Compare And Contrast Morality Play And The Sculptor's Funeral

The two stories that we focused on are Morality Play by Barry Unsworth and The Sculptor’s Funeral by Willa Cather. Unsworth and Cather resembled each other somewhat in their style of writing. They both were important artists and they used their artistic role in order to attempt to better society. These authors put the characters in their stories through many different obstacles throughout the story in order to display important themes. The theme being that they are attempting to better society. There were also times when these two authors set each other apart. Unsworth and Cather didn’t portray their messages in the same way. In Morality Play there were a few parts that demonstrated one of Unsworth's main ideas. One being that the people

Unsworth especially focused on The Lord and the people he closely shared his life with. The Lord was secretly killing many children and he believed that he could get away with it just because he was in a higher power. Obviously in the end though, his secrets were all revealed and he was no longer able to get away with these acts of murder. By acknowledging that the Lord actually killed these children, Unsworth proved that he was attempting to better society while trying to get rid of all the corrupt leaders in the world. Though, he was the Lord, it is still possible to prove these high powered people, guilty. Another obstacle that a character faced was portrayed through scenes with Martin and Jane. Before the Lord was found guilty, the townspeople were going to have this mute and blind woman, Jane, sent to the gallows for supposedly murdering this boy named Thomas Wells. While the players were going around trying to find more information about the story of this little boy, Nicholas and Martin go to try and learn Jane’s side of the story. While Martin was talking to her through their made up sign language, he discovers that Jane is in fact, innocent. Once he talks to Jane and realizes

It was the artist against the average person. Harvey never felt like the town that he lived in could offer him what he wanted in the world and he seemed to feel like he didn’t fit in with everybody. He was looking for an outlet where he could express his artistic talent, which is important in bettering society. Still, after his death, his family still didn’t quite understand what the big deal was which threw an obstacle in the way. However, the fact that Harvey had passed away, it didn’t really matter anymore. Another thing that Cather did was made sure to develop the main character to be well rounded. Harvey Merrick was the artist who had passed away in the story. “Yes, he was an oyster..he could be very fond of people...he disliked violent emotions; he was reflective, and rather distrustful of himself-except...his work. He was sure footed..He was determined” (478). By creating his characters to be full of emotion he was able to portray that artistics values that he added to the world. It was used to show Harvey’s passion for the world through his eyes instead of just somebody who doesn’t have many values. Nobody really understood him throughout the novel which again was the obstacle. This is usually how it plays out in the real world too, artists tend to be pushed aside and made to feel useless. Cather emphasizes this point to make it clear that artists do better