A Good Man Is Hard to Find" with "hills like White Elephants

Compare/Contrast: "Good Man" with "Hills"

Currently, a plethora of outstanding stories have been written. What makes a story, though? The answer is the elements that the author includes into his or her writing, such as symbolism and imagery. "Hills like White Elephants," written by Ernest Hemingway, and "A Good Man is Hard to Find," written by Flannery O'Connor, are just two examples of admirable work. Each writer incorporated plenty of elements to improve the story. Since the amount of elements is limited, these two writers exploited several of the same ones. Although the stories have numerous resemblances, they are also remarkably different.

Various similarities arise in these two pieces of writing. In both, a main character is greedy or selfish. The man in "Hills like White Elephants" is a prime example of self-interest. Throughout the entire conversation, he says things like "It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig. It's really not anything. It's just to let the air in," and "I won't worry about that because it's perfectly simple." From Jig's feedback, the reader easily notices that he is merely trying to convince her to go through with the abortion, because it's what he wants. The man's greediness corresponds directly to that of the grandmother in the story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find." In the grandmother's case, she wants to go to Tennessee, while the rest of the family wants to go to Florida. Like the man in "Hills like White Elephants," she tries to persuade somebody to get her way. This time it is done by the use of evidence of potential danger: "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." The greed that these characters have results in arguments and pain for both stories. While these are similarities, they are of little importance. The main similarity is the symbolism that occurs. For example, O'Connor uses things like "five or six graves fenced in the middle" and "a big black battered hearse-like automobile" to symbolize the death that awaits the family. She also includes characters to symbolize higher beings, such as the devil and Jesus. The symbolism that Flannery adds in displays the meaning to the story. This is parallel to the symbolism that occurs in "Hills like White Elephants." In this instance, Hemingway relies on the use of symbolism to carry his theme. When Ernest shows the hills as "brown and dry" or as "lovely green," he portrays the outcome of each choice. The audience, in turn, realizes this, and then sees how greed can cause terrible consequences. These two stories can be seen as closely resembling the other, but they possess countless distinctions as well.

Both authors applied some of the same elements into their stories. However, the style of writing is unmistakably different. In "Hills like White Elephants," Hemingway provides the reader with little detail. At times, it is difficult to comprehend what the characters

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