Welcome Table free essay sample

The theme in a story is associated with an idea that lies behind the story. Every story narrows a broad underlying idea, shapes it in a unique way, and makes the underlying idea concrete. Thats how theme is created. In other words, the theme in a story is a representation of the idea behind the story. (Clugston, 2010) This paper will compare and contrast the theme of the stories Country Lovers by Nadine Gordimer and The Welcome Table by Alice Walker. The first story which is Country Lovers which is about a boy named Paulus Eysendyck, who is a white farmer’s son, and Thebedi, the black daughter of one of the farm workers. As children, Paulus and Thebedi played together, but when they are teenagers they began a sexual relationship. They have tender feelings for each other, even though their relationship is ultimately doomed. They continue a relationship throughout the years when Paul comes home on visits. We will write a custom essay sample on Welcome Table or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Thebedi later marries Njabulo, a kind young black man who has loved her for years. Two months later, Thebedi gives birth to a light-skinned child. Although Thebedi is pregnant when she marries it is not considered scandalous because men in this culture often insist on finding out before marriage if their women are barren. The child’s light skin, however, reveals who the father really is. Although Njabulo knows the baby is not his, he treats the child as his own and buys things that the baby needs. When Paulus comes to visit he learns that Thebedi has married and has a light-skinned child. He panics about the child and goes to visit Thebedi. When he sees the baby he knows that it is his because it had â€Å"his own hazel eyes†. He then asks her to give the baby to someone else to raise, Dont take it out. Stay inside. Cant you take it away somewhere? You must give it to someone— but she does not want to. Two days later, he goes back to Thebedi’s and ask to see the child again. Waiting outside the hut, Thebedi hears soft groaning sounds, and that night the baby dies. Officials later discover that the baby was poisoned, and Paulus is arrested. Initially, Thebedi says that she knows he poisoned the baby, but when the trial comes, she claims that she does not know what he did in the hut and Paulus is set free. The second story is The Welcome Table which is about is about an old, rundown black woman who staggers the necessary distance in the freezing cold to attend an all-white people church. The white people are at a loss when they see her near the entrance of the church and do not know what to do. Some people take her in as she is, an old black woman with a rusty dress that is missing buttons. She is lean and wrinkled with blue-brown eyes. † The white women inside the church, take it as a personal insult and feel the most threatened about the old black lady being at their church. They rouse their husbands to throw the old lady out. The old lady then looks â€Å"down the long gray highway and saw something interesting and delightful coming. † She then realizes that it is Jesus. He tells her to follow Him. She te lls him how they grabbed her and threw her out of the church. She continued walking with him not knowing where there were going but she suspected it would be â€Å"someplace wonderful. The story ends with the perspective of some black families who witnessed the old lady walking down the highway. The two stories are similar because they are both about racism. The first story is about forbidden love between an interracial couple that both knew that society did not accept it. That is why they would sneak around to see each other and also one of the reasons that Paulus wanted Thebedi to give away the baby. When she would not do it he took it upon himself to kill the baby. The second story shows how the black woman was rejected from a church that was made up of all white people. They did not accept her so they forcefully threw her out of their church. The differences of the two stories The Welcome Table story was interesting to me because the author describes the old woman as one who does not have emotional ties with the people around her, is alone, and does not have the luxuries of life that one would expect for a woman of her era in today’s time. The one luxury and seemingly the most important thing anyone could ever have is her closeness with Jesus and the luxury of knowing that her time is here for her to join him for eternity.