Compare And Contrast The Storm And The Saboter

Different Writing Styles Yield Different Result Amongst Readers

Ha Jin and Kate Chopin are two American authors who lived just a little more than 50 years apart. Ha Jin’s story “Sabotage” is about an innocent man who is wrongfully accused of a crime by a Chinese police department, is denied legal counsel and forced to confess to his crimes. In Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” she writes about an affair a woman has while her husband and her son are away from the house, this affair actually strengthens their marriage in the end of the story. Kate Chopin and Ha Jin use setting and character development in their stories, sometimes differently and sometimes quite comparably, yet both effectively at getting their points across.

The ways Ha Jin and Kate Chopin use setting in “Sabotage” and “The Storm” are not similar at all. Ha Jin starts “Sabotage” off with a very detailed description of the Muji City train station. He included every detail possible, without drowning the reader in useless details. “The air smelled of rotten melon. A few flies kept buzzing above the couple’s lunch. Hundreds of people were rushing around to get on the platform or to catch buses to downtown. Food and Fruit vendors were crying for customers in lazy voices” (Jin, P 179). Jin dedicates an entire paragraph to the description of the area surrounding the main character, making sure the reader is thoroughly immersed in the story before going ahead and telling it.

In a very dissimilar style Kate Chopin does not go into great detail describing the setting in which the story takes place as Ha Jin did, she leaves out the details such as how the air smells and even exactly where the story takes place. By the end of the story the reader knows that Alcee’s wife is in Biloxi, Louisiana but they are never told exactly where the story takes place. To help readers discern where the story is taking place, Kate Chopin’s uses dialogue to allude as to where the story takes place. Kate Chopin’s character, Calixta, said “If this keeps up, Dieu sait if the levees goin вЂ? to stan’ it” (Chopin, P116). Later in the story, Boninot says “My! Bibi, w’at will yo’ mama say! You ought to be ashame’. You oughtn’ put on those good pants. Look at вЂ?em! An’ mud on yo’ collar! How you got that mud on yo’ collar, Bibi? I never saw such a boy” (Chopin, P118). Calixta and Bobinot’s broken English plus the knowledge of Alcee’s wife being in Louisiana hints toward the story taking place in a Cajun part of Louisiana.

After all of the differences between the ways the authors expressed the settings in their stories readers may be surprised to find that both of the authors utilize dynamic who change significantly before the story ends.

When Kate Chopin develops her main character, Calixta, she does not let the reader know about Calixta’s relationship with her family until the end of the story. Bobinot’s comments and actions before he returned home, cleaning mud off of Bibi with a stick, and preparing for “the meeting with an overscrupulous wife” indicate that Bobinot tries his best to please Calixta, but that is hard to do. After Calixta’s affair with Alcee she is seemingly changed, where as normally she would require Bobinot to explain where he was and why (Chopin, P118). After Caltixa’s time with alcee, Bobinot came in the house and she surprised him by not demanding that he explain where he was during the storm, instead “Bobinot’s explanations and apologies which he had been composing all along the way, died on his lips” (Chopin, P118). The greeting Bobinot received was vastly different from the one he expected to receive,

instead of needing his prepared explanations and apologies to appease his wife he was surprised to be greeted with “nothing but satisfaction at their safe return” (Chopin, P118).

Similar to Kate Chopin’s character, Calixta, Ha Jin’s main character was also dynamic. In the beginning of the story Mr. Chiu claims to be a “scholar, a philosopher, and an expert in dialectical materialism,” such a claim suggests that he would rather solve his problems peacefully (Jin, 181). It also suggests that he would rather not seek retribution by attacking the police department directly; instead he would pursue legal action against the police department. Mr. Chiu even tells the police chief directly that he “shall report you to the Provincial Administration”