With reference to any two short stories that you have studied in the course, compare and contrast any two characters.

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NAME:

 FAZLIN FARIEZA YUSSUFF

MATRIC NO.: 022

CLASS:

 FOUNDATION 1.4

QUESTION: With reference to any two short stories that you have studied in the course, compare and contrast any two characters.

TITLE OF STORY:

  1. The Lumber Room
  2. The Rocking Horse Winner

        Characters play an important role in writing short stories. The characters often make the story more interesting thus they attract more readers. Two characters can be similar to each other but they are always differing in some other ways. I have chosen Nicholas from ‘The Lumber Room’ because I had fun reading the story and I noticed that his character, being curious and naughty but brilliant, really brings up the story. Paul from ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ on the other hand is also curious but he is rather innocent compared to Nicholas. Therefore I have decided to compare and contrast these two characters.

        Both Nicholas and Paul are young boys aged between 8 and 10 years old. Children who are in this age group are usually curious and inquisitive. Nicholas for example, is always curious about how the lumber room is because the room is always sealed from the youth and he can never enter the room under his aunt’s supervision. He is also inquisitive when he asks his aunt why he is not allowed to go into the gooseberry garden. Like Nicholas, Paul is also curious and inquisitive. This happens when he keeps asking his mother about luck. After she answers his questions, he continues asking whether luck is money and why were some people lucky and some not.

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        Being curious and inquisitive actually leads them to be good planners. “Having thoroughly confirmed and fortified her suspicions Nicholas slipped back into the house and rapidly put into execution a plan of acting that had long germinated in his brain”. This textual evidence denotes that Nicholas has been planning for a long time on how to go into the lumber room. At first, he acts like he did go into the gooseberry garden but he returns to his house. Then he takes the key from a shelf in the library and he applies what he had practised in school; the ...

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