When it came to war reportage and military affairs, no magazine delivered like Yank, the Army Weekly. Born in World War II, Yank was on the scene for only three years, but during that brief period this unique GI tabloid won the hearts and minds of America’s Greatest Generation.

Yank Began Publishing in 1942

Yank was founded by Major Hartzell Spence in May 1942. Established primarily to inform and entertain the men of the United States Army, Yank was staffed exclusively by enlisted men who served as the magazine’s editors, correspondents, photographers, cartoonists and illustrators. Many of Yank’s staff members were eminently qualified, having worked in civilian life for big city dailies, slick magazines and small town newspapers.

Vol. 1, No. 1 of Yank rolled off the presses bearing the cover date June 17, 1942, with the headline: “FDR: Why We Fight.”

Yank Produced 21 Editions

Yank was published in 21 editions in 17 locations. The magazine’s domestic edition was produced at their main editorial offices in New York City. Other Yank editions were published around the globe in such far-flung places as London, Honolulu, Sydney, Rome, Paris, Cairo, Tehran, Calcutta, Puerto Rico, The Aleutians, Panama and Strasbourg.

As the Allies advanced, so did the offices of Yank. The Paris edition made its first appearance in September 1944 and was printed on the same rotogravure press that the German Army newspaper, Wehrmacht, had been published on weeks before the Allied liberation.

Yank even published a small pony-sized air mail edition for use by American troops on some of the more remote islands of the Pacific.

Yank’s Outstanding War Reportage

Yank quickly established itself as one of the war’s premier magazines. Its outstanding war reportage was second to none, as witnessed by a vast array of first-hand, eyewitness battle accounts. Among the best entries: “Infantry Battle in New Georgia” by Sgt. Mack Moriss, “Blown Off the Deck of an LST” by Sgt. James P. O’Neill, “The Dead End Kids” (from Burma) by Sgt. Dave Richardson and “Cameraman in Cassino” by Sgt. George Aarons.

In one article, “Schweinfurt Raid,” Yank correspondent Sgt. Walter Peters not only accompanied the B-17 Yank on its perilous mission over the skies of Germany but manned a .50-caliber machine gun as well. Upon landing back at their bomber base in England, Peters cabled his stunning eyewitness account to Yank’s editorial offices.

“Our formation across the North Sea was perfect,” Peters wrote in describing the massive American raid. “We led the ‘Purple Heart’ elements, and in front of us the sky was literally clouded by B-17s. We counted as many as 190 and then quit counting.”

Several of Yank’s correspondents and photographers lost their lives while carrying out their hazardous assignments. Sgt. John A. Bushemi, one of Yank’s most talented photographers, was killed during the invasion of Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. Likewise, Sgt. Peter Paris lost his life while storming bloody Omaha Beach with the U.S. First Infantry Division on D-Day.

Yank’s Cartoons, Humor, Pin-ups

In addition to its magnificent war reportage, Yank also contained a number of other features. The magazine’s cartoons were especially well-received, showcasing the talents of such GI contributors as Sgt. Ralph Stein, Sgt. Frank Brandt, Sgt. Al Jafee, Corporal Ernest Maxwell (a.k.a. Cpl. Emax), Private Thomas Flannery and Sgt. George Baker (creator of “The Sad Sack”).

Humorous articles also populated the pages of Yank. A few hilarious examples: “Invasion of Mae West’s Dressing Room” by Sgt. Al Hine, “A Dogface Answers a Collection Agency” by Pvt. Oris Turner and “Hopeless McGonigle’s Brother Wins the DSC” by S/Sgt. L.A. Brodsky.

One of the magazine’s most popular features was the Yank Pin-up Girl, which featured a bevy of beautiful starlets and models. Among the Hollywood famous were: Lauren Bacall, Rita Hayworth, Carole Landis, Betty Grable, Martha Vickers, Ann Miller, Dorothy Lamour and Lizabeth Scott.

Yank’s Famous Contributors

Yank could boast of a handful of GI contributors and staff members who later found fame in civilian life. Among the roster: Pfc. Irwin Shaw, acclaimed novelist and author of The Young Lions and Rich Man, Poor Man; Sgt. Marion Hargrove, author of the bestseller See Here, Private Hargrove; Sgt. Walter Bernstein, Hollywood screenwriter; Pfc. Bil Keane, creator of the popular cartoon strip The Family Circus; and Sgt. Merle Miller, bestselling author and motion picture writer.

