Written paper on novels

Have you ever read a book that had you chuckling to yourself? I recently read the books Walk Two Moons and To Kill a Mockingbird. Both of these books are very similar. The narrators, in both books, are teenage girls that go through some form of a challenge and want to share it with the reader. I think that both of the voices in these books are similar because of the story line behind them.


Scout and Salamanca (the narrators of the two books) are both alike in that they both give details in a humorous way. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout tells of how she can never think of anything to say to her Aunt Alexandra and can never think of anything to say to her Aunt. She says,
“I could think of nothing else to say to her. In fact I could never think of anything to say to her,and I sat thinking of past painful converstations between us:”.

Scout could have simply said that it was awkward to talk to her aunt, but instead she describes it as being painful. Also, in Walk Two Moons Salamanca describes when she tried not to flinch whenever she was touched by Ben. She tells the story like so,
“My brain was mess, what with trying not to flinch whenever Ben brushed against me.”

Salamanca didn’t need to say that her “brain was a mess”. I think that both narrators made attempts, multiple times in their stories, to include humor. Personally I think that this was a good way for the narrators to create a voice that a teenage narrator would use.


Also, I believe that another characteristic that both narrators share is that they ask many introspective questions. In To Kill a Mockingbird Scout asks why Atticus didn’t tell her that he was assigned to Tom’s case. Scout remembers when she first learned that Atticus was assigned to Tom’s case how she was upset that he never told her that when they were teased by the kids at school and Atticus told her to keep enduring it patiently. Salamanca wonders about Pandora’s Box, and all the things that were in the box. She says,
“There must have been another box with all the good things in it, like sunshine and love and trees and all that. Who had the good fortune to open that one, and was there one bad thing down there in the bottom of the good box? Maybe it was Worry.”



However, I feel that there were things that made the two authors different. In To Kill a Mockingbird I noticed that Scout almost always formed an opinion and voiced it to the reader. In this passage it says,

“She had put so much starch in my dress it came up like a tent when I sat down. She made me wear a petticoat and she wrapped a pink sash tightly around my waist.”

Scout is clearly upset by the way Calpurnia is making Scout wear. In Walk Two Moons I found a passage that was similar, but it didn’t have an opinion; it was just a statement. It goes,
“I had just finished telling Gram and Gramps about the mysterious message when Gramps pulled off the freeway. He said he was tired of chewing up the road, and the white lines down the middle of the highway were beginning to wiggle.

Both of these passages are similar because the narrator is in a situation where they are upset (Salmanca hates to stop and wants to get to Lewiston, and Scout doesn’t like wearing Sunday clothes).


I think that there are many more ways to compare the narrators of the two books, but here are some of the comparisons that I noticed in the book. I think that these two books both share stories in a humorous way, ask introspective questions, but they are different in the ways that they share opinions.