Erdrich And Ben Okri's "Shawl" And "A Prayer From The Living" Compared

Erdrich And Ben Okri's "Shawl" And "A Prayer From The Living" Compared

In Erdrich’s, “The Shawl,” the narrator explains his father that his father’s sister threw herself to the wolves to save her mother and her sibling, instead of his mother throwing her away. This explanation from the son is very different from the situation known by his father. Instead of conceiving death as a sad ending to life, the death of his father’s sister is considered martyrdom here. The little girl’s demise is concealed by the narrator as a heroic ending, one to be proud of. This helps to alleviate the grief of the father. Even though the girl is dead, this new view on the sister’s death changes the situation completely. The misery of the loss is changed to a sad pride for the father. Even though this doesn’t change the fact that the girl is dead, it is accepted as a heroic act and the girl is respected for her deed. T
In “A Prayer from The Living” by Ben Okri, the narrator is on the verge of dying from hunger as he traverses the land in search of his loved ones. This sheer will keeps him alive until he finds them in the end even though he went famished for three weeks. However, after finding his lover and family, the narrator lies down to his death. On his “deathbed”, the narrator realizes the situation where the livings are nothing but beggers, trying to live with the aid of others. They live through their hardships, longing for better times, which rarely come. In this way death is like a relief, a passage out of this pathetic living. Death, instead of being the ending of a beautiful life is portrayed as something that many people long for.
In both the stories, the writers find death to be very different from what normal people may perceive it to be. It is no more the cruel ending, but possibly something that has been done for the better. The cause for death has alleviated the grave nature of death, which is quite paradoxical, because death will always be death.