Yank’s Final Edition in 1945

Yank, with an honorable discharge gracing its cover, published its final edition on December 28, 1945. The war had ended three months earlier, and like an old soldier Yank merely faded away into history…

The main characters in “The Simple Gift” and “Only Ten” both feel that they do not belong at the beginning of the story. Billy feels alienated from his father, school, his town and the community. Hussein is first not accepted at his new school when he moves from his old war torn country. The idea of belonging is shown differently through the song “Small Town”. The man is shown to belong in the town and the community surrounding it.

The character Billy from “The Simple gift” is first shown to have a disconnection from his father which can be shown from the quote “Drink this instead to celebrate your son leaving home.” He is also shown to dislike school, from the quote “It’s the only time my schoolbag has come in handy.”

Billy feels that he connects with Westfield creek, and can be shown from the quote “I love this place”. Steve Herrick uses highly descriptive language to amplify a feeling of belonging though the characters.

Billy physically moves from his old lifestyle due to his sense of not belonging at home and school. Billy is accepted by Ernie the train driver, even though he is homeless. He is similarly accepted by the librarian in Bendarat, helping him in his transition to belonging. Billy finds old Bill, who is also homeless, living in an old train carriage. they are both outcast from society, and create their own sense of belonging. Billy and Old Bill both reject the pressure of mainstream society, but for different reasons. Billy chooses not to belong to his father, and Old Bill attempts to forget the death of his daughter and Wife.

Billy and Caitlin’s relationship develops throughout the verse novel. Caitlin does not judge Billy while he is eating food scraps at McDonald’s. The quote “I hate mopping” shows that they both dislike what they are doing.

Steven Herrick uses symbols throughout the novel, such as the key. this represents the gift Old Bill gives to Billy. Old Bill is able to move on with his life after giving the house to Billy.

The short story “Only Ten” tells the story of a young boy who has moved from a war torn countr. He struggles to belong at his new school and with the other children. The main character, Hussein, is shown to not belong anywhere. The quote “They can see in here” shows the fear of soldiers from his old country. Husseins paranoia is also evident when he is playing football. Hussein sees the ball falling from the sky and relates it to a bomb. The quote “You are here now” shows Bruce accepting Hussein and helping him to feel as he belongs.

Bruce attacks Hussein with a ruler, to see how he would react. This gives Hussein a greater feeling of alienation towards Bruce, and the rest of the children. Hussein is shown to have a desire to belong. This is evident as Hussein follows the other children around. Hussein is gradually more accepted throughout the story, allowing him to belong.

The song “Small Town” tells the story of a man that has belonged his whole life. This connection is created through the community, family and his home.

The quotes “Well I was born in a small town” and “Probly die in a small town” show how he feels about his lifestyle. The phrase “small town” is repeated throughout the song. This strengthens the man’s feeling of belonging in the town.

The quote “All my friends are so small town” shows that he has social connections where he lives. This also shows that his friends belong as well. He is shown to have family living in the town from the quote “My parents live in the same small town”.

He also shows that he does not wish to change his lifestyle from the quote “But my bed is in a small town”. It can also be shown from the quote “Gonna die in this small town.”

The three texts mentioned all show belonging in similar ways, all exploring aspects that create the idea. In my opinion, “The Simple Gift” best explores the concept through the simplistic characterization.

But sometimes, for some readers, violence can be too much. It can be too powerful, even to the point of turning the reader off a certain author. Possibly such a reader won’t even finish the story they were reading.

What can a writer do about this? How can the writer know when their fictional violence has gone over the top?

It’s not easy. In fact, it’s mostly a subjective decision.

The writer has to take into account the genre in which they are writing and the potential reading audience. Violence obviously is a bit more acceptable in horror, for example. But even within the horror genre, there are many different levels of violence that could be portrayed. As examples, there is generally a huge difference in the violence as portrayed by an author like Dean Koontz than there is by someone like Joe R. Lansdale, a known “splatterpunk” writer. Koontz’s violence tends to be over fairly quickly and doesn’t focus on prolonged torture or gore. Lansdale, on the other hand, gets his hands dirty with the red stuff, then makes you do the same while smashing your face down in it.

Would you want your readers to have to deal with that level of violence? Maybe you do. There is such an audience for over-the-top violence, though it’s not a mainstream audience nor is it very large. Some writers enjoy delving into the darkest parts of humanity, as do some readers. Some writers intentionally set out to be offensive, even go out of their way to do so, but even this has a place within a free society with protected speech; if nothing else, such literature can get people to thinking and talking.

Most authors, however, will not want to go quite that deep into violence. Violence is often a necessity in fiction, but the truth is the majority of readers won’t want to dwell on it. And that’s fine, too.

