ENG1400 essay. compare and contrast essay between 2 stories, the question attached below. NO EXTERNAL SOURCES please. CITATION FROM THE BOOKS IS NECESSARY. Attached below are the stories as well. PLAG

As mentioned in the course audio, when young Virginia encounters Sir Simon in the house, the two talk about death, and how it is what the Canterville ghost longs for. His language here is deliberately melodramatic, in the way that it is predictable and emotionally manipulative of one’s feelings. The switch to a more “serious” tone isn’t something we should actually take seriously (though we typically tend to), because we should have learned by this point in the text that Wilde is deliberately setting up our expectations only to show us how silly those expectations were by totally inverting them.

In the end, Virginia helps Sir Simon find his peace in death. And it all ends just as the ghost and the prophecy have said: “When the barren almond bears” (79), which means when the old almond tree bears fruit again, it will mean that the ghost and the house are at peace. And, surprise, surprise, after Virginia returns from helping the ghost, one of the twins discovers the blooming almond tree: “‘Hallo!’ suddenly exclaimed one of the twins, who had been looking out of the window to try and discover in what wing of the house the room was situated. ‘Hallo! the old withered almond-tree has blossomed. I can see the flowers quite plainly in the moonlight’” (83). Young Virginia then lowers her eyes demurely, “‘God has forgiven him,’” she says gravely, as a beautiful light illuminates her face, and the young Duke kisses her (84). Of course he does! The girl is always kissed by the Duke (or the prince). It’s how these stories go!

The funeral of Sir Simon is similarly predictable. As Sir Simon’s coffin is being “lowered into the grave, Virginia stepped forward, and laid on it a large cross made of white and pink almond-blossoms. As she did so, the moon came out from behind a cloud, and flooded with its silent silver the little churchyard, and from a distant copse a nightingale began to sing” (84). Why did the nightingale begin to sing? Because OF COURSE it would do just as Sir Simon dreamed it would, because OF COURSE that is how the story goes. Of course! The utter predictability of this ending should make us all suspicious of it. We should know that Wilde is teasing us, trying to get us to fall into the pattern of the book, which he has already shown us is silly.

The text, then, is ultimately about our proclivity to understanding the world through texts. That is, we interpret reality according to our immersion in stories. The stories we know determine how we know reality. What then *is* reality? Is there such a thing? Can objective knowledge be possible, or are we simply determined by the kind of reality we have already come to know? Wilde’s text tends towards nihilism, but it’s a cheerful nihilism. If all we can know of life is the stories we tell about it, why not listen to the best stories? Why not tell the world a fabulous one.

In this way Wilde will differ from Shakespeare, as we’ll come to see, since Prince Hamlet comes to believe that there is a purpose to life (and to death).