Struggle for Freedom

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Struggle for Freedom

In the short story Flight by Doris Lessing and Dubliners: An Encounter by James Joyce, have many of the same literary techniques employed through the themes and imagery. Thematically, these two short stories are very similar because they both are about youth growing up which leads to escape or freedom during the childhood and adolescence years. Lessing's story is about a grandfather who is possessive of his granddaughter and does not want her grow-up. Because of this, he tries to control her because he does not want to be alone, and most importantly because this was his last granddaughter out of four to mature. As for Joyce's story, it is mainly about the relationship between Father Butler and the boys, where the boys are faced with boredom at school and are spurred by excitement found in magazine stories about the American Wild West, two young boys skip school to take a trip to "The Pigeon-house." Their school boy lark and youthful egocentricism are destroyed by an encounter with an aging pervert who tells them that boys were too young to have sweethearts. In addition, both of the authors use descriptive words to create imagery, which also shows how the two stories are similar. Some examples of descriptive imagery from Flight are: and Dubliners: An Encounter is It will become apparent that this is what these stories are about when evidence is provided by referring to the each story to support these statements in the text.
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Similarly, the themes in both short stories illustrate flight in one case and freedom in another, during their adolescence years of the characters. This shows how the characters move on to live their life in Flight or the transition from boys to men (bigger boys) in Dubliners: An Encouter. An example of this is in Flight, when the grandfather disapproves of the granddaughter (Alice) going out with the postmaster's son (Steven). With this, he runs to his daughter (Lucy) and argues that Alice is just a young girl and that she needs to stop Alice from making a ...

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