Similar and Different

Authors Note: This piece of writing is a comparative essay comparing and contrasting characters from the two novels that I am currently reading War Comes to Willy Freeman and Shug.

Imagine being a teenage girl, alone, on your own if you ever need help .Either your parents are fighting and won’t pay attention to you, or one of them is dead and the other got taken as a slave. There are many similarities between the two books War Comes to Willy Freeman and Shug. In the book Shug, Annemarie’s dad is barely ever home because of work, and when he is, he and Annemarie’s mom are fighting constantly, they are too busy fighting that they don’t pay attention to her. In the book War Comes to Willy Freeman a young girl named Willy saw her dad get stabbed by the British during the Revolutionary War; her mother also got taken as a slave, now Willy has no one, so she goes to find her mom… alone.

One of the main similarities between the two books is that both girls are going through life alone without their parents to help them. Although most teenage girls don’t like having their parents getting in their business, it would still be nice to have them pay attention to you for once. Annemarie is not an only child; she has her older sister named Celia, but she is never home. Celia is always either hanging out with her new boyfriend or hanging out with her best friend Margaret. Annemarie’s best friend Elaine just got a new boyfriend and is forgetting who her real best friend is.

Second of all, another thing the two novels have in common is both of the main characters from both books are searching for something. Throughout War Comes to Willy Freeman , Willy is looking for her mother that had been captured and taken to New York as a prisoner, she would do anything to find her even if it involves dressing as a boy. Within Shug, Annemarie is looking for “love”, she had been crushing on her old best friend Mark and is dreaming for him to kiss her. Mark does not like Annemarie but little does she know the boy that is always mean to her does named Jack. In both of these books, they both find what they are looking for. Annemarie starts liking Jack back, and soon she receives her first kiss from him, and Willy finds her mother. Unfortunately her mother was sick and dies but luckily she got to see her before that.

Of course there are many differences throughout these books. First off, the time period is a huge one. War Comes to Willy Freeman was while during the Revolutionary war had been going on. In Shug the time period is definitely modern day, everything is perfectly normal, beautiful summer days. Another difference is Annemarie gets to find love, kid love, the kind of love Willy will never get to experience because it wasn’t right back then to have crushes on someone when you’re that young, especially if you are black.
Overall, there are lots of similarities, and many differences between these two novels. As said before, both girls have found what they have been looking for all along. For Willy it is her mother, and for Annemarie it is love. One of my favorite quotes relates to this one little similarity, “Never give up on anybody” by Hubert H. Humphrey. This quote is telling us that we shouldn’t give up on someone, such as finding love, or finding your mother.