Compare And Contrast The Osage Orange Tree And Only Goodness

Metaphors aren’t just a writing device to make writing more interesting, they are also a tool that can provide new insight and change the way we see things. Metaphors help us better understand our surroundings and complex concepts. In William Stafford’s short story, “The Osage Orange Tree” and Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story, “Only Goodness,” we see the importance of metaphors and how they can connect to the theme of the story and can have a deeper understanding of the text. This is shown when Stafford mentions the osage orange tree and when Lahiri brings up the lime-green balloon. In “The Osage Orange Tree,” Stafford shows that the osage orange tree symbolizes Evangeline when the narrator is at his high school graduation, but can’t find Evangeline. After the graduation, he finds her brother, who is a janitor at their school, and asks where she is. According to her brother, Evangeline stole and couldn’t come. At this, the narrator rushes over to Evangeline’s house to check on her, but is shooed away by a woman, who is most likely Evangeline’s mother, at the door. Defeated, the narrator makes his way back to the road,

I hadn't wondered before how it grew there, all alone, in the plains country, neglected” (37-38). The osage orange tree represents Evangeline,