I choose “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka

Similarities:

  • Both third person narration
  • Both characters end up in a cage and are shown off to people who pay to see
  • Both share the gothic emotion of cruelty- people become cruel to the hunger artist as they stop paying him any attention or wouldn’t believe his gift; people were cruel to the angel by locking him in a cage and letting people pay to see him
  • Both share the gothic emotion of passion- the hunger artist was passionate about his work; the angel was passionate about being able to fly again
  • Both have a return to normalcy- when the angel flies away and when the hunger artist dies
  • Both stories have villians- the people who don’t believe the hunger artist; the people that locked the angel in a cage

Differences:

  • “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” has a happy ending because the old man gets to fly away and return to where he came from
  • “A Hunger Artist” ends sadly because the hunger artist dies and is just replaced with a panther
  • “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” is fantstic because it is uncertain if this can be real or not
  • “A Hunger Artist” is uncanny because it is very close to reality