Compare And Contrast The Red Convertible And The Little House

Although stories may be polar opposites, they can have similarities that unify them in one way or another. On a Native American reservation, two brothers, Henry and Lyman, drive around the country together in a red convertible that they share between each other. Compared to the little house, which sits on a hill until a city is constructed around it, their summer is the most exciting time of their lives. The house is the narrator of her own personal story about surviving through her peaceful life becoming crazy and scary city life. “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich, and The Little House, by Virginia Lee Burton are similar for many reasons, such as their love for old possessions, changing scenery, and nostalgia of better days seen in both

After Henry is done with his tour in the Vietnam War, he acts differently, he is quiet and seemingly distanced himself from Lyman, more than ever before. Although Henry’s life has drastically changed, he still deeply cares about the car and the memories that have been made because of it; he also knows “‘that [car is] a classic! But you went and ran the piss right out of it, Lyman, and you know it don’t deserve that’” (Erdrich 109). The red convertible was the glue of their relationship; it never failed to bring Henry and Lyman together, even after becoming so distant due to the war. On the contrary, the little house becomes lonely, the city buildings block her view of the moon at night and the sun during the day. Compared to these fancy new buildings, the little house is seen as an antique, because “her paint [is] cracked and dirty…Her windows [are] cracked and shutters [hang] crookedly” though regardless of her grim appearance, she is “as good a house as ever underneath” (Burton 17). A major difference between these stories is that Henry and Lyman use the car until it is broken, while the house gets abandoned for many years; but a similarity is that no matter what happens to the characters in the two storied, the house and car receive the same amount of love and appreciation for the time they were being