Muttsy Vs. City Of Refuge Summary

Za’ya Eugene Ms. Lloyd English II H 6 March 2024 Muttsy vs. City of Refuge

The story Muttsy, written by Zora Neale Hurtson in 1926, is about a girl who moves from the South to the North and stays with a character called Ma. While she is there, a man named Muttsy develops a liking towards her and wants to marry her, but she would rather not marry him, so she runs away. Unfortunately, in the end, she does end up married to Muttsy. The story City of Refuge, written by Rudolph Fisher in 1925, is about a man named King Solomon who also moved from the South to Harlem, but he did so to escape being killed for killing a white man. While he is in the North, he is in awe of how different it is from the rural South he is used to. He is quite naive, so

Both Muttsy & City of Refuge discuss the theme of characters moving to a new place and unfortunate things happening to them. They also both have characters who come in contact with sexual assault, but handle this theme & these events differently. Both Muttsy & City of Refuge have characters who move from the South to Harlem for a better future. In Muttsy, the main character Pinkie, moves from the South to the North for better opportunities and to further her education to get a job. She was not very happy to be in the North at Ma’s, but she wanted a better life than what was offered in the South. And Ma had open rooms, “She could see that the girl was not overjoyed in her presence, but attributed that to southern greenness” (Hurston 99). Although she is not happy to be at Ma’s, her desire to find a job is her main focus throughout most of the story, even when Muttsy says she should do otherwise. In City of Refuge, the main character King Solomon, also moves from the South to the North for better opportunities and a fresh start. King Solomon’s escape from the South was not fully for the hope of better opportunities, but also to escape being killed, “Back in North Carolina Gillis had shot a white man and, with

During a drug deal in a restaurant, King Solomon sees a woman with a man. He is interested in the woman, so he continues to pay attention to her. After his drug deal goes wrong and the cops discover him and try to arrest him, he sees the man force himself upon the woman, “The man was trying to kiss the girl and she was resisting” (Fisher 98). King Solomon runs to try to save the woman. The police arresting him are oblivious to what is happening and think that he is just trying to escape from them. Eventually, they tackled and arrested him. Both Muttsy & City of Refuge discuss the theme of characters moving to a new place and unfortunate things happening to them & have characters who come in contact with sexual assault, but handle this theme & these events differently. Both Pinkie and King Solomon were good people from the South trying to find their way in the North, but were betrayed and misled by people whom they were promised they could trust. Pinkie was trapped into a marriage that she did not want and King Solomon was trapped into a drug scheme and was arrested, so although they both were