Much of this depends upon the writer’s goals and what they wish to accomplish with their career and any given piece of their work. Someone striving for more mainstream success should generally shy away from writing graphic violence. Horror writers have a little more room to work with, as to some extent do men’s action writers, thriller writers and writers of Westerns. But even within those genres, there is much wiggle room. The best thing is to be familiar with your genre and its audience; this will help you know the boundaries of the levels of violence which you can approach in writing. And it can help you decided how far you want to stay within those boundaries, or if you want to leap over them.

And readers need to remind themselves what they are reading is only a story. It’s fiction. It’s not real. Yes, stories can have power, but only the power you allow them to have over you.

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Kirby McCauley, a famed Gothic critic, said “Gothic literature puts us in touch with a part of ourselves that we don’t know but that we feel.” Why does someone want to read something that they know will scare them? Of course, they must like to, but why? I agree with Kirby that a dusty, hidden string; buried deep within the mind; is pulled. We fell the string pulling us closer to the end, and know how to stop it. Yet, we read on.

Gothic literature is necessary in our civilized world today, because it drags out the uncontrollable feelings in us all. In “An Anatomy of Literature” by Robert Foulke and Paul Smith; there are four different categories, Romance, Tragedy, Comedy and Irony. Since Gothic can participate in all four of those, in any amount; it will appeal to a variety of readers and appear in a variety of styles. Good Gothic novels will incorporate more than one of the categories through the characters of the story. “Hop Frog” by Edgar Allen Poe illustrates this by the love between Hop Frog and Tripetta, the satire of the crown, and the horrifying tragic ending. These different forms enhance the suspense of the story by providing a feeling of reader control, so when the bottom falls out at the end, and all control is lost; a shock of adrenaline occurs. The reader is hooked. The climax is here. The Gothic writer will also use these forms of literature to emphasize an aspect of a character’s personality. In the story “Cask of Amontillado”, Poe uses Fortunato’s love of wine to dupe him into his demise, and for Montressor to offer him a considerably lesser quality wine to sooth his cough; shows the sarcastic irony of Montressor’s success. I use Poe works as an example since he is “The Father” of Gothic. Other authors also use this technique with equaled accuracy as the master, such as Stephen King, Clive Barker, and others.

Gothic literature is necessary to the society in that it offers the reader a release for feelings and needs deep within ourselves. Naturally, these needs and emotions will go on throughout life unfulfilled. It is with Gothic stories and movies that society can safely investigate these emotions. Gothic writer’s know about this primal need of man to experience this dangerous dark side of life; and they know how to pull it our from it’s well-guarded, hidden little corner of the reader’s mind. Stephen King once said that a good story depends on the strength of the “gotcha” it impresses on the reader. “Gotcha” is that feeling while you’re reading that you just can’t put it down; you have to know what happens to so-n-so and how the book ends.

Although Gothic follows a basic literary list of ingredients such as; plot, setting, unity, continuity and conflict; it has unlimited topic range. It can go from a dark, musty castle in Transylvania in the 17th century to a modernistic condo on the top floor of a skyscraper in the 25th century. The variety of stories is due mostly to the conflict of all Gothic between Good and Evil. From this conflict can arise a multitude of variations on the other ingredients, especially characters. In most battles especially Good – Evil someone must die, death is an ingredient that always emphasizes the climax. Since Evil is almost always portrayed as a demon or ogre or a creature of the night, we find another ingredient; the supernatural. Plus, only the bravest of souls can defeat such an intense foe. All these extra ingredients are fears of our society because they can not be explained through scientific means.

Society generally does not like anything that it can’t understand; so it will think Gothic stories as literature since it deals with unexplainable topics. If society would only look on the streets, they will notice that there really is a fine line between what is real and what is a fantasy. Just because we may not see it in our life styles, doesn’t mean the dark side is not out there. Since these DARK conditions are rare in real life, Gothic literature allows the reader to experience these situations in a safe, controlled surrounding. Is it safe and controllable?

Gothic stories like to lull the reader into a false sense of security and control, when suddenly the bottom drops out and we are left staring into a chasm of chaos and disaster and death. If the reader allows a good Gothic story to pull loose the chains that bind those fears; when we finally do read the last line, we leave with a sense of disgust, disillusion, satisfaction and often fulfillment.

There will always be those in society who think that bloody guts and gore mixed with the supernatural just isn’t “natural” and good literature. I think it is good to adventure into the DARK, as is fantasy and science fiction. After all as I recall history wasn’t always “glitz” and glamor. There are hundreds of war novels that are quite suitable for our greater educating environments such as “War and Peace”.

