Two stories, “Korea” by John McGahern and “Father” by Michael O’Conghaile, tell about completely different events taking place in different times and countries. “Korea” deals with a father offering his son to leave his own country because the foreign one gives more opportunities for self-realization and opens wider horizons for self-development and having a more prosperous life whereas the second story shows the conflict arising between a father and a son because of the son being homosexual which none of the fathers would approve.
The most evident similarity between these two stories lies in that they both deal with relations between father and son which sometimes are so underestimated. People tend to think that the mother is the one who always worries about the children more while the father is believed to be the strongest member of the family who is not allowed to have emotions and worries. Children are usually more sincere and eager to share problems with their mothers rather than with their father: “But fathers know nothing. Nothing until it’s spelt out for them” (Michael O’Conghail, 678). Both the stories emphasize the importance of relations and communication between father and son because most fathers care about their sons more than they show which is also true about children who grow up lack fathers’ attention though they never admit it: “I’d never felt so close to him before, not even when he’d carried me on his shoulders above the laughing crow to the Final. Each move he made I watched as closely as if I too had to prepare myself to murder”.
Another similarity is that both the stories are about freedom of choice. In “Korea” the father offers his son to go to America in search of a better life. It is not for nothing that he asks him about this as years ago, being young, he was deprived of the possibility to choose and was denied in the desire to make his life better: “I feel I’d be giving you a chance I never got” (John McGahern, 56). Thus giving his son the right to choose he is letting him have a life he himself has never had. The second story describes the issue of the choice in a different way but still, it is close to the point. While choosing sexual orientation in most cases does not depend on a person him/herself because it depends on nature still the choice of changing your life regardless of the judgments of other people remains a free choice.
The only difference I managed to observe between “Korea” and “Father” is that staying in his own country the young man from “Korea” agreed to have a regular life of a fisherman as a “better life” in America did not seem alluring to him whereas the young man from “Father” staying in places where everybody knew him doomed himself and his family to public denunciation as some decades ago being homosexual was a disgrace for the family.
All in all, two stories “Korea” and “Father” describing different events and written by different authors have a lot in common as the fates of people living in different countries and in different times have always been the same. Both stories help us understand that no matter who you are and what kind of life you may choose family should always be of your prior concern.
Works Cited
O Conghaile. Ed. Dermot Bolger. “Father”. Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction. Picador. 2000.
Mc Gahern. “Korea”. The Collected Stories. London. Faber and Faber.