Your Shoes starts with the mother writing a letter to her unnamed daughter. The mother starts of saying “I thought I knew you as well as I know this house” this shows that the daughter was hiding something or her daughter has grown up to a point where she has started to keep secrets. Whereas in Flight, the granddaughter doesn’t keep secrets, she could’ve kept secrets and ran away like ‘the daughter in Your shoes’ but she was so mature and intelligent, so se decided to tell her parents about he relationship with the postman’s son. She did that because she knew she’s old enough to make her decisions and her parents won’t go against it
The main similarities between Flight and Your shoes are comparing non living things or animals with human being. In Flight the grandfather compares his granddaughter to pigeons, while in Your Shoes the mother is comparing her daughter to her daughter’s shoes. Flight deals mainly with the relationship between Alice and her grandfather and Your Shoes deals with the relationship between the mother and daughter, but also between the mother and the father; the daughter and her father.
Your shoes and Flight use metaphors to describe their relationships, Flight uses the metaphor of pigeons and Your Shoes uses the metaphor of shoes to describe the relationship.
Both stories talk about love and loneliness. In Flight the granddad does not want to let his granddaughter leave, because he is scared to be alone. ‘Can’t we keep her a bit longer’ this quote indicates the strong love which the grandfather feels for his granddaughter. In Your Shoes the daughter has left home and the mother is desperate to have her daughter back, because she loves her and feels lonely with out her ‘I knew you’d come back’ this quote indicates the hunger of the mother for her daughter.
Both stories also have the experience of past life. In Your Shoes the mother describes her experience with her mother showing how difficult it was for her to live with, but she still did. This actually shows how the generation has changed. Similarly in Flight the mother uses her experience to try to convince the grandfather that how happy she was when she got married to her husband said in the following quote.
The theme about freedom is being asked in both stories. In Your Shoes the daughter runs away because the lack of freedom was given to her, although the freedom was too much compared to the freedom her mother was given, but in the eyes of her daughter and the generation she was living in made her feel the freedom was too less. The mother tries to show how little freedom she had and she still cope with it, shown in the following quote. This shows that the mother is trying to use reverse psychology to win her daughter back. On the other hand Flight has the same sort of theory. The granddaughter is asking for freedom although she has given the freedom by her mother, but the grandfather doesn’t want her to get married that’s because he doesn’t want to lose her and doesn’t want to lose the moments he once had with his granddaughter. “Think your old enough to get married hey” this shows he his having a go at the granddaughter and trying to convince her that your not old enough to get married.
Both stories deal with maturity and immaturity. Flight deals with immaturity in the way that the grandfather is jealous of granddaughter’s boyfriend because he feels the boyfriend is going to replace “She did not turn. She had forgotten him. Along the road came the young man Steven…the old man stiffened as he watched the gate swing back and the couple embrace”. This quote shows that the grandfather feels upset that the granddaughter seems to have replaced him with an intruder. The grandfather is also scared of him being left alone when she leaves, which makes him think that without her he won’t be happy. Flight also deals with maturity in the way that the granddaughter is being questioned very angrily but she replies back in a polite manner, ‘and she said in a pert voice’: “hullo, granddad.” ‘Politely she moved towards him, after a lingering backward glance at the road.’ The calm and polite manner shows how mature she is. Compared to flight Your shoes only shows immaturity of the daughter who left because of her father having an argument with her, because she went to a night club and came back home very late and was drunk, which made the father very angry, and he called her a dirty slut and other rude comments. By her father calling her a dirty slut made her fell insecure and trapped so she decided to leave.
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Although the main theme of “Flight” and “Your Shoes” are similar, however structurally they are different, because in “Flight” the grandfather didn’t want the accept the choice of the granddaughter but in the end they both came to a solution and the grandfather ends up accepting her choice. While in “Your Shoes” the mother doesn’t want to move on. She constantly refuses to put the welfare of her daughter first, because she knows that she won’t get this letter and won’t come back. Therefore the relationship between the mother and the daughter is not re-established and doesn’t have the happy ending as Flight
