Compare And Contrast The Four Literary Approaches

Four Basic Approaches to Understanding A Tale of Two Cities, Pride and Prejudice, House on Mango Street, Slaughterhouse Five, and Of Mice and Men

In both A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, and Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, some of M.H. Abrams’ four approaches reading and understanding literature apply. The four approaches include: mimetic, pragmatic, expressive, and objective. The pragmatic approach deals with instruction from literature. Pragmatic is the best approach to understand A Tale of Two Cities. Sydney Carton, one of the protagonists, starts the novel as an ungrateful man. Throughout the story he changes and becomes a better person. He becomes selfless because of love. Readers see his maturation when he says, “It is
Billy Philgrim is a man that is drafted into the army. At one point, his entire life flashes in front of his eyes. He is taken to different important points of his life. Because of the war, Billy admits himself into a mental institution. While there he has more strange experiences with his life. All of these weird flashbacks are results from being a prisoner of war. The night of his daughters wedding, he claims aliens called Trafalmadorians abduct him. No one believes him when he tells them of his adventures with the aliens. From this novel readers learn about war and its affects. Because of war, Billy goes through many difficult things in his life from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Through Billy’s experiences readers see how awful war s and the difficulties of being there. It also teaches readers to appreciate things. Billy goes through a terrible life: war, PTSD, and even a plane crash. Even though all of these things have been put upon Billy, he still has a good attitude. This can be seen when he is abducted by the Trafakmadorians. They ask him if he is happy and he responds, “About ad happy as I was on Earth” (Vonnegut