Comparing Bravery In The Enemy And The Hollow Of The Three Hills

‘Bravery’ a word that may portray a courageous behavior or a daring character. Yet, it does not necessarily mean being fearless. On the contrary, bravery is endured out of our desire to confronting our fears and conquering over them. In other times, it’s the courage of staying true to your self and holding on to your convictions and morals and integrity against this biased world. Bravery is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it. Both short stories “The Hollow of The Three Hills” and “The Enemy” present different types of bravery similar to the content aforementioned. “The Enemy” shows a son who’s afraid of his mother and counts her as an enemy as of her use of violence against him in a way of controlling his actions, yet he goes back to her when he’s left with no one. In “The hollow of the three hills” a youthful woman who sacrifices her existence and seeks for the help of a witch to see what has become of her loved ones after she left. Hence, using evidence from both passages, I’ll discuss the ways in which the two stories portrayed various definitions of bravery.

In the short story “the enemy” V.S. Naipaul depicts a young boy who has favoritism for his dad at the creation of the story. He perceives his mother as the enemy. When she leaves to live with her mother for her own safety, he chooses to stay back with his father. She used to hit him and made him suffer when he disobeyed, while the father was the mentor to his son. This explains why the young boy disliked his mother and looked up to his father. Later on, the father dies and the kids has no one to stay with, thus he moves in to live with is mother again. By the end of the story, the son realizes that his mother wasn’t his enemy after all, as he saw her crying when he was close to death. The first scene of bravery portrayed by V.S. Naipaul was created when the father refused to move in to another place when they were in danger. Refer back to his beliefs and faith and hung on to them “Rama! Rama! Sita Rama!”. Rama is the Hindu god of courage in men. It gave him courage, therefore, he taught his son to repeat the name when he was in danger. Another main scene of bravery and courage presented in “The Enemy” is when the son moves back to live with his mother even before comprehending that she isn’t his enemy in the long run. “I had always considered this woman, my mother as the enemy. She was …show more content…
She abandons her family, disgracing their name by leaving her motherly duties when her daughter faces death. She also deceives her husband, leaving him all alone with their ill dying child. She broke the vow of marriage and forced him into taking all responsibilities. Thus, the woman strives for the help of a witch in order to contentment herself about the situation of her beloved ones. Consequently, she had to give up her own life in order to do so. In a series of three visions she gets the chance to observe her devastated parents, her child’s funeral, and her panic-stricken husband raging woefully over her unfaithfulness and his child’s