Compare and Contrast "High School Senior" and "And Summer Is Gone"

In Sharon Olds’s poem “High School Senior” and in Susie Kretschmer’s short story “And Summer Is Gone” both speaker and narrator show a attitude of missing people and a frustrated attitude respectively, and the speaker and the narrator have a realization of love will not disappear and a realization of grow up makes something different respectively toward losing someone.

According to the poem, the speaker show a attitude of missing people and a realization of love will not disappear toward losing her daughter. Her daughter is going to study in college, “I say college…”(line 11-13). So she cannot image her life without her daughter, “and our parting…”(line 14-17). She just misses her daughter. Then she realized that even her daughter was no more with her, her love of her daughter is till in her heart, “my daughter is free…”(line 26-28). That is her realization of love will not disappear.

In the short story, the narrator has a frustrated attitude and a realization of grow up makes something different toward losing his friendship. The narrator’s female friend was changing from a person he knows to a person who is strange, “She ahad been more truly mine than I had ever known…”(last prargraph). The narrator’s attitude is frustrated for losing her and their friendship, “I watched her go, and I cried within, for I understood that it was I who had grown up and she who had gotten lost.”(last prargraph) The narrator realize they were growing up, and that made their relationship different, “And I saw that she had not spoken to me at school, or dared to associate with me in public. I thought, that eighth-frade year, that it was because Amy had grown up…”(prargraph 16)

The speak’s attitude and realization have similarity and difference with the narrator’s. Like both of the speaker and the narrator’s attitudes are passive attitudes. The passive attitude the speaker has is for losing her daughter, she is missing her daughter. The passive attitude the narrator has is for losing her friendship, he is frustrated to keep her. However they get different realizations. In the poem, the speaker realized her love will not disappear, this active realization. In the short story, the narrator thought grow up changed Amy to hurt their relationship, this is a passive realization.

As a conclusino, the speaker’s attitude is passive, her daughter is gone, however she got a active realization, her love will not disappear. The narrator got a passive attitude, he is frustrated, and he got a passive realization, grow up hunt their relationship.