compared to the grandfather’s favourite pigeon and in Your shoes the neatly kept shoes. In Flight Stephen gives the grandfather the gift of a new bird. The grandfather realises his favourite pigeon has flown away i.e. Alice has gone to Stephen.
How are the two stories different?
In Flight the granddaughter is different to the daughter of the narrator in Your Shoes. The granddaughter Alice is well groomed and seems to be a lady type figure in her actions although we see she can be rude occasionally when she feels that she has to talk out of what she feels to be in justice, this shows she is strong.
Alice is not bothered that her Grandfather is going to tell her mother that she is courting. “Tell away!” she said, laughing.
Yet the daughter of the narrator seems to be very common and not lady like at all getting into drugs and sex only at fifteen and swearing and answering back to her father.
“He can’t stand rudeness not from you not from anybody.”
The grandfather in Flight is also slightly different to the narrator in Your Shoes as the grandfather is stubborn and won’t give up until he gets what he wants.
The settings are very different, as Flight is set in a rural countryside in hot South Africa where it is not commercial at all.
“The dark red soil, which was broken into great dusty clods, stretched wide to a tall horizon.”
While in Your Shoes the only description of a setting is around the house, but we get the idea that it is set in modern day town close to London due to the issues of the story, “People your age hanging about outside the supermarkets and the tube stations up in London.”
The language is different in both stories as Your Shoes uses some offensive language and modern language, “When your father called you a dirty slut he didn’t mean you to take it personally.”
Flight is more mild and uses more detailed actions to express the characters true feelings, “The old man’s hands curled.”
By Greg Hanshaw 4 Fox
