The People Across The Canyon Analysis

1085 Words5 Pages
While the stories “The Chirashi Covenant”, by Naomi Hirahara and “The people Across the Canyon”, by Margaret Millar seem disparate at first glance, the internal struggles of the individual characters and their families are intimately connected. Destinies are formed by our individual perceptions of our future and the choices we make to remedy our dilemmas. “Men are not prisoners of Fate, but only prisoners of their own minds” – Franklin Roosevelt. This quote epitomizes the underlying conflict that the families in both stories created for their individual members. The close-knit Japanese culture in “The Chirashi Covenant” held Helen Miura captive to the past and tradition. In “The People Across The Canyon”, Marion Borton’s desire to isolate herself and escape from real relationships into the world of television created a self-imposed prison for…show more content…
All they had to do was look right in front of them or ask. Both saw the glass half-empty. Rather than seeing new neighbors as a possibility for Cathy to make friends, Marion saw them as an invasion of privacy. Instead of seeing them in a positive light, she sees them as a nuisance. Cathy saw her mother as someone who views the world in a negative way and chose to distance herself from her. “When Cathy went off down the canyon by herself, Marion realized, in a vaguely disturbing way, that the child had politely but firmly rejected her mother’s company.” (Hamilton 188). Helen on the other hand had two men that cared a great deal for her. One offered her a way out of her community into a beautiful home by the beach. The other offered her stability and prestige in her own community. She was caught between two worlds and could see the good in neither. Helen blamed the death of her husband on her lover, whether it was true or not it relieved her guilt and she became more and more detached from reality in the way she murders and disposes of her

More about The People Across The Canyon Analysis

Open Document