In this essay I will be comparing how writers present the theme of GROWING UP from the extract of “flight” and “your shoes” giving their similarity and differences.
This is a story of grand daughter and the grandfather .This story reflects the relationship between the grown up granddaughter and her grandfather and how they accept the change.
Your shoes by Michele Roberts
This a monologue story where the speaker is a woman who has a daughter who left her and the woman who is her mother has no idea where her daughter so she is writing a emotional letter to express her love, sympathy, guilt . The mother is also concerned about the daughter’s well being and the writer shows us the mother’s obsession with cleanliness.
Comparison of themes in two stories
Your shoe is a letter in a first narrative person written to a teenage daughter who has run away from her house because of her family conflicts. In flight the grandfather thinks its best to protect his grown up granddaughter, as he thinks his granddaughter is too young to control her self.
SIMILARITIES
In the two essays we get similarities between the mother and the grandfather in that they both do not accept that their daughters are grown up. In flight we see that when the mother says the daughter is too young to get a job, this clearly shows us how the mother sees her daughter not grown up to support her self. In flight the grandfather thinks Alice is too young to fall in love and take care of her self, this is after he the grandfather sees Alice with Steven and he reacts quickly to show his granddaughter that he doesn’t accept that she’s grown up, but truly this is a symbol of growing up.
These two stories are based on the link between nature and human nature; we see that in your shoes when the shoes are personified to the daughter “I locked the wardrobe door on those rebellious shoes”, she clearly states that the shoes are like the owner and this also shows us her controlling way which might have influenced the daughter to run away. In Flight the grandfather’s favourite pigeon is personified to his lovely granddaughter, whom he fears to lose since she’s the last born.
Generation gaps also link the two stories together, in your shoes the mother recalls on her history especially her unhappy family, which might have also lead to her relationship break down with her daughter as she tries to give the daughter what she did not get from her mother as she was growing up. The narrator in flight first looks at the relationships and the grandfather’s objection about Alice moving on with Steven, but this issue ends up with a solution after the mother supports her daughter.
Finally both stories are based on growing up and how every certain individual deals with it, In Flight we end up with a solution after the grandfather accepts that Alice is grown and he lets his birds go as a sign of freedom. Alice also cries at the end when she realises she’s grown up to take care of her self and her grandfather, but she shows a bit of maturity with Steven when they buy her grandfather a present to show their love. In your shoes they is no conclusion we see that when the mother hopes her daughters come back and she acts as if the daughter comes back. In your shoes the mother shows her vivid description of her pain, as if she talking to the daughter, on the other hand she tries to hide her emotions from other people even her husband as she locks the room because she does not want to be disturbed in her fantasy.
