Sunday, January 28, 2007

Response Paper

In both short stories, My Mother's Memoirs, My Father's Lie, and Other True Stores, by Russell Banks and My Father, the Englishman, and I, by Nuruddin Farah, the narrators are characterizing their parents. Compare and contrast these characterizations. What do the stories say about the narrators themselves?

I believe that the story by Russell Banks says a lot about the narrator. I think that the narrator is depressed, and wants the reader to feel sorry for him. The whole story is about how he was lied to as a child, and still in the present day. All the stories he tells makes me think that he wants the reader to feel sorry for him because he was always lied to.


I believe that the story by Nuruddin Farah is told in an angry tone. The narrator, to me, seems to be very angry while telling the story because he was abused, along with his brothers, by his father while they were young. The story says that the narrator is still angry at his bad experiences in his childhood.

1 comment:

Professor Sweet's Cultural Reference Log said...

It seems also that as angry as the author was, he also examined hist history enough to understand why his father behaved the way he did. He seems to have worked out his family issues more than the nerrator in the Banks story has.