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Many other versions of "The Tall Old Man" are with Balzac's other work, "Eugenie. Grandet" is bound together.
They both belong to Balzac's "Human Comedy" series, both of which are the author's most influential novels, and both show that materialistic era by telling the relationship between father and daughter.
But the two works are similar but so different, "Eugenie. The father in Grandet is an out-and-out miser, with nothing but money in his eyes, and his daughter Eugenie is innocent and kind, but in the end she loses the opportunity to be happy because of what her father did.
Here in "Tall Old Man", on the contrary, Gao Old Man is a spoiled madwoman, in order to satisfy the squandering of his two daughters, he gave everything, from the initially decent and exquisite Mr. Gorio step by step to the disdainful old man in the mouth of the apartment tenants, even if he finally left this world in poverty without complaint.
Eugenie did not abandon her father because of his selfishness, and accompanied him until the last moment of his life, while the daughter of the tall old man was not moved by her father's selflessness towards them, and even did not want to attend her father's funeral, but was organized by an outsider, Rastigné.
Eugenie's tragedy lies in her kindness and benevolence, although she also made a small resistance and resistance to some of her father's actions, but in the end she had to compromise because she loved his father, and could only get rid of his control after his death.
The tragedy of the old man Gao also lies in his love for his two daughters, but this love seems a little absurd. The two daughters only know to take without restraint, but they have never considered anything for their father, and what is more sad is that the old man himself does not think so, and even enjoys the daughters' "gnawing old" behavior towards themselves. It was also a form of control, and the father did not get rid of his daughters until after his death.
The same father, the same daughter, how can the characters in the two books be so different?
Balzac is known as a literary giant, and it is no exaggeration to feel from the literary works he created that he received this honor. These read with a touch of absurdity, and if you think about it, you will find that the content is actually extremely spicy, ruthlessly revealing the greed and selfishness in human nature.
Maybe that's what the world is all about. The world is big, what kind of people don't have it? So Balzac will include these stories in his "Human Comedy" series, although it is a human story, it is not a comedy, if it has to be paired with comedy, it can only be said to be black humor.
Perhaps this is also a helpless self-mockery.