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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 7 page comparison that looks at Langdon Gilkey's autobiographical account of life in a Japanese internment camp, Shantung Compound, and Mary Gordon's novel concerning an embittered young woman who must learn to cope with life, Final Payment. The writer argues that these two very different works come to similar conclusions concerning the nature of happiness. No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
7 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_00gogi.rtf
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the basic questions of life?Why do we exist? What constitutes real happiness and how do we achieve it? In both novels, the authors arrive at conclusions about happiness that
focus on a re!ligious perspective; however, they go about arriving at this perspective from completely opposite directions. Gilkey discovered a greater meaning in life by embracing religion. His prospective
on religion, which he acquired via his experiences in the internment camp, served to heighten his involvement with the world, making him feel more alive. Gordons protagonist, on the other
hand, embraced religion, but used it to run away from life. Her heroine has to reject her feelings of guilt and shame, and her strict interpretation of Catholicism in order
to fully embrace life and begin to comprehend what happiness can be. Mary Gordons protagonist is Isabel Moore, a woman who devoted 11 years of her life?from age 19
to 30 -- to carrying for her invalid father. The novel opens with Isabel at her fathers funeral. She is, at last, free to live her own life?to "catch-up" to
the place where she imagines her contemporaries to be. Although this is th!e moment that Isabel had waited for, she is also hesitant. She realizes that she will have
to "invent an existence for myself" (Gordon 5). Isabel falls in love with a married man, and eventually retreats into what she imagines will be a "guilt-free" existence. Rather confront
life and truly live, she embraces a stylized-version of religion in which she martyrs herself. Isabel decides to devote herself to caring for Margaret Casey, a woman who is both
crippled in body and soul. Isabel explains to the reader that "It would be a pure act, like the choice of a martyrs death which, we had been told in
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