“Well”, we warmed up for news when they returned. “How was it?”

“Fine,” one of them said.

“What exactly did you see?” we asked, noticing that there wasn’t much coming forth naturally.

None of them was able to describe what exactly they saw.

Traveling is a Learning Experience

It turned out that these friends of ours had gone to Kenya in a group, carrying with them German medicines, foods, water and so forth. They had stayed in a German-owned hotel and kept to themselves as a group thus missing all the fun of travel.

Travelling should be a fun-filled learning experience. When you leave your home and you familiar culture to visit others, you are actually saying you are a special person who is willing and eager to learn. Traditional Africa recognized this special character of travelers. Men had a special fire place near the entrance to their homesteads where they would welcome and learn from travelers. Travelers brought to them stories about other peoples and cultures, animals, insects, folklore and economic opportunities. To travel is to sample foods, to wear different clothes, to sing different songs… to experience new ways of life.

Travelling to Africa as my German friends did encourages misconceptions about our continent. And worse, if they are writers, they miss a wonderful opportunity to learn and gather materials for their writing. Yet for anyone, writers included, the continent offers plenty of opportunities to learn, plenty of opportunities make your soul grow and plenty of opportunity for the travel writer to make money writing.

Gather Article Materials as You Enjoy Yourself

The following tips can make your travel to Africa much more fun, meaningful and a profitable source of your writing materials:

1. Remember that traveling is a learning experience. Don’t go with preconceived ideas about what you will see. Be curious and engaged, always ready to learn something new.
2. Focus on the positive in order to gain more from your travelling experience
3. Determine to truthfully share what you have learned with others. Not everyone is lucky or rich enough to travel. But we are all eager to listen, to read and to know and to understand how people other parts of the world live. If you have the privilege to travel, then you have the duty to truthfully share your experience and education with others.

If you are a writer, write articles and share your experiences. Publish the pictures you took and show them to your friends and family. Of course, you can earn money giving speeches on what you learned to schools, universities, clubs and other organized groups.

After living in Europe for a few years, I wrote the novel, The Surface Beneath, which describes my experiences in Europe and especially in Germany. I believe the book has been very helpful to those travelling abroad for education.

• Determine to become a change agent. Most travelers – and travel writers – are looking for what they think they audience back home will be anxious to hear or read about. But you should be different. Great travelers such as the North African Ibn Battuta (1304 – 1369) took learning from travelling seriously and devoted more than 30 years of his short life to travelling, learning and writing about what he learned. From him, the world has learned a lot and many “souls have grown” from his experiences.

You too, can do the same for your own sake, for the sake of your audience and for the sake of your pocket.

First of all, we accept that if a book is both old and remembered, then no modern writer can match it. We also assume that a classic was always a classic, that the society which first encountered it accepted it as such, and that therefore it must be some sort of conservative celebration of its own time and place. So we tend to lump whole centuries together. The 19th century in particular falls victim to this fate. Zola and Hugo are both bound up together in series with names like “Masterpieces of World Literature,” so we see them just as two old French farts and not as two very different writers with interesting views.
So the process of making classics ends up ignoring an incredibly revolutionary leap which occurred in 19th century literature-the leap from sentimentalism to realism, which really came about thanks to Madame Bovary. And what a revolutionary leap it was! To write about life as we actually experience it and not as some sort of morality tale? It simply had never been done.

You almost have to wonder why no one thought of it sooner, but in truth, someone had probably thought of it, but Realism didn’t catch on prior to Flaubert for two reasons: first, what was the point of writing about “real life” when we experience it every day? Surely literature shouldn’t just reflect what we do, it should teach us valuable lessons. A condescending, pompous attitude, but one which led to the second reason why Realism didn’t catch on: it was seen as dangerous and immoral. Real life, after all, is a nasty thing. It’s about as easy to stuff the events of our daily existence into a morality tale framework as it is to stuff a dog into a Halloween costume. Good is not always rewarded. “Sin” is not always punished. That is the way of things, but nothing could have been more offensive to the pre-Realist mindset (particularly in Victorian England).

And that is why, while Realism caught on in France, it never achieved much of a following in England-at least not for some time. Flaubert published Bovary in 1856, and after that, Realism swept across the continent. We remember Ibsen as the controversial fellow he was, but Tolstoy was also considered a radical Realist in his day. Zola was perhaps the most radical of all, for he brought in a left-wing political component. He was the one who took it upon himself to report straight facts in literature: to remove the moralizing and editorializing and get on with the brutal realities of alcoholism, poverty, working conditions, labor strikes, etc.

