Short stories are fast anecdotes, quickly delivering a message to a reader. Typically, they are one-thousand to twenty-thousand words long. There is a small emotional impact – especially compared to larger pieces of literature – but the theme is still conveyed. And there are countless themes when writing stories. Nonetheless, observing the many aspects of literature in short stories, there are always similarities within the differences. One story is Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway. The short story describes an American man and woman – named Jig – drinking at a bar. They love one another; the man wants Jig to do a simple operation, relieving them of stress and leading them towards a happy life together. However, it is a tough …show more content…
The settings are completely different, as the couple is in a bar while the wolf-girls are in a church. Specifically, Hemingway’s story takes place in Spain, while Russell’s story is inspired by her upbringing in the Florida Everglades, a swamp similar to the outside in the story. Also, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is much longer than Hills Like White Elephants, resulting in more detail as well as many more characters which are static, dynamic, flat, or round compared to Hemingway’s three flat, static characters. On top of that, the styles are different, somewhat due to the time periods they were written in; St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves was created in 2006, while Hills Like White Elephants was written in 1927. Hemingway’s story can be an allegory for the debate regarding abortion, saying it should be allowed, while Russell holds symbolism representing change in a person. The long-lasting argument was talked about in the 1920s, and still is discussed …show more content…
Besides the plots themselves, the setting Paley made is unknown; possibly a home or hospital, due to the father being 86 years old and bedridden (50) compared to a bar in Spain. Hills Like White Elephants is a third-person narrative in the past-tense, while A Conversation with My Father is first-person in the present-tense. A Conversation with My Father is also written in a slightly-modern prose compared to Hills Like White Elephants; Paley published her writing in 1974 compared to Hemingway writing Hills Like White Elephants 47 years earlier. Both ended up being conventional, or in modern writing during their