No Gumption By Russell Baker: A Literary Analysis

Have you ever seen twins? Have you ever tried to tell the two apart? Notwithstanding the fact that the outside appearance may be consubstantial, their personalities will most likely be contradistinctive. That's kind of how the memoirs “Barrio Boy”, by Ernesto Galarza, and “No Gumption”, by Russell Baker, are. Even though there are many unambiguous similarities such as their characters, P.O.V, story structure, values, and theme, they have univocal differences such as the character's' actual personality. If you read the book you'd notice that the lesson the books taught is close if not exactly the same. The characters just were destined to take two different paths in the process of learning the same lesson. Now even though the two did take …show more content…
The differences were mainly focused on the characters personality and how they went about things rather than the story itself. In the story “No Gumption”, Russell was clearly a lackadaisical person. Working wasn’t exactly on his list of “things-to-do” and because of that he had a harder time accepting that in life you have to work. Baker had all the right cards put out in front of him to have some gumption, but instead he kept getting others to play the cards for him. Even when he worked he didn't even try. In the story, a conversation between him and his mom sparked up and the piece in the story confirmed to me that Baker was indeed lethargic. I say this, because once his mom, after a series of other questions, asked him: “You just stood there?” and he replied back saying: “Didn’t sell a single one.” It'd be different if he tried, but he didn’t even try. I know he wasn't trying because before that he said: “Stood on the corner waiting for somebody to buy a Saturday Evening Post.” He didn't even attempt to make anyone want to buy it. In the story “Barrio Boy, by Ernesto, unlike Baker, Galarza was a diligent worker. He attempted to try. Though he didn't really want to learn English or be in that class, he didn't complain he just accepted it and soon he learned to like it. Another evident difference is that while Baker and Galarza both had a struggle, Galarza didn't have a choice but to work hard. In both Mexico and California. Galarza's motivation to have Gumption is an internal motivation rather than his mother pushing to have it. The difference between the actual stories is that while one was forced to work the other had no choice but to learn to adapt to another culture and learn a new