Comparing and Contrasting the Elements of Literature by Langston Hughes
In any spoken or written narrative, there are various constituents that make up the work of narrative fiction, and they are mostly referred to as an element of literature. A narrative of fiction is an important feature of various verbal storytelling found in the effort of many authors’ works. These elements, for instance, include tone, character, theme, plot and many more others. The aim of literary analysis is assisting in understanding and discussing the whole work of literature as key groupings of critical analysis.
In most cases, literature elements can be supposed to be produced by those reading the work just as they are produced by the writer. This essay compares and contrasts the element of literature from the short narrative ?two kinds? by Amy tan and the poem ? theme for English B? by Langston Hughes and their effective use. Therefore, these discussions will mostly concentrate on the work of literature evident in both works of narrative fiction.
Tone development in both texts seems to be discussed in a profound way. Bothliteraryworks seems to have the same element of issues even though they have differences and similarity commonly profound throughout the progress of the work. The “Theme for English B,” and the ?two kinds? use narrator to employs questioning and uncertain tone in most of their work. “I didn’t have to do what my mother said anymore. I wasn’t her slave.
This wasn’t China. I had listened to her before and look what happened. She was the stupid one,” she decides. According to Tan (p.67), “the purpose of the tone was to describe various problems the main characters faced in their life”. Thetone also at the beginning of both texts seems to bemore appealing.
However in both work there was difference in tone development since in the“Theme for English B” the tone progressively became of a more assertive as the main protagonist described his problems as minority students, where by the end of the poem he had a feeling of directly confronting the difference between him and his teacher (Hughes, p.124).
The setting of both texts contains similarity and differences which help to bring out the harsh environment that character lived in. In both the “Theme for English B” and ?two kinds? the setting appears to relate to each other on the basis of the difficult life that the characters faced in their delicate background setting. For instance in the “Theme for English B,” the narrator reflects that the main character is just only a twenty-two years old who faces racism problems in his school life in America (Hughes,136).
Furthermore, society pursues to frustrate the assured people to face or find the truth. Two brilliant instances are of the main character in “The theme for English B” and Jing-Mei Woo in the two minds. According to Amy (p.234) , morals and lies of society affect the young black American who is affected by the corrupt version of American society and more so that of his teacher and his inability to pursue his dreams and own goals.
He does not work hard due to lack of motivation from his teacher while he still loves his education. In contrast, Jing-Mei Woo is faced with his family band and desire to escape it and the sad reality in his life. She has a hard time escaping it all since his life is boring and his family annoys him. Jing-Mei Woo thinks that it is either fame in music that makes him happy whereas consistently his mother pushes him to pursue a different she doesn’t want.
In both the “Theme for English B” and ?two kinds? the plot development seems to be comparable in a number of ways as expounded in both texts. In ?two kinds?, for instance, Jing Mei fantasized her early days of finding her phenomenon and later being a celebrated Chinese American due to belief her mother has on him (Amy, p. 405).Her mother always encouraged and pushed new talents and tests on her. Throughout the story, her mother intently tested her with all things she thought would help Jing Mie’s discover his talent.
Later on in the story, Jing started realizing that her mother was forced to make him someone whom she was not. She only realized the intentions of her mother only when she died. Plot development in both texts compares and contrasts both in a clearer way. In the “Theme for English B,” for instance the plot development is a structured one, even though it offers more comprehensive background information.
There is a close connection between the plot and setting as it is claimed by Hughes “I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem.” This shows a suggestion of growth and period. The plot development seems to begin when the student was ordered to go home and write. The time takes one to before or during the desegregation of the plot development. The tone is explored throughout the poem through the thought of self-assessment. Through this, the tone shows the feeling toward growing up colored in a world full of white guys.
Work Cited
Amy. “Two kinds.” The joy luck club (1989): 132-48.
Hughes, Langston. “Theme for English B.” The collected poems of Langston Hughes (1951): 409-10.
Tan, Landa, Jose Angel Garcia, and Susana Onega. Narratology: an introduction. Routledge, 2014.
