[Name of the Writer]

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Compare and Contrast

Introduction

This paper focuses on comparing the two different stories on the basis of their themes, symbolism and significance. The two different stories are based on different concepts, one of the stories is based on the story of a couple who eventually decided to end up their life and the other story is based on the war in Vietnam. The two stories are “The Crane” by Peter Meinke and “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O'Brien.

Discussion

Themes

In the story of the “How to Tell a True War Story”, the major theme which have been represented is the theme which is common to war fiction. It is the truthful illustration of one of the traumatic episode. Post modern connections among the truth and fiction have been highlighted in this story along with the close connection with some important and paramount motifs. Tim O'Brien has used an experimental technique in explaining “How to Tell a True War Story”. The major themes are the rejection of generalizations about the war, the nature of storytelling and deconstruction of the concept of truth. The current problem within the trauma theory illustrates the pathological catastrophe of the reality which has been experienced by the survivors that eventually lead them in terms of both a rejection of the experience and an anticipation to restructure it and fill the loop holes in their memory. In this short story of Tim, the author's compelling behavior of telling the same traumatic event repeatedly in several different manners can be understood and taken as the manifestation of the author's post-traumatic stress syndrome. He has tried the restorative working with the help of the process in order to undergo the means of his story line. He never got successful in accomplishing because of the fact that neither postmodernist aesthetics nor war agrees to definite answers or the exact definitions of the war (Braswell, pp.148-156)

The major theme of “The Cranes “ by Peter Meinke revolves around the common and shared life of a couple who ends up their lives in order to be isolated , peaceful place nearby the lake for their suicide. In the engaging, yet disturbing, short story “The Cranes” by Peter Meinke, the two main characters make a decision to end their lives. Initially, the reader is unsure of what the couple intends, but several images in the story provide clues. One image that offers the reader assistance with basic understanding of the plot is the description of the body of water adjacent to where the man and woman are parked as being “like metal, still and hard” (Meyer 622). This image suggests to the reader that the object wrapped inside the towel between them might also be a hard, metal object - a gun. The descriptions of the other nearby birds, the plovers and the egrets, serve as powerful images. However, the most dominant image is the one in which the author refers to the cranes as being “stately” and standing ...