Queen of Diamonds

The books "Queen of Diamonds" and "Aunt Parnetta's Electric Blisters" are very similiar in that they both portrait the disadvantage of a pessimistic view on life.  "Queen of Diamonds" is a story about a lady named Christine who is very down on life and wastes her days drinking and partying until it catches up with her and she decides to take her own life.  The other book, "Aunt Parnetta's Electric Blisters", is about a lady who feels out of place in the world because she is Indian, and she lives in the land of white people.  Aunt Parnetta and Chrstine's problems are similiar, in that, they are both caused by pessimistic attitudes towards life.

"Queen of Diamonds" paints the perfect picture of how a bad attitude in everything makes everything worse.  The story starts off in a hospital where a lady named Christine is in bed, sick.  They make it clear to the reader that Christine was not in the hospital just for this one occasion, but has spent a lot of time there in the past as well.  Christine was not one of those people who were sick all the time, but she was someone who had gone out a lot of the time with her friends and drank.  The drinking was the reason that she was in the hospital.  It never once showed Christine as being happy, she was always in a bad mood, and never really seemed to be pleased with anything.  Towards the end of the book we find out that Christine is going to kill herself.  The reason for which she decides to take her own life is that there is nothing for her to live for, nothing that she had made for herself.   Christine had done nothing in her life time worth enough to live for.  We also see the picture in Aunt Parnetta's Electric Blisters.

"Aunt Parnetta's Electric Blisters "was a good story with almost the same theme as "Queen of Diamonds".  The story is about a Indian lady who's refridgerator broke.  The refridgerator was a symbol, in the story, of the lady in a world of different people.  The refridgerator was surrounded by Indians that were nothing like it, a lot like how Aunt Parnetta was in world surrounded by white people.  Aunt Parnetta saw this, and revolved every thought about it.  She was overcome by the idea that she was living out of place, and could not bear it.  Aunt Parnetta did not have an external conflict, it was something that she had to sort out for herself.  She didn't have a good view on life, and she was mad all the time because of it.

The relationship of these two stories is that they both envolve and show the negative effects of a pessimistic attitude.  Christine and Aunt Parnetta had completely different problems, but were both caused by the same problem.  Their issues had nothing to do with one another, but were similar enough to be compared.  Their themes were both evident, and identical.

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