But England never really took a shine to it. The Brits really had to wait until Thomas Hardy before someone was willing to tell it like it was-to say, yes, this plowman may be a good person, but that doesn’t mean all of his wildest dreams will come true. Shaw as a critic championed the Realists, but his best work had to wait until the end of the Victorian era. And George Eliot? She was definitely of a more realistic frame of mind. After all, what she was really criticizing in her essay “Silly Lady Novelists” was the sentimental mode of writing. I can think of a few other notable exceptions. For instance, Anne Bronte, despite the highly romanticized writing style of her sisters, was a controversial Realist who wrote stark portrayals of alcoholism, class antagonism, etc. There was also the lesser-known George Gissing. But still, I think it’s safe to say that Victorian England clung longer than most to the old sentimentalism. Britain would have to wait for George Moore and the death of Victoria for naturalism, the most controversial form of Realism, to appear.

British literature held out for so long for two reasons, both of which stemmed from the famed Victorian reserve. First of all, the author was blamed for the behavior of his or her characters. It was therefore his or her duty to mete out punishments and rewards. Adultery had to mean a sudden drowning or a bolt from heaven. Most of all, the Victorians were terrified at the thought of people doing what they wanted to do. For one reason or another, the thought of people decided what they enjoy and pursuing it seemed incredibly dangerous. What? Nora Helmer is leaving her husband? Surely her remorse will drive her to ruin and suicide. Or perhaps she will return in the end, a chastened but virtuous woman once more. If authors let their characters off the hook, they were seen as jail wardens who had let all the convicts escape.

Victorians were also horrified at the reality of human behavior. They preferred to think that everything we do is motivated by a sort of cold, calculated, good-evil analysis. If you were motivated to do something wrong or hurtful or stupid, it was because you had given in to the devil’s temptations, but don’t worry-your remorse will make you a broken person for the rest of your days. And if you did “the right thing,” it meant that you had successfully denied yourself whatever it was you wanted and you could go about your miserable, virtuous way. Here’s Jane Eyre, for instance, on human behavior. Jane is trying to decide whether or not to travel across Europe as the mistress of Mr. Rochester, the man she loves, or to stay put as a village schoolmarm:

“Which is better?- To have surrendered to temptation… to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa; to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love half my time… which is better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool’s paradise-fevered with delirious bliss one hour-suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse the next-or to be a village schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?”

Well, obviously the first one is much better. Any Realist treatment of the situation would allow that Jane might spend her life in “delirious bliss,” without also being destroyed by guilt. But the Victorian treatment won’t allow it. Jane cannot behave as a person, but as a cutout figure in a morality play. Everything she does has to be filtered through the good-evil analysis, which is why the pre-Bovary novels can come across as so morosely sanctimonious.

Now, which writers in particular am I talking about here? Most of the great Victorian novelists had already been published before Madame Bovary came out, including Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Reade, Trollope, Thackeray, the Brontes, and many others. But when we speak about the sentimental, romantic school, we can rule out Thackeray and Trollope, the hard-nosed satirists. What about the others? I don’t mean to portray them as sanctimonious saps-they were in fact brilliant writers. What’s more, most of them were “left-wing” in the sense that they were concerned by social injustice and the stupidities and hypocrisies of society. But they were not “radical.” Orwell makes this point in his essay on Dickens. Certainly they were not interested in revolution, and mostly, they limited their critiques to specific institutions, such as prisons or schools. What’s more, every political doctrine had to be filtered through the good-evil analysis. Here’s Jane Eyre again on human equality: “I had to remind myself daily that [the poor students she teaches] were made of flesh and blood every bit as good as that of the scions of the wealthiest families.” In order to understand the issue, she has to filter it through a pious adage. And even if Jane reminds herself of this daily, she doesn’t seem to put it into practice.

The way she speaks of the students and their families is cloyingly patronizing. She speaks of their “simple gratitude” and delights in seeing them change from “quite torpid… hopelessly dull… heavy-looking, gaping rustics” to “docile, obliging, and amiable pupils.” What she is really praising is their ability to become more like herself. Without education, Jane sees the people around her as utterly vile. She remarks: “It is a well-accepted fact that prejudices find fertile soil in uneducated minds”-an amusing statement considering how prejudiced it is in itself. This after some mean jokes at the expense of the uneducated person in question.

