one literature discussion board and one literature journal

Example 2:

Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and Hirokazu's Like Father, Like Son both explore the concept of tragedy as discussed by Bennett and Royle. A comparison and contrast of Marra and Hirokazu's works reveals that tragedy may be similar in many aspects but also significantly different in other perspectives.

In A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Marra unveils the low chance of survival for the characters during the time period and explores tragedy in a unique way. A quote from Bennett and Royle is fitting for Marra's viewpoint on tragedy, “It involves – as Aristotle suggested, more than 2,300 years ago – a paradoxical combination of emotions, at once pity and fear or (as Sideney says) 'admiration and commiseration'. Tragedy involves an encounter not only with the death of a character on stage (or in the pages of a book) but also with the idea of our own deaths” (Bennett and Royle 106). Bennett and Royle attempt to convey how people have been thinking about the concept of tragedy for a very long time and tragedy in literature can make the reader or the audience feel through personal reflection. Marra writes “On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones” (Marra 15). Marra's beginning sets the mood of the whole story by ingraining in us a sense of chaos and hopelessness. Connecting back to Bennett and Royle, Marra uses a specific tone within his writing in order to create a sense of tragedy within both the story as well as ourselves.

In Like Father, Like Son, Hirokazu also explores tragedy however it is a very different type of tragedy. The two couples question their lives and are confused because after developing a strong bond with their children, they realize that the children were mixed at birth. The situation is not only tragic for the parents, but also for the children because it's like they lost their family and are put into an uncomfortable situation with perceived strangers. Like Father, Like Son's form of tragedy differs from A Constellation of Vital Phenomena's tragedy because one is about relationships while the other one is about the hardships of war.

In both cases, characters are in search of meaningful relationships in order to keep them sane and as they hope to pursue a happier life in the future compared to their current state. In light of this comparison and contrast between A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and Like Father, Like Son, what concepts from Bennett and Royle's tragedy are reflected within Ogawa's work and how are those concepts similar or different compared to A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and Like Father, Like Son.