Compare In Detail The Approach To Superstition Of Thomas Hardy In THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN’S STORY And Penelope Fitzgerald In THE AXE. Think About The Nature Of Superstitions And The Ways That The Writers Have Chosen To Portray It. I am going to compare these two stories that were written 100 years apart. The Superstitious Man’s Story is set in the 1830s but was written in 1891 when hardy was at the height of his fame like JK Rowling.
The Axe was written by Penelope in 1977 and is set in an office and written in the style of a memorandum. They are both stories to do with superstition. Superstition n. 1 belief in the supernatural; irrational fear of the unknown. 2 practices, belief, or religion based on this. Derivative: superstitious adj. superstitiously adv. [[Latin]] The Axe is not obviously a superstitious story, but in deeper analysis there are some vague superstitions e. g. damp smell in Singlebury’s office.
The superstitious Man’s Story shows some more clear superstitions and is more of a traditional ‘Ghost’ Story. It set in more superstitious times when belief in witches and sorcerers. It also has a superstitious background because William Privett’s son died and it’s set on midsummer’s eve a mystical date on the calendar where funny things go afoot. In The Superstitious Man’s Story is about a man who is going to die. It has many well-known superstitions of the time.
The first one is where William walks under the bells. It was thought that the bells know when they will be ringing for a funeral and they go heavy and ‘sad’. Then he was seen lying down in the graveyard. This is because it was believed that the spirit would visit the graveyard where they would be buried close to their death. When he actually died a white moth escaped from his mouth when he died. This was another superstition as the moth was seen as the spirit escaping from the body.
