In the first story Vendetta the widow Saverini has had her son killed by Nicolas Ravolati, at first she seems to try to forget about what had happened but she promises her son the Vendetta, she had suffered enough clearly and so, she promises him that she will seek justice for him as he is unfairly killed, she figures that she cannot perform the Vendetta alone so one night after hearing her dog Semillante barking she comes up with an idea, she initially chains the dog up and starves it for as long as four days giving it no food or water. During the end of the forth day the dog is very agitated and is barking furiously, she makes a dummy and onto this dummies neck she ties a piece of black pudding, following this she sets the dog free who unleashes its rage on the dummy by biting its neck where the pudding is situated. She practised this technique with the dog for several months and gradually the dog had learnt how to attack without the black pudding. On a Sunday morning she disguises herself as a beggar and travels to Sardinia where Nicolas Ravolati was hiding, she finds Nicolas’ house and with the enraged dog she shouts “tear him” and not a second after the dog jumped up at Nicolas, they fought but he was eventually overpowered by the dog. They leave the house and the dog Semillante is rewarded with a black pudding and she slept well that night knowing she had performed the Vendetta and that she had sought justice for herself and her son.
In the story the Golden Cadillac the father Wilbert decides, after his wife doesn’t speak to him, to travel southbound to Mississippi. He does this not to show that he is annoyed with his wife or that he wants to leave but because he is trying to fight for freedom for black people as racial inequality was common at the time, he ignores all the warnings given by his brothers, his wife and everyone. After his shock announcement his wife proposes herself and the two daughters travel with him and after hearing this, the girl’s uncles all intend on coming with them. All the other members of the family travelled in the Ford, the Buick and the Chevrolet, before reaching Mississippi they see that on all the roadsides are signs that read “WHITE ONLY, COLOURED NOT ALLOWED” they saw several of these throughout the whole journey, shortly after travelling through Memphis they lost the rest of the group due to the traffic, they tried to find them but it was hopeless so they were required to go on ahead leaving them. Shortly later they are pulled over by the police, the policemen are both white and a conflict begins, they speak down on the man by saying “whose car is this boy?” and “you are a liar. You stole this car!” He states irately it is his car but they don’t really acknowledge the fact. They arrest him with little if not any evidence, the only reason is purely because of the fact that he is coloured, the father remains calm and does as he is told because if he were to loose his temper he could be in more trouble because the white people were always ready to sentence him if there was any need, and subsequent to this they put him in the police car and the other white officer drives the Cadillac behind, the father had been locked up for 3 hours and was charged for speeding, he wasn’t given any justice at any point, primarily due to the fact that he was black and black people were often overlooked and every so often seen, by even Christian people, as not been a part of the human race.
In the story Vendetta it takes place in Corsica, a small island situated close to Italy. After her son is killed there is absolutely no indication of anyone trying to seek the perpetrator Nicolas Ravolati to punish him for killing Saverini’s son, from what I have read the island appeared to have little if no law enforced so people were free to go around committing such crimes, now in modern times, such an offence would be treated as been very serious and often the person who committed the crime would be sentenced but clearly it wasn’t like that so people like the widow Saverini could have been made to take the law into their own hands and seeking justice by themselves without the help of others, it is my belief if someone commits such a crime then they should be punished, since nobody punished Nicolas Ravolati then the widow Saverini was right to take the law into her own hands.
This is different to the story The Gold Cadillac in which the father Wilbert isn’t able to seek justice and is still treated unfairly, racism was common in the 1950’s, often black people were treated as if they didn’t exist, they were made to be slaves up to the 19th century and were treated as peoples property, they were often split form their families and could never see them again, there were separate sections in buses for them, they were required to wait in separate waiting rooms in buildings such as airports, banks etc, they had to enter pubs, clubs etc through a separate door which was used solitarily by coloured people. Times have changed and because of people like Martin Luther King racism has almost been abolished and the slave trade is a thing of the past, black people are almost always treated the same but some people have yet to adapt with the ways of the modern world and are still prejudice towards black people.
Both stories share similarities about how justice can be portrayed, in the story Vendetta nothing is done to help the widow, it may be because of the fact she is a woman but this isn’t stated in the story (not her gender but whether people don’t help her because she is female), but she sets off to avenge her sons death and proves successful in doing so, the ending of the story is “that night she slept well” which is a great way to conclude the story and the way she felt after she was treated so unfairly, it is similar in the story The Gold Cadillac, the father Wilbert intends to go to the south of America in his new car (The Gold Cadillac) to make a point that life isn’t fair for black people and that they were treated differently, his point is proven effectively but nothing he does changes the way things were. The story the Gold Cadillac has a powerful statement in which the father explains to her about the ways in which racism has affected their lives, he states that racism was a different thing to understand and he didn’t understand it himself, he said it had to do with their skin been coloured, with stupidity and ignorance, the law, the law that said they could be treated the way they were in the south. He finished this by saying “I’m hoping one day though we can drive that long road here and there won’t be any signs. I’m hoping one day the police won’t stop us just because of our skins and we’re riding in a gold Cadillac with northern plates.” This in my words sums up what life must have been like for him along with millions more black people, they must have felt a great deal of hatred towards people who were racist but they knew that one day things would change and now they have, black people are justified and that is all that they wanted.
Both stories impressed me because of the way the characters dealt with their dilemmas but overall I preferred The Gold Cadillac, the story was much longer and more in-depth, it gives you a greater account of what life would have been like for many and it shows how far people would go to prove a point which plagued so many people for such a long time. Vendetta was still a good quality story and made a fine attempt to show how life would have been, it shows that there was little law and order so vigilantism was common and people often took the law into their own hands and set debates between one another, often with unpleasant consequences.
