Ann Packer's short story "Horse" with Geoffrey Becker's "El Diablo de la Cienega."
Comparison and Contrast -- Ann Packer's short story "Horse" versus Geoffrey Becker's "El Diablo de la Cienega."
Victor, from "Geoffrey Becker's "El Diablo de la Cienega" and Elizabeth from Ann Packer's "Horse" are both individualists who excel, in different ways, in solitary pursuits. Victor is a young star basketball player whose skills draw the attention of a man whom he believes is the devil. Elizabeth is an introverted, bookish young woman who excels in reading. However, these two characters are both forced by external family circumstance to come out of their introverted shells as they realize a more expansive version of their evolving adolescent selves. Both characters must draw upon reserves of strength they never knew existed within their souls.
For Victor, the conflict the young man is engaged in, is a masculine narrative of excellence exhibited in a one-on-one basketball match with a man whom he believes is the devil. For Elizabeth, the female adolescent protagonist's narrative of self-exploration is not a tale of success but of failure, namely her failure to become the girl whom she believes her dead father would have preferred to have as a daughter. Victor's success and Elizabeth's failure are both created, in narrative terms, in an artificial way -- that is through the rules of 'game play.' Games provide the narrative structure to both tales and the rules for these young adolescents to find themselves in the world. However,...
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