In Alice Munro’s two short stories “How I Met My Husband” and “Walker Brothers Cowboy” there are many similarities and dissimilarities. The main points of contrast and comparison are the setting, social and economic standing and theme.
Throughout the two short stories by Alice Munro “How I Met My Husband” and “Walker Brothers Cowboy” There are some similarities and also some differences between the two settings. Munro’s short story “How I Met My Husband” is set in a time just after the Second World War where there is electricity, automobiles and even planes are starting to make an appearance in peoples lives and the population is in the middle of an economic boom. This is very similar to “Walker Brothers Cowboy” where the story is set in a very similar timeline as the speaker says “He was barely alive when this century started. I will be barely alive,-old, old-when it ends”(5), but the setting also has one key difference. In ‘How I Met My Mother” the people should be facing an economic boom, but in “Walker Brothers Cowboy” the family and many others are struggling with poverty “Prices fell, and they fell again.”(5) Which hints that the story takes place somewhere after World War 1 during the great depression. Social and economic hierarchy plays a key role in both of Munro’s short stories. The protagonist in “How I Met My Husband”, Edie comes form a family of low status and wealth and throughout her whole life has been accustomed to living with the bare necessities, “Mrs. Peebles had an automatic washer and dryer, the first I ever saw”(129). The family from “Walker Brothers Cowboy’ however have known both lives. At one point they “raised silver foxes and sold their pelts”(5) which was quite profitable and they were able to live quite comfortably. Soon however, they where hit by the recession and were forced to move and look for new work and the father ended up becoming a walker brothers man.
Even though written by the same author the themes in “How I Met My Husband” and “Walker Brothers Cowboy” .The main theme in “Walker Brothers Cowboy” is that of poverty, the story takes place after the conclusion of World War 1 during the great depression and it is clear that the family has been greatly affected by this, saying that even though they were poor beforehand what they where experiencing now “ was a different sort of poverty”(6). However the theme of “How I Met My Husband” is that of love as the title implies and the story is centered on “Edie’s” experiences and the unusual way that she ended up meeting her husband. However in both stories the themes overlap, Edie, a maid for the Peebles family, comes from a background of poverty, but finds love throughout the story, while the family in “Walker Brothers Cowboy” already had love and have now been just recently become poorer due to the depression.
Both of Munro’s short stories “Walker Brothers Cowboy” and “How I Met My Husband” were similar in some aspects and different in others, but both of her stories still give an accurate and enjoyable recollection of life in the mid 2000’s.
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