Not that Charlotte Bronte was unfeeling toward the working class. I haven’t read her novel Shirley, but apparently it deals with the Luddite rebellion and is quite pro-worker. But she still seems to feel that things can be fixed only through the study of certain moral “laws.”
Elizabeth Gaskell is better on the class front. In fact, she stands alone among the Victorians for her maturity and genuine sympathy. She portrays “rustics,” for instance, who aren’t on the page simply to be mocked or molded by educated people. Some of her works dealing with poverty and injustice can come off as sentimental, but she was willing to portray poor people with real emotions who might merit the reader’s interest. She also went after the realities of the economic system, instead of simply addressing certain improper “attitudes.” Jane Eyre (and, we can assume, Charlotte Bronte) feels she can right the wrongs of society by memorizing platitudes. Gaskell is much less simplistic, and her works are therefore more interesting. What’s more, she sympathized with working and lower class movements for political and economic rights. The other Victorians tended to hold these at arm’s length.
And Dickens? He is sometimes derided as the most sentimental of them all, but I think he has a realism of his own.

Particularly when he deals with childhood. His characters are outlandish, fantastic caricatures, but when you are a kid that is how the adult world appears. Everything is larger because you are so small. The tiniest accident becomes the greatest tragedy, and petty bullies become the outrageous monsters that appear on Dickens’s pages. No Realist, at least as far as I know, ever wrote so well about the way children see the world, and the way injustices affect them. Also, Dickens is not so pious and moralizing. He doesn’t always propose easy answers to the problems he confronts.

Probably the best way to describe the politics of the pre-Realist school would be “tolerant.” Reade, Gaskell, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and others were “tolerant” of the working and lower classes, and they were intolerant of injustice. But keep in mind that in order to be “tolerant” of something, that thing must be distasteful to begin with. None of the writers, with the exception of Gaskell and poor, overlooked Anne Bronte, truly made an effort to understand the lower class and to see them as real people with real aspirations, real hopes, and real anger. The true rage of undemocratic social structures is missing from their work.

I’ve probably made it sound as though I’m a partisan of the Realists. That’s a bit misleading. In reality, I’ve spent much more time reading the sentimentalists than I have the Realists. I myself have a mawkish streak, and I can understand the drive to moralize even if it grates on me after awhile. I am not at all trying to suggest that the great Victorian novelists should be downplayed in literature courses and such. Far from it. But I do feel that even the best work of these writers is affected for the worse by this sentimentalist, moralizing streak. For instance, I think the best passages in Jane Eyre can be found in the first hundred pages or so of the book-when Jane is still a child. The character hasn’t yet internalized all the necessary pious platitudes, and her behavior therefore seems much more real and convincing.

Once Jane is grown, sure, she has believable emotions and reactions, but the reader has to dig through a pile of Victorian reserve and priggishness to get to them. Here’s the ideal situation: to have seen Dickens, the Brontes, and all the rest plopped down in the Realist era and to have let them write about the very real anger and frustration of their characters-which are clearly there, only buried-in a world which would have let them do it.

In “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman is the father of two, Biff and Happy, who is at the twilight of his career life as a traveling salesman. He is sixty years old and mulling on retirement but his present career does not permit him. He has been recently demoted to a strictly commissions salesman, a position he holds at the start of his career as a young man.

Due to his predicament, he looks back at his past life to answer the questions which baffled him. How did he come to this? Where did he go wrong? His brains rack back and forth as he searches for answers.

He realized that he has not been exactly the ideal salesman. Willy always thought that being popular is the key to attaining success. It is not what you know but whom you know that matters to him. He shuns hard work and frowns on integrity – things which every morally upright salesman should strive for.

As the end draws near for him, he realizes his errors. He looks back with regret on how he was deaf to the advices his brother Ben once showered on him. Ben is wealthy at the age of twenty-one.

Willy tries to show his sons the how-to’s in attaining success. Early on, he prepares Biff, the eldest, for success and excellence in the business world. In his desire to teach them, he creates a make-believe world where he appears to be respected, admired and successful businessman. Willy wants to earn the love and respect of his family by creating a web of deception. To some extent, Willy is trying to salvage some remnants of respect for himself. He even believes his own deception and is convinced of his own importance just as he convinces his boys. When the stark reality confronts him however and his illusions are contradicted, his life slowly crumbles.

The truth strikes him like a blow and wakes him up to harsh realities. He knows he is a dismal failure. And his greatest failure is turning his sons into copies of him. He taught his sons the wrong way. Biff becomes a bum who cannot stay in a job and ends up as a farmhand in the West. Happy, on the other hand, is the assistant’s assistant who has a blown-up concept of self-importance. Willy knew that he brought them up in the wrong way hence the reason for their mediocre lives.

