Atwood and Lahiri's Death by Landscape and Sexy: Girls Finding Their Inner Woman

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“Death by Landscape” and “Sexy”, two short stories written by two very different authors; although different they share some similarities. “Death by Landscape’s” Margret Atwood is a Canadian writer who began writing in the early 1950s during her teens. Atwood published “Death by Landscape” in 1990 during the time in which the female faculty of Victoria College vocalized about feminism, Atwood since has portrayed her non-male characters with female power and promise in a man's world. The author of “Sexy” is Jhumpa Lahiri an Indian woman whose first literary collection debuted in 1999. Her common language and characters that resemble foreigners from India coming to America often characterize Lahiri’s work, but in “Sexy” the main female character is a young white woman. Both Atwood and Lahiri use main characters that are female and use object setting and place setting to help them find whom they are, but the difference is in which whom these women become once they see themselves.
While Atwood in "Death by Landscape" tells the story of Lois, an old woman fixed on looking into her past as a young girl at camp Manitou after experiencing the disappearance of her good friend Lucy; Lahiri tells of a young woman Miranda, who falls deeply in love with a married Indian man. Atwood uses multiple settings unlike Lahiri. Atwood uses the season’s of summer and winter as well as the past and present in “Death by Landscape”, the use of summer and winter are to show when Lois’ best friend is at camp with her and not at camp just like the Greek myth of Persephone and Demeter. The other two occurring settings are past and present, where you see the build up of Lois’ growth and the never changing solidarity of her loss. Lahiri places her story in the c...

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...vident truth that Lois knows is that her best friend is dead and she will continue to wait for her until she dies because at this point Atwood shows that Louis has forgotten how to be a mother and wife to her children and husband.

Works Cited

1. "Biography of Margaret Atwood (1939-)."Biography of Margaret Atwood. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2014. .
2. "Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Sexy” – A Review." Jim Breslin. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
3. "Reflections on Kosovo." Reflections on Kosovo. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
4. "this to say about that." : "Death by Landscape" by Margaret Atwood. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .

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