The two short stories I have chosen to compare are “the Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, and “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway. These two short stories and authors are totally different, and touch on different walks of life. In the story “A Clean and Well-Lighted place,” the theme is centered around empathy, and despair. The author is economical with style in the short story. In the short story “The lottery,” the general theme is conformity, and irrational fear, and the narration of the story adds to the dark undertone, and distance to the reader as if they were looking in on a scene. Shirley Jackson wrote the story in a simple style, and straightforward manner. This is quite different to Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted place,” because in contrast he concentrates on the dialogue between characters, and gives the reader a feeling of eves dropping a conversation in the café.
I found some similarities between the stories, and the first is that there are no specific locations or period in time mentioned to set the scene. In “The Lottery,” the date of June 27th is mentioned, but no year is clear. In the story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Hemingway kept the focus of the story away from a specific date and location, and kept the center of interest on character dialogue. The reader is given some clues in both stories to draw their own conclusions as to the time period and location. Hemingway uses Spanish language in places, and mentions a soldier in the story, which leads the reader to make an assumption about a time of war, and a Spanish speaking country. Jackson also gives the reader the feeling that this story takes place in small town America, at a time where communication, and accountability was low. Both short stories are in small settings, and happen in very short periods of time. Both authors leave much of the scene to the