Comparative Analysis - Essay Example

Comparative Analysis Various themes are continuously repeated among various genres of story-telling. While plots are often recurring, how the story is delivered as well as the cultural context gives each story its unique flavor. This can be seen in comparing two stories with nearly-similar plot but portrayed through different genres and cultures. A well-known plot of a wife cheating with a lover and the two planning to get rid of the husband in any way is presented by two genres: an original novel written by James M. Cain with the title The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) presents this plot in pre-World War II California, with a drifter named Frank Chambers as the lover, Cora Smith-Papadakis as the scheming wife, and Nick “Greek” Papadakis as the unsuspecting husband; and a controversial Chinese motion picture directed by Zhang Yimou and Yang Fengliang with the title Ju Dou (1990), having early 1900’s rural China as its setting with Tianqing as the lover and Ju Dou as the wife of a ruthless textile mill owner Jinshan, Tianqing’s adoptive uncle. The concept of a cheating wife getting rid of the husband and living with her lover for the rest of their lives is what makes the two stories similar, however major differences with the genre, the settings, and the context as well as the cultural background and character motivations are factors that separate the two stories from each other. The settings in both stories show that the husband and wife work together to earn their living. Nick and Cora operate a roadside sandwich joint (Cain Chap. 1 p.3), and similarly Jinshan and Ju Dou work together in running a large textile mill in a rural village (Ju Dou). Another similarity with the two pairs is that both women got married to a man they do not love, and must work each day despite not being happy with their lives. What sets the two stories apart is that in the case of the western couple, Cora seems to have enough guts and confidence to assert herself and that her husband does not control her too freely, while in the eastern couple Ju Dou is entirely submissive to her husband Jinshan and always gets beatings from him nearly each night since she cannot give him a son. She is also gets verbal abuse each day due to this dilemma, even if in reality Jinshan was really the barren one due to having a good deal of wives unable to bear him any children (Ju Dou). Being unable to take any more of her husband’s beating, as well as slowly being attracted to her adopted nephew Tianqing who treats her well despite having awkward and silent moments provoked Ju Dou to create a liaison with him, which initiated the dynamic flow of their story. In contrast, Cora is bored with her husband Nick despite him truly loving her and treating her right. When Frank comes along as a hired hand she does not hesitate to make things exciting for both of them, and this pushes the story and its plot forward. Both stories present the plot of a wife cheating on her husband with a lover, and in both stories the husband actually dies. What separates these two stories is that the circumstances dictate why the cheating took place within the plot. First is Cora and Frank’s case, where Cora cheats on Nick due to her wishes of making improvements both in her life and in the sandwich joint, as well as not really loving her husband in the first place (Chap. 3 p.18). It may seem obvious that Cora is still young at heart and easily gets bored, and when Frank arrives in the scene she got excited to live again. In Ju Dou on the other hand, Ju Dou cheats on Jinshan with Tianqing due to her being unable to take the beatings and the verbal abuses anymore, and scenes in the movie imply that her husband is not only barren and cold but is also an inadequate lover in bed (Ju Dou). Tianqing gives Ju Dou something that the husband, his uncle Jinshan could not provide: a warm and loving relationship with Ju Dou, and this leads to the secret relationship between the two which lasted for a very long time, even beyond the death of Jinshan. In looking at these two circumstances, the first circumstance in Cora and Frank’s case, the cheating is motivated by the desires of the wife to get rid of her husband and use the money to keep the business running, and she uses her lover as her accomplice in doing so. The second circumstance however is motivated by the lover intending to provide the wife with genuine compassion and warmth, which the husband deprives her of. Based on how the two settings are presented, it may be implied that Cora’s cheating was selfishly-motivated despite experiencing a fair and loving treatment by her husband. In the case of Ju Dou she was motivated to cheat due to her husband’s cruelties and that her desires of becoming free and getting out of such a situation was further fuelled by the fact that even Tianqing gets verbally abused by her husband as well, which justifies their decision to stand by each other even in secret. Thus while the two stories both have similar plots, the themes in each story differs due to the motivation in each setting. The endings of the two plots also have similarities and differences. In terms of answering the question of whether or not justice was served in the end, both stories have their similarities in this aspect. Both stories also ended after one of the pair of lovers died and the one that outlives the other has to suffer the consequences. However, the identity of the character dying in the end is the factor that separates these two stories. In Cain’s noir crime story, the pair that cheats and plots the murder of an innocent man eventually gets the Divine punishment. The two decide to give things another chance after turning against each other when charged with Nick’s murder. Before they got the chance to live happily all over again the inevitable happens, and Cora crashes her car just before she gets to join Nick. Nick on the other hand gets accused of killing Cora, which puts him behind bars. In the case of the western couple, justice gets served in the end, and the story being read as a novel is Frank’s whole account of the events to clear up his name for the readers. What makes the ending of Ju Dou similar with The Postman is that one of the lovers die in the end as well, thus serving justice with the wrongdoings of the past. However, in the case of the movie it is not the cheating wife who dies, but rather the lover. Tianqing was killed by his biological son while still under an oxygen-deprived state, drowing inside the dyeing wells in the textile mill after being thrown in there (Ju Dou). The story ends by Ju Dou setting fire to the textile mill, not just to burn her lover’s body along with the textile mill but also to remove traces of the bad memories that she had, which is what the mill must mean for her. The story is open-ended but the viewers may see the ending as the point where Ju Dou is liberated from her many sources of anxiety such as having been sired with a son by her lover, having to live her life with an illicit but nonetheless loving affair, and being the subject of many gossips in her village. Aside from the motivations, the endings of the two stories separate each other despite having similar plots. Two narrations having similarities in plots but differences in stories and genres used for each one were presented in this analysis. The first one is from literary genre, a story by James M. Cain with the title The Postman Always Rings Twice which shows how a wife who cheats with her lover incessantly plots the murder of the husband for monetary gain, and ultimately gets divine punishment when the wife dies and the lover goes behind bars in the end. The second one is from a motion picture genre, Ji Dou a movie by Zhang Yimou and Yang Fengliang, where an abused wife cheats on her husband with his nephew, and after several years the lover was killed by his biological son as payment for creating a liaison with his adoptive aunt. The two stories have differing motivations for the wives: in the novel, Cora succumbs to selfish desires and longing for excitement in her life by living it with a man she loves; in the movie Ju Dou wants to be free from her domineering and abusive husband and she enters an illicit relationship with her adoptive nephew to show her rebellion and to gain feelings of liberation. A recurring theme of a wife who cheats on the husband with her a lover and plotting to live together for the rest of their lives is shown in the two stories, however aside from character motivations, genres and settings, the differences between the two are told through a western and eastern points of view and creates variation for the audiences. Works Cited Cain, James M. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934). New York, NY: First Vintage Crime, 1992. Print. Ju Dou. Dirs. Zhang Yimou and Yang Fengliang. Perf. Gong Li, Li Baotian and Li Wei. 1990. Motion Picture. Read More