When Biff was younger, he was close to Willy. Things changed though when growing up Willy felt disappointed in Biff for not coming up to his expectations. Given the situation he was in, it was hard for Biff to achieve anything without the proper guidance. Willy instead encourages Biff to strive for popularity. Biff was taught not to work hard or to take orders from anyone. Willy also encourages his boys to steal. Consequently, Biff fails immensely in his jobs. Worse, he often gets into trouble due to stealing. He jumps from one job to another. When Biff goes home, he realizes that he is not as important as he thinks himself to be. That he is just an ordinary guy who cannot survive the business world.

He further learns that he is at his element when he is honest to himself. This serves as an impetus for Biff to be on the path towards self-discovery. The values which he learns from Willy become useless and he needs to embark on a drastic and painful transition. Biff wants to reveal the lies Willy taught them for years. Willy of course is adamant. His pride is at stake. After several arguments, Biff chooses to leave his father for good. He realizes that he will never come up to his father’s expectations nor will he persuade Willy to face reality.

Willy becomes unemployed and wearied by life’s struggles. He has aged not only in appearance but more so in spirit. He wants to prove to Biff that he was not an utter failure after all. His disillusionment reaches a notch higher when he decides that he will achieve the much sought-after redemption if he kills himself so Biff can use the insurance money to start a business. He likes to believe that because of what he believes as his heroic and unselfish act, Biff will regard him as a hero and learns to appreciate his father. That his success is real and his funeral will be grand, attended by many of his customers in New England.

But things are not meant to work out for Willy in life more so in death. The insurance that he hoped to give to Biff does not include suicide. The grand funeral he wished for is attended only by his family and two neighbors. The legacy Willy left, in the end, is a broken spirit characterized by dismal failure.

“True West” by Sam Sheppard is another tale depicting the sons’ struggles. In the story the father is hardly ever mentioned. But the impact he has on his sons’ lives is where the story revolves.

True West is the captivating tale of two grown brothers who attempt to work out the details of their sibling rivalry while gulping down a ridiculous amount of beer in their mother’s kitchen. It explores intensely a tortured familial relationship.

Austin and Lee are the brothers featured in “True West”. At the start of the story, the brothers are depicted as people totally opposite from each other like day and night. But as the story progresses, their similarities become more pronounce.

Austin, although ten years younger than Lee, is perceived to be the more mature and goal-oriented one. He is driven by his ambition to become a scriptwriter in Hollywood at the same time his ambition confuses him. He wears glasses and works hard to succeed. That is why their mother did not hesitate to put Austin in charge of her Southern California home while she goes on tour to Alaska. Austin wears neat white clothes. He does not use the slang words Lee uses. Austin takes after his mother who is conservative middle-class person who lives with family. Just like his mother, Austin observes the traditional life of the new West.

Lee is the opposite of his brother when it comes to physical and mental aspects. He is drunk most of the time. He has bad teeth. He looks untidy with his dusty clothes. His accent is slurred by a slang. He does not have a stable job or a family to go home to. He is a drifter. He earns money by taking part in illegal dog fights. He takes after his father who abandons his family and follows the life of a vagabond by going to the Mojave desert. Unlike Austin and mother who loathe his father, Lee worships his father like a hero. Lee chooses a rebel life just like his father and lives at the desert too.

Austin and Lee refer to their father as the Old Man. Both barely know their father as he left them when they were young.

At the start of the story, Austin is found in his mother’s kitchen attempting to write a screenplay and housesitting for his mother at the same time when his older brother decides to drop by from his frequent wanderings from the desert. Lee constantly disrupts his brother’s Austin writing. Austin is an aspiring writer who dreams of clinching a Hollywood movie deal later. It is easy to see how troubled the relationship is between the two brothers. Despite their mutual dislike, it is easy to see that deep down they really admire each other’s dissimilarities. And what appeared to be their differences actually stems from their fundamental similarities.

Tension builds as Lee insists on helping Austin with his screenplay, but reaches epic proportions after a schmoozing round of golf during which the straight-laced Austin scores fewer points with the schmooze target than Lee does. Just as Austin is on the verge of exploding, Lee stares him down and taps the frames of his glasses threateningly with one of his golf clubs.

Both brothers despite their obvious dissimilarities are actually seeking for appreciation and a better life. Their methods of pursuing their goals may differ. Austin tries to cope by keeping his desires hidden and being reserved. Lee, on the other hand, is more loud and expressive.

