Essay Comparing The Seventh Man And The Man In The Water

Tragedy of Water
This past week in English class we read two short stories: “The Seventh Man” by Haruki Murakami and “The Man in the Water” by Roger Rosenblatt. Both short stories are similar and different in many ways. The two stories are similar in ways like; the structure, settings, and moods of the two stories. The ways they are different are the characters, plot, the themes, the point of view, and resolutions.

The two stories are similar in many ways. One way they are similar is the structure of the two stories. Both stories are told from mainly from flashbacks looking back on tragedy considering someone died from each story. The setting of “The Seventh Man” is on the beach during typhoon season in Japan while “The Man in the

Water” is by a bridge in Washington, DC on January 25, 1982. Both stories have similar settings, because water plays a key role in both stories as in the beach and the river underneath the bridge. The moods of both of the stories are tragic because in “The Man in the Water” the man lost his life to help to help others and in “The Seventh Man” K. dies as a result of a typhoon.

The two stories are different in many ways.

The plot setup was different for both short stories, for “The Man in the Water” the man in the water sacrificed his life to let others be rescued before him, and putting others before him shows he is a hero. In “The Seventh Man”, K. dies by being completely swept away by a tsunami, and although the seventh man could’ve helped him and possibly rescued him, he did not prevent K. get taken by the typhoon. The point of view were different in “The Man in the Water” and in “The Seventh Man”. In “The Man in the Water” it was third person omniscient and told by a narrator, meaning that the story is told from the authors point of view but get everybody’s thoughts not just one person. In “The Seventh Man” it is told in third person limited from the point of view of the seventh man, meaning that the seventh man’s mindset is used throughout the whole story since he is the one telling it. The theme is also different for both short stories. In “The Man in the Water” the theme is heroism because that man in the water showed a great deal of bravery and thoughtfulness toward others. In “The Seventh Man” the theme is fear and the best way to handle it is to face it instead of turning our backs on it. The resolutions in both the “Man in the Water” and “The Seventh Man” are different because in “The Seventh Man” the man gets over his fear of the water after his friend gets taken away by the tsunami, but in “Man in the Water” the man dies and nobody claimed to know who he

was.

Both “Man in the Water” and “The Seventh Man” are similar and different in a variety of different ways. Structure, settings, and moods are how each of the stories are similar. Plot setup, characters, point of view, theme, and resolutions are how the two short stories are different. Both stories have similar aspects of them, but in the end, the two short stories were really diverse in more ways than I thought.