Jordan Stearns -- Literary Critic

I'm going to sign all of my posts as "Jordan Stearns -- Literary Critic" from now on. I believe it was the great Winston Churchhill (who was terrified of the Village People btw) that said, "We must take our inspiration from complete idiots."

This is possibly my best english paper yet. You will have to have read both books to get it though...

Compare and Contrast - The Scarlet Letter and Slaughter-House-Five
   
    Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House-Five are mostly different books in term of stylistic elements. This is because of the difference in the time periods when they where written, and their subject matter. Though however different they are, they manage to have things in common.
   
    The Scarlet Letter shares a similar syntax to Slaughter-House-Five. The Scarlet Letter has very long, drawn out sentences that mainly describe the characters, describe what they are doing, what they are thinking, or what they plan to do in the future. A simple sentence, “Hester walked down the street,” could be turned into “Hester walked down the street, with the shame of a platypus, bearing the burden of her scarlet letter like Hulk Hogan with a Big Mac the day after Thanksgiving. Slaughter-House-Five shares this trait, with sentences similar to “Billy was scared out of the left side of his cerebral cortex while the Tralfamadorians jeered at him through the glass sphere, using telekinesis to call him shallow and pedantic.” These similar forms of syntax are about the only comparable trait of the two books.
   
    The mood between the two books are basically on the opposite ends of the spectrum. The Scarlet Letter features a dark mood, full of lies, deception, and revenge. Imagine stealing candy from the store as a little kid with your friend, and getting in trouble for it, but then everyone knows about it. But your friend is nowhere to be friend. And friend number two, who you had originally planned to steal the canndy with, but forgot about it, is planning to tell on you, so you get in even more trouble. Slaughter-House-Five is much more imaginative, like a story about unicorns and gremlins, but still has that sick twist,  that one would write in the fourth grade for creative writing. This is the major difference between the two novels.
   
    Diction is also a key difference. The Scarlet Letter has words from the 19th century. Augur, physiognomy, ignominious, edifice, antinomian, countenances, and escutcheon are all examples of the diction in the story. Words you are forced to copy and paste from a long list of big words in the Scarlet Letter. Slaughter-House-Five contains a rather average vocabulary, suitable to the current time period. Words like red, dog, and the all come to mind quickly. While the Scarlet Letter’s diction will help you in final jeopardy, the readability of Slaughter-House-Five is a direct contrast to this.
   
    All in all, both novels are actually similar in a sense. In 200 years, Slaughter-House-Five may be hated with a passion by students as much as the Scarlet Letter is today. They contrast each other in terms of style, but the message is suitable for the time period.