Compare and Contrast - Karlyn

In reading “The Only Rule That Counts” and “My Papa’s Waltz” I found the major theme of both stories is regret. While both narrators write about something in their life they regret, the two stories are very different. In “The Only Rule That Counts” John Long is the writer/ narrator of the story. He writes about a friend from his past whom he lost touch with as time went on. Most of the story is actually his friend Jeff’s letter to him, talking about his life and him trying to meet up with Long again. Long then tells us that he never responded to the letter, and that is one of his biggest regrets. In the story “My Papa’s Waltz” James Brown writes about a memory of his, that he is not sure is actually real. He writes about this memory of him and his dad dancing together. He talks about how he wrote a novel based on this memory, but it was a fiction novel. His whole thought process throughout the short story is him trying to remember the truth, but only coming up with fiction. This is something that he regrets, not being able to recall what is fiction and what actually happened. The two stories share the theme of regret, but they end on very different notes. Long writes “In a matter of  day’s after Jeff sent me his letter, a million tons of rubble covered a lot of the issues that will forever remain unfinished” (Long 4). One of his beignets regrets is not responding to that letter right away, because Jeff is now dead, and there is no one to respond to. Long writes about something that he is always going to regret. In “My Papa’s Waltz” Brown writes about his regret throughout the whole story, until the end. In which he writes, “That’s fiction. But, in fact it doesn’t matter” (Brown 229). Brown ends his story with him letting go of his regret, saying that it doesn’t matter if what he remembers is fiction, that memory is a happy one, so that’s the one he wants to remember. Both stories are written based on regret, one holds onto that regret because of tragedy, while the other lets it go because of happiness.