"Vendetta" and "The Schoolteachers Guest"

Essay by salak March 2006

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How do the writers show the cultural and personal forces that leas the characters to taking their revenge?

In both "Vendetta" and "The Schoolteachers Guest", both stories show that the cultural forces did lead to them taking their revenge, in the most different ways possible, this being affected by their culture and communities as both stories were set in different time scales and different surroundings, vendetta being set in Italy in the 1900's and the schoolteachers guest being set in the 1800's in Agua Santa, South America. Both writers portray these very well in the stories interlinking the culture and personal forces with the way the two women got their revenge.

"The Schoolteachers Guest" was written by Isabel Allende and was set in Agua Santa, in the south of America, in the early 1800's. In the schoolteachers guest the main lead, Ines, was a very headstrong person, determined and a "well respected matron of the community".

Her strong links and family bonding with the community determined her role even more as she was "the towns only schoolteacher". the writer portrayed Ines as this hard going disciplined woman but also a woman who had a son whom she cared for, this arouses a feeling of love between the mother and son, the writer explains how her son was "the centre of inclination to indulge him" making him first priority in her world but then again disciplining him at the same time.

So that fateful day arrived when her son would be breathing his last, picking up a mango , the mango farmer got wary of this and shot the gun to warn him, only to shoot him in the head. The writer doesn't say why or what reason the boy picked up the mango for, so it is open to...