As the play unfolds later, both realize that their lives are not exactly what they want it to be. Lee wants to become a writer just like Austin and land a movie deal. He realizes the endless possibilities if he could sell his ideas to Kimmer. The bigger surprise though is when Austin realizes that he wants to be like Lee. He even begs his brother to take him to the desert. Each influences the other to become the opposite of who they are.

When their mother arrives from her trip earlier than schedule because she misses all her plants, she is aghast to find her kitchen and alcove all messed up, her plants all dead, a number of stolen toasters on her table and a typewriter shattered on the floor. She finds Austin on the floor fighting with Lee. He almost kills him. Mom does not seem to find the whole situation terrifying until Austin declares his intention to leave his family and goes off to the desert. Another surprise awaits her though when Lee also announces that his script is sold and he clinches a deal. The role reversal seems to have taken mom more off-guard than the plight of her kitchen that she mumbles “this is worse than being homeless”.

Mom is certain that the “disease” that once afflicted their father has now passed on to them. It was simply beyond her grasps that Lee, whom she thought would amount to nothing just like his father, would sell a script to Hollywood in just a matter of few days. The ever-reliable Austin, whom she sees as mentally and emotionally stable, wants to give up family and career to be able to live with his brother in the desert. Mom believes that the curse of the father is now in his sons. The role reversal is proof to that. This sudden change destroys the stability of the identity mom cherishes.

The role reversal though is seen by the brothers as liberation of their true self and the attainment of their dreams. Due to the reversal of their roles, the brothers need each other for support as they now become strangers to their own worlds.

At the start, Austin believes that his world is the true world and not Lee’s. As he convinces Saul to choose his script as the one that depicts the truth he explains: “I swallow the smog. I watch the news in color. I shop in the Safeway. I’m the one who’s in touch.” Later on, Austin realizes that he desires the life Lee leads. The struggle of the brothers continues as they tackle their new-found dreams. The play comes to an abrupt end in the middle of the brothers’ fight.

Similarities

In both stories, the influence of fathers is markedly present and is manifested even to the point of duplicated in the way of life of their sons.

In the case of Biff and Happy in the play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller, the sons’orientation to an easy and lazy sort of existence early on in life teaches them to dislike hard work as a means of attaining success. Being popular and well-liked are the more important traits than hard work needed to get ahead in life as their father, Willy Loman, taught them. This proves to be false, of course. Willy unfortunately also taught them to steal which further aggravates their problems later on in their career life.

As expected, Biff and Happy do not attain the success their father Willy hoped from them which was frustrating on their sides because they were not actually equipped with the right attitude and skills for success due to their own father’s erroneous way of bringing them up.

Austin and Lee in the play “True West” by Sam Sheppard barely know their father because he abandoned them when they were little. Austin being the more mature yet younger brother was able to attain a respectable level of success through hard work and his conservative ways. He has a wife and kids. From the way the play is told, we can safely assume that Austin is a good father and provider too. He does not rest on his laurels and strives to do better by writing scripts and hoping to clinch a movie deal.

Lee, on the other hand, is a free-spirit who likes his father wanders to the desert and live there most of the time and pays his mother a visit every now and then. Lee lives by participating in illegal dog fights.

The negative influences of their fathers seem to result in mediocre achievements in their lives except perhaps for Austin who has managed to break from the mold at the start of the story. Later though, as the roles reversed Lee manages to clinch the Hollywood deal Austin strongly desires at first. And Austin decides to give up family and career to live with his brother in the desert.

The bad examples the sons see from their fathers serve as the impetus for change later such as in the case of Biff who openly criticizes his father’s unscrupulous ways. It also enables Lee to find better use of his and his experiences by coming up with a realistic script that enables him to land a movie deal.

Differences

The main difference I see between the two plays is that Biff and Happy in the play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller were consciously and deliberately taught by their father to attain success in twisted sort of way. Austin and Lee in “True West” by Sam Shepard, on the other hand, learn everything on their own without the guidance of a father since they were abandoned at an early age. Of course, the absence of a paternal figure denies them a role model that could have influenced them in a positive way hence the errors they consequently committed. Austin and Lee’s father though does not deliberately lead them astray the way Biff and Happy’s dad did.

Another difference is that while Biff and Happy become typical examples of maladjusted individuals of society, Austin and Lee somehow lead normal lives although quite deviant for Lee. Austin and Lee lead lives that are more morally upright and at least, acceptable in society than Biff and Happy.

The negative influence of Bill and Happy’s father reduce them to scoundrels and undesirables in society. Austin and Lee may not really exhibit the perfect examples of respectability but they do not have issues of morality either unlike the other two.