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Sebastien Trameon TSIA

Comparative analysis
OIB Written English Essay Question

This comparative essay will aim at comparing and contrasting two pieces of
literature, looking at themes, language and style. Those are in a first place a piece of prose
which is a passage from Grocers Daughter, a novel written by Marianne Wiggins, and in a
second the poem On Finding an Old Photograph by Wendy Pope. Both of these passages
express the feelings of the authors after their fathers disappearance. However, the form of
both texts (one being in prose and the other a poem) is enough to put forth the respective
diversity of both texts. We will first analyse the piece of prose before moving on to the poem
and comparing them.

First of all, the author of the piece of prose is in search for a memory. She has
passed a part of her life in company of her father and this passage is a tribute to the man he
once was as she clearly states at the end of the passage: I miss him. The first example
which evokes this is the amount of imagery. The writer uses visual (see him once again)
and auditory (hear his footfalls) imagery which shows that the author is trying to live the
scene again, and giving the impression to the reader that he is too actually living them. Also,
she has different ways of addressing her father, whether it be totally neutral (John
Wiggins), formal (my father), or affectionate (Daddy). This shows that she has different
ways of perceiving her father based on the different memories she has of him, at work or at
home.
Moreover, the writer explains that her memories are gradually fading. She only
remembers fragments of the past as loses her accurate memories at time goes by. She
compares them to dried leavings that crumble between [her] fingertips and fly piecemeal
to the wind. This symbolises time passing by, and the loss of her accurate memory as time
flies by. She is therefore probably writing to fight against this as her memory is her only way
of reaching out to her father
Furthermore, she explains that since she has lived with her father, she has kept
much of his methods and his habits. For instance on the first line of the passage it reads:
Diluted in me is John Wiggins. Not only is he her father, he is also the man than gave her
his name, therefore her identity. He also taught her how to pack a grocery bag, and to
respect a certain order, when she worked at his grocery store on week-ends, hence also
giving her a taste for work: she always wears an apron when she cooks. The stain that her
father has left represents the legacy that he has passed on to her and which she is proud of.
Also, there is a strong use of poetic language in the prose in oxymorons and
imagery. As we have previously seen, there is visual and auditory imagery which makes the
memories more vivid and portrays how the writer is searching through them. Also, there are
oxymorons like choke it to full bloom and alliterations: green growths on a grocers floor.
These literary devices are uncommon in prose and more often used in poems, and therefore
tie this piece of prose to the following poem we are about to study.

First off, in the second text, the poem, the writer describes looking at a photograph,
as the title evokes (On Finding an Old Photograph). She describes her father whom she has

Sebastien Trameon TSIA


never met (as she was born after the photograph was taken), based on what she can
observe in the photograph (There he is, happy). This is quite different from the first text as
she has no actual memory of her father since she has never seen him. She has therefore
had no legacy from her father: she doesnt even mention his name and casually calls him
my father which emphasises how little she knows of him.
In addition, as the writer is looking at a photograph, time seems to have frozen. The
beginning of the poem gives us without a sentence the place and date the photograph was
taken (Yalding, 1912), in a very factual manner. Then, the writer begins a description of the
photograph. The vocabulary also contributes to this feeling of stillness (soft, halfdrugged). There is no motion in the poem because of the stillness of the photograph she is
observing, which is entirely different to the succession of memories in the first poem which
was very vivid.
Besides, there is a real discrepancy between the happiness of the father as it is
described and the guilt of the writer. On the one hand, the father is happy, and on the other
the writer blames herself for the things [she] didnt give him, like her love. Yet she is
relieved to see that he is accompanied by three women and seems happy in their
presence, which immediately eases [her] burden. Even though it is not at all as strong in
the first passage, we can still find this same feeling of guilt: Im sorry. The writers in both
poems share this, which reinforces our appeal to their loss.

In both of these pieces of literature, the authors seek to picture their father whose
disappearance was very difficult to bare. On the one hand the author seeks through her
memories whereas in the other, the author tries to imagine his feelings and emotions by
looking at an old photograph of him. These texts share much in common: in their language
but also by looking at how the feelings of the authors and fathers are presented: the father
being happy and the writers rather sad. They also present some differences: the impact of
the father on the writer, or the idea of motion which is illustrated in the presentation of the
fathers. In all, these texts share a lot in common but are quite diverse because of the
differences in experience of the writers, but also because of their writing styles.

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