The Management of Grief” and “and of Clay Are We Created”

Comparison and Contrast of â€Å"The Management of Grief† and â€Å"And of Clay Are We Created† Introduction missing†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ The main characters in â€Å"And of Clay Are We Created† and of â€Å"Management of Grief† differ in many ways. In â€Å"Management of Grief†, Shaila Bhave is the main character who is a 36 year old Indian Hindu Canadian woman that lost her husband and two sons in a plane crash to India. On the other hand, the main character in â€Å"And Clay are we created† is Rolf Clarke who is a middle age TV reporter, first to arrive at the mud slide disaster caused by volcanic activities that tries to save a girl trapped in the mud.The difference of both characters separates them from one another. While one character is a reporter at the scene trying to save life the other is dealing with the grief of her lost ones and helping a social worker with the families of the crash. â€Å"This should be paragraph 2† The tone an d point of view of â€Å"And of Clay Are We Created â€Å"and â€Å"Management of grief† differs from one another. â€Å"The Management of Grief† is narrated in the third person limited by the main character Shaila.In contrast, the other is narrated in the first person in a very unique way and is told by the main character’s lover as witness miles away, through television with unedited access. The tone of â€Å"And of Clay Are We Created† is melancholy throughout the story. It gives the sense of gloom â€Å"the sky is weeping† as murmured by Azucena as she begins to cry. Unlike in â€Å"The Management of Grief† the tone is more subtle through the voice of Shaila. The narrator has a more rational view of the events and delivers it with calmness. â€Å"This should be paragraph 1† †¦..A transitional sentence between the difference and similarity paragraph should be here. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ The characters in â€Å"And of Clay Are We C reated† and â€Å"The Management of Grief† are quite similar in repressed feelings towards the tragic events of their lives. In beginning of â€Å"And of Clay Are We Created† the narrator describes Rolf Carle to report the news with â€Å"equanimity in the face of danger and suffering† and seemed detached from his emotions. The way he tried to comfort the girl and help her through the night by singing songs and staying with her shows his demeanor and resilience in the face of the tragedy.Midway in the story when the girl starts to remind Rolf of all the women in his life, his past opens up and the repressed memories becomes fresh in his mind. The memories – burying of prisoners died from starvation in the concentration camps as he recalls â€Å"the naked bodies piled like a mountain of firewood† and how his father would beat him and his retarded sister. Likewise in â€Å"The Management of Grief†, Shaila doesn’t lose herself in t he tragedy and remains calm while she narrates the story as a reporter much like Rolf and is described by the people as â€Å"the strongest of us all† in coping with the tragedy.Then underneath it all as she says in her mind â€Å"I wish I could scream, starve, walk into Lake Ontario, jump from a bridge† shows that she is repressing her feelings of the tragedy. Towards the end of the stories, the characters reached a point of acceptance and started on the path of healing. In â€Å"And of Clay Are We Created† and â€Å"The Management of Grief† deals with the inadequacy of the government in dealing with tragedies. In the tragedy of the mud slide, millions of dollars of special television equipment, helicopters and personnel arrives at the scene but fell short of a mere water pump.The narrator calls important people from the city, senators, and commanders of the armed forces, begging for the pump, and only obtained vague promises. Likewise in the plane crash tragedy that was under investigation for a terrorist plot and how the social worker Templeton could not effectively help the families of the tragedy. Templeton who continues to endeavor to assist members of the Toronto Indian community who either refuse to accept the loss of their family members, or who have no ability to operate effectively in a Canadian culture of legal requirements, bank documents and government forms.Shaila assists her with the families but soon realizes that Templeton doesn’t understand that not all Indians are the same and they are different in religions and traditions. For instance when they visited a couple and she told Templeton â€Å"They are Sikh. They will not open up to a Hindu woman. † Templeton shows her frustration afterwards and Shaila sees that she doesn’t understand their culture and stopped helping her. Although the stories have different tragedies in different countries, the fact remains that the government was not as effec tive as they should have been in dealing with the tragedies.The two stories are of different tragedies in different places with different people. In those tragedies despite the differences the grief is the same as is their government response. To finish the title â€Å"and of clay are we created’ and to clay shall we be returned gives the sense of acceptance of death which synchronizes with the title of ‘management of grief’ in that the final stage in grief is acceptance. â€Å"generally need more quotes†