Children and Parents Relationship in the Short Story; Alice Munro’s “The Eye” and Katherine Mansfield's “The Apple Tree” in Comparative Perspective

علاقة الأطفال والآباء في القصة القصيرة:'العين' لأليس مونرو و'شجرة التفا ح' لكاثرين مانسفيلد من منظور مقارن

Abstract

Parenting and role models are important in influencing how children develop into healthy individuals. Children often watch their parents and model their behavior after them. This educational-psychological and socio-cultural process has been noticed and portrayed by writers of short stories. The development of mother– daughter or father– son relationships has increasingly drawn the attention of the readers and critics, both in literature and in applied criticism. This study critically tackles the parent – children relationship in two short stories: Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Apple Tree’ and Alice Munro’s ‘The Eye.’ In connection with Mansfield’s tale, the phrase “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” is an age-old yet true comparison among people and how children are viewed in relation to their parents. It implies that apples (children) are not all that different from their parents. The narrative addresses the intricacies of this long-standing relation. Munro masterfully tackles the subject of mother-daughter relationships in her story ‘The Eye,’ the most grandiose monument to memory. The setting and the mother’s and daughter’s characterizations serve to emphasize this. The narrative illustrates how, in the face of death, imagination triumphs over reality. The study is carried out through a descriptive and analytical approach using the two stories as primary texts and other critical works produced on them as secondary sources. It ends with a comparative statement that the two stories actually share some characteristics but differ in certain aspects, as regards the techniques and values implied in the two stories.