A Blow In The Dark And Old Ben Analysis

Eric Chen
Mr. Todd
Language Literature E8, Compare and Contrast Essay
28 September 2017 Compare and Contrast: “Old Ben” and “A Glow in the Dark”

The two stories, “Old Ben” and “A Glow in the Dark”, like any other stories, have many similarities and differences. In this essay, I will discuss three similarities and three differences relating to these two short stories. I am comparing and contrasting them because the stories “Old Ben” and “A Glow in the Dark” are two of my favorite short stories and both have a lot of suspense. But the suspense happens during different times in the story.
The first similarity is that both main characters were afraid of something but conquered their fear at the end of the story. In the story, “Old Ben,” the snake, Old Ben, was a large black snake. Even as the narrator and the snake started to have good relationship, the narrator “still though the snake might wrap himself around his neck and choke him” (Stuart, 88). In the story, “A Glow in the Dark,” the narrator was afraid of a “soft, green, ghost glow” (Paulsen, 323). “The dogs were singing the death song” (Paulsen, 323) and reminded the

In “A Glow in the Dark”, the main character was scared by a glow in the forest. The ending was clear because the narrator discovered that it glowed since it had “…sucked phosphorus from the ground up into the wood…so much for ghosts.” (Paulsen, 324). In “Old Ben”, the narrator and the snake had a very good relationship. Later on in the story, Old Ben disappeared and “the last trace of Old Ben was in the corner of the lot near the hogpen” (Stuart, 93). This doesn 't have a clear ending because of two reasons. One is that it could’ve been the hogs, the dog, or the horse that had killed the snake. Two is that the body of Old Ben wasn 't found so there’s no proof. The endings of “A Glow in the Dark” and “Old Ben” are