Morality In The Street Of The Cañon

Out of all the concepts in the world, love and morality are the hardest to explain and understand, yet time and time again, authors try to tackle both concepts. The first story that attempts and succeeds in bringing out these perceptions is by a woman named Josephine Niggli. The main reason why she writes many stories based in Mexico such as “The Street of the Cañon” is because her family came from Mexico during the Mexican civil war. In the story, a man and a girl are at a party when the man, named Pepe Gonzalez, tries to woo the girl named Sarita Calderón to unite their two towns after he broke them apart. Another author that tackles the same concepts in a different way is Alfred Noyes, an Englishman who wrote the next story based in …show more content…
The main male character remains anonymous throughout the whole story, never revealing a name further than Highwayman, making him known by his descriptions alone. He wears a velvet coat with lace at his throat, thigh-high boots that cover his doe-brown pants, and he carries his rapier and pistols as he rides his horse. All in all, he is both stylish and very mysterious, which makes it obvious why he would have an equally secret and mysterious love with the innkeeper’s daughter, Bess. Bess and has black hair braided back with a red love note in her hair head with equally black eyes and reddened lips. When the story comes to a close, Bess shows that she is brave and truly loves the highwayman when she shoots herself to warn him of the redcoats that have stormed the inn. Angry and hurt by the loss of his love, the highwayman goes to avenge her death showing how brave and loving he is despite his background of theft. No matter how horrible his acts were, he truly was a loving and caring person during a time when acts as immoral as thievery were punishable by death, no matter the …show more content…
“Street of the Cañon” gives a complete picture of both characters, leaving the mystery of what happens after the story is over, while “Highwayman” gives Bess a full picture but leaves you guessing on what the highwayman looks like or who he is. Both stories reflect their author's hometown, but both could not be any more different. There is the party in Mexico between two warring towns in “Street of the Cañon” compared to a quiet town with an inn now home to a suicide and somber mood. One thing that is similar is the style used to write the stories, using both love and mystery to create the conflict with morality, but still using different methods. While “Highwayman” turned into a tragic love story where love creates a tragedy and questions stay unanswered, “Street of the Cañon” ends with a lighthearted and optimistic ending that maybe the towns can be brought back together through love and no questions stay unanswered. The conflict of love versus morality in both stories shown in their own respective ways still creates the overall theme that in the end, love has no ends and can do almost anything, whether in repaying old crimes or dying for your