A Comparative Analysis between ‘’The Selfish Giant’’ and ‘’Attack on Titan

This analysis focuses on a literary comparison between two literary piece. The
story of "The Selfish Giant", a conventional literary piece, and "Attack on Titan", a 21st century
literary work, are both about the nature and relationship of a titan or a living giant individual
towards normal persons or humanity, but in different different dimension. This analysis aims to
pinpoint the similarities and differences among the given conventional piece and 21st literary
work regarding the story's element, structure, and theme.

The story of Oscar Wilde's 'The Selfish Giant' is first and foremost a Christian
fairy tale. The symbolism of the Giant's garden recalls the Garden of Eden from the Book of
Genesis, and the Giant's expulsion of the children from his garden echoes God's expulsion of
Adam and Eve – his children in a sense – from the Garden of Eden after their transgression. At
the beginning of the story, the Selfish Giant is portrayed as extremely selfish and wicked, he
built the wall taller than it was before in order to distance himself from the kids who are always
invading inside his castle’s garden to play. His happiness at seeing the little boy transforms him.
When the giant was cold to the children, everything around him turned cold and depressing.
When he had a warm heart, he became happier, and everything around him became happier as
well. “The Selfish Giant” is a lesson in Christian charity, as the titular Giant learns how to let go
of his self-interest and love others.

On the other hand, "Attack on Titan" is a Japanese manga series written and
illustrated by Hajime Isayama. It is set in a world where humanity lives inside cities surrounded
by three massive walls that protect them from the gigantic man-eating humanoids known as
Titans; the story follows Eren Yeager, who vows to exterminate the Titans after a Titan destroys
his hometown and kills his mother. Eren Yeager is the main ptotagonist of the story, he is best
described as hardheaded, strong-willed, passionate, and impulsive, which are attributes of his
strong determination to protect mankind and eventually escape the Walls. Due to his affection
towards his friends and relatives from the walls, he had a lot of character development
throughout the four series of the story. As a child, Eren badly wanted to exterminate titans, but
then turned into a titan which started the whole conflict of the nature of titans. As Eren grows, he
slowly grasps every ability an attack titan posseses, and he discovered every detail of the titan’s
true nature wherein he found out that the reason behind everything was the humanity that exists
outside the wall. Eren’s final character development is becoming a villain to the humanity
outside the walls in order to protect his relatives and friends inside the walls. His comrades tried
to stopped him from sweeping the humanities away which caused his death. The real motive of
Eren , the main character, portraying as a villain is to unite the Marleyans (humanity outside the
wall) and the Eldians (humanity inside the wall) by empowering as one to stop him. As Eren
says,‘’If you fight, you’ll live. If you lose, you’ll die. And if you don't fight, you can't win.” A
recurring theme in Attack on Titan is the need to never give up and keep fighting in the face of
adversity.

Overall, the main distinction is one of style. Long, flowing sentences and
paragraphs characterizes a traditional literature, typically, the pacing is slower and the subject
matter have been more restricted. Literature in the twenty-first century is more compact in
structure and style. The sentence structure is frequently short, and the pacing is faster in moving
Subject matter has more leeway in dealing with topics that would be considered taboo in
traditional works. Specifically, there are quite differences but the both of the literary piece have a
great element, structures, and themes, besides, it covers a two way of a reader’s interest.
Although conventional literary pieces has aged, it’ll remain as gold over the time. Remember,
before our adored 21st century literary work developed, it firstly came in a form of traditional
genre, and this transformation is what made the 21st century literature’s prosperous growth.