Compare & Contrast- “The Taste of Watermelon” and “Her First Ball”

Writing is a way of portraying one’s self thoughts and inner feelings by using different styles of writing, symbolism on the situation in the writer’s mind, imaginary or of real-life events. In the two stories “The Taste of Watermelon” and “Her First Ball”, the characters are involved in similar situations in different times and environment with the result of different social behaviors. Hence, the purpose of this essay is to analyze the similarity and difference in the thoughts and feelings of the writers through the stories they have written.

“The Taste of Watermelon” begins with a boy from town, expressing his thoughts on how he was isolated by others in a farmers’ village and in order to blend in and prove himself worthy of his friend’s trust, he stole the biggest watermelon grown from Mr. Wills, the best but scariest farmer in the neighborhood, sharing it with his friends later on destroying the left-overs, which made the farmer mad and destroyed his other melons. The boy felt guilty and apologized by agreeing to help out Mr. Wills with his farming for the next year, only to learn that the true purpose of the farmer guarding the melons so strictly was to ensure that everyone, including his sick wife, would get a share of the melons and that no one will steal it for selfish needs.

In “Her First Ball”, Leila, a teenage from the countryside, is sharing a cab with her cousins to have her first ball in a town. One of her partners ended up to be a middle age man in her 30’s who gave her a warning that good things will not last forever where she will age, thus, ruining her mood. However, at the moment another guy came for the next dance, she forgot about the middle aged man and continued enjoying the night.

The sentence “The boys I knew, even Freddy Gray and J.D., still kept a small distance between us” from The Taste of Watermelon and “Oh dear, how hard it was to be indifferent like the others” from Her First Ball shows that both of the main characters have shown loneliness due to their different statuses among the commons where the boy is isolated because he is from town from out of town.

  However, both writers interpreted different ways of handling these social gaps in the story. As Leila from “Her First Ball” tries to blend into the environment by following the common procedure and steps in her society, for example, going down to the ladies room to collect her cards with the other ladies while the boy in “The Taste of Watermelon” tries to seek acceptance from his society by standing out and gaining the admiration of others through completing daring tasks. This hints that the author of “Her First Ball”, Katherine Mansfield, has a more humble opinion on social preference compared to Borden Deal, the author of “The Taste of Watermelon”.

In similarities, both of the stories had revealed interactions between adults and children regarding to the theme maturity where Leila’s conversation in “Her First Ball” with the middle age man about growing up from the text "you can't hope to last anything like as long as that. No-o," said the fat man”, and the boy’s occasions of watermelon theft and apology of his deeds dealing with adults, growing mature by being brave  enough to face the consequences of his actions.

Nevertheless, from the written stories, the authors have different perspectives concerning of the influence of adults to teens on maturity. Being frequently neglected and ignored in her family, Katherine Mansfield displays a viewpoint of how the adults gave her negative influences by the way they treated her, as a result, comprising the negative conversation into the story. Although Borden’s father passed away when he was 16, his father left him a good impression, giving Borden a positive view of adults in his thoughts.

Moreover, from "like the sleeve of an unknown young man's dress suit" and "little satin shoes chased each other like birds” found in the story, Katherine had used similes, figurative language and personification, bringing out the story in a poetical, light and billowy way to enable the reader to sink in her ideal scenes in her fantasy, only introducing the appearance of the middle aged man, anchoring the story from drifting too far into fantasy whereas Borden had presented his story based more on realism hence, using less similes and personification in his story. Instead of using indirect and complex figurative language, he chose to use direct descriptive language to describe the actions of the characters, presenting his story in a straight-forward basis.

  “Her First Ball” ended with Leila giving the middle aged man a sense of ignorance where she continued enjoying her teenage times before she turns old by the text “she didn't even recognize him again”, where it also hints that the author solves her problems by escaping reality but in “The Taste of Watermelon”, the author refers to a more decent way of solving the problems, confronting it and facing the consequences.

In conclusion, it is learnt that the authors highlight communal and social issues by involving their characters in similar situations to their experience in real life, conveying the message through writing out how the characters feel and sometimes, how others feel about the characters through third person. Both stories are related to similar social issues of difference in social standards but however sharing different viewpoints and solution towards it.

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