The Outsider

Tn the short stories The Outsider by Graeme Lay and Yellow Brick Road by Witi Ihimaera we see several similarities in the endings of each story. In The Outsider underline the titles of both stories all the way through the story ends with Karl leaving Kaimara without a single word to Justine, who is left alone and pregnant with his child. On the other hand in Yellow Brick Road the story ends with Matiu and his family reaching the ‘Emerald City’, Wellington; this however isn’t necessarily good, and his family and he begin to doubt if they made the right choice in moving to Wellington. ndings very well described but if this is your intro - you need to also have a 'signpost' to the examiner of what will be in your essay, so another sentence or two about what the idea/s are that you're helped to understand in the endings. You also need to hint at what the 'several similarities' are. The Outsider’s ending was one that was quite poignant and negative, in the way that Karl left Justine without even a goodbye note. Leaving her with a child to raise on her own is quite a disastrous thing to happen, and of course no one ever thinks that it’s going to happen to them.

This negative and quite catastrophic ending helped me understand better the portrayed idea of how naivet? © and hasty decisions can be almost detrimental in some cases and that everyone needs to be careful before rushing into things. If we look back we can see that everything between Karl and Justine happened so fast, “It was September, and they had known each other for five months, when she learned that what could be was true. ” When we think about how we rush into things we realize how foolish it can be, yet all of us do exactly that without a second thought in different situations.

Another aspect that can contribute to making us think that everything is peachy and rosy is the fact that when things are rushed, such as Justine and Karl’s relationship, everything travels on an almighty high, “Half the winter passed. The beach and the little house became their entire world. ” However when everything suddenly comes crashing down we realize the fact that everything went well should have been an indication to know that something was actually very wrong. This ending is also very similar to that of Yellow Brick Road in which the ending is also negative, but perhaps with a deeper meaning to it.

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