Free Radicals Short Story

898 Words4 Pages
Free Radicals and Phone Call have little to some similarities and have many distinctions, this was mainly due to the two authors different uses of setting, characterization, and tension in their stories. The setting in both stories have a few similarities between them. They both take place at the home of the main female character, but the two stories took place in two different decades. The two stories’ settings can be identified through the author's use of vocabulary, objects/brands, and the date that the stories were published. Phone Call and Free Radicals both displayed distinct objects/brands that can be distinctly connected to a certain date. For example, in Free Radicals the author used objects in the story that would prove Free Radicals took place in the mid-2000’s, the two distinct objects that were pointed out were cell phones…show more content…
Phone Call had three key objects that pointed out that the setting of the story took place in the 1960’s, the distinct objects used were; telephone book, party line, and 1959 Impala. Due to both of the stories having cars with a specific model one can only guess that the stories took place after car’s model release, Phone Call didn’t take place in the early 50’s because the car used wasn’t created yet. Comparing the two authors’ use of characterisation is almost comedic because the two stories have swapped the gender roles of the two characters. This can be obvious if one compares one character from one story to a character in the other story. For example, the Delivery Guy in Phone Call and the Killer in Free Radicals both of which were very different from one another. The Delivery Guy’s can be viewed as a polite young man who needs to call his boss about his delivery van, which had broke down. This is very different from the Killers personality which was extremely tense about Nita’s actions, obviously very
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