Wordsmith By Susan Young And The Gold Mountain Coat By Judy Fong-Bates

After reading “Wordsmith” by Susan Young, and “The Gold Mountain Coat” by Judy Fong-Bates, one can easily verify the differences in the relationships between the children and their fathers in the two stories. Everyone has a different relationship with their father than the next person, however some of these relationships are more negative than others. This is the case for the two sons, John and Ken in “The Gold Mountain Coat”. Compared to the daughter’s relationship with her father in “Wordsmith” the sons have a much more noticeably negative relationship with their father. Although the daughter’s father in “Wordsmith” may not say much, he shows his love through his work on their house. Through filling the cracks in their walls, he is filling the cracks in their relationship by using his work as a metaphor for the words he does not know how to say. All of “the lost syllables and consonants springing up from the bucket” (line
Throughout “Wordsmith” the daughter is glorifying her father’s work and acknowledges and understands his difficulty with words. However, in “The Gold Mountain Coat” the sons are resentful and scared of their father. After realizing that the two brothers must purchase a second coat so that they can both go and greet John’s family at the airport, they brainstorm ways to ask for their father’s approval to purchase a second coat. The seeking of their father’s approval agitates John and makes him resent his father for treating him like a child when John must be responsible for his own family now. Although John may speak with great determination, when the time comes in paragraphs 18 and 19 he panics after proposing his request to his father and his brother must step in with a more practical request of a second coat for John’s