Three Wishes

The short stories “The Third Wish” written by Joan Aiken and “Those Three Wishes” written by Judith Gorog share the main similarity of having a three wishes motif. These two stories may share a similar motif, but they differ in several important aspects. “The Third Wish” and “Those Three Wishes” differ in the way the story is told. Also, “The Third Wish” and “Those Three Wishes” are different, because they use the three wishes motif in different ways. Last but not least, the stories have a different plot line. In “The Third Wish”, the story starts off with Mr. Peters driving through a forest and overhearing a commotion. Mr. Peters finds the King of the Forest in swan form trapped in thorns. He frees the King of the Forest and receives three wishes in return. After receiving his three wishes, he wishes for a wife as beautiful as the forest. The next morning, he meets his new wife Leita. At first, everything is going great between him and Leita, but he soon finds out that Leita is actually a swan that is separated from her sister. One day, Mr. Peters feels sorry for Leita and wishes she was a swan again. Then, Leita is reunited with her sister, and Mr. Peters grew old and died peacefully without ever using the third wish. On the other hand, the short story “Those Three Wishes” has a much different plot line. The story begins with Melinda Alice walking to school early and alone so she could study for her math test. She came along a snail and wanted to crush it. When she was about to crush it, the snail gave her three wishes in order to spare its life. Melinda uses her first wish to make sure her next thousand wishes come true. While walking to school, Melinda starts to contemplate uses for her wishes. Melinda ends up using her second wish to wish that she was always perfectly dressed and she used her third wish to get pierced ears and small gold earrings. After her third wish, Melinda begins to relieve the power of the wishes and considers using her wishes to solve