A Clean, Well-Lighted Place vs. Good Country People

The two stories that I am choosing to compare are A Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway and Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor. First, in Hemingway’s, the younger waiter has youth and confidence, while the older waiter and the old man seem lonely and tired-out by life. That is why the older waitress has more respect for the old man; he can relate to him. The story is really about good actions versus bad actions. The young waitress tells the old man that he “should have killed [himself] last week.” He knew that the old man was deaf so he wouldn’t have heard him. The younger waitress chose to have bad actions when dealing with the old man, while the older waitress chose to have good actions toward the old man. He is willing to stay late and let the old man stay and drink as much as a he pleases. He understands the old man having pain and suffering because the older waiter has had conflict is his life. The story alludes to his wife cheating on him. The younger waiter doesn’t understand the pain and suffering because his life is good right now.
I think the theme could also be good choices versus bad choices for O’Connor’s. Hulga makes the choice of changing her name from Joy to Hulga to rebel against her mom. Manley makes a bad choice of getting Hulga to go with her to the barn house and get her to fall for him, and then he leaves her with nothing, taking her wooden leg. Faith, Hulga’s mom, thinks she is making a good choice by inviting Manley into her home because he sells Bibles, which makes Faith think he is a good person. Faith also believes that it is a good idea to let Hulga go out with Manley. All of the choices that the characters make, end up coming back to bite them.
There is a common word between the stories: nothing. In Hemingway’s story, the word is repeated several times; “It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too.”(98). Here, despair follows from a belief in the meaningless or absurdity of life. The older waiter seems to believe that if one suffers, one does so for no reason; it does not matter if one lives or dies. This is why despair is over nothing if one has “plenty of money.” (97). While in O’Connor’s, Hulga seems to believe in nothing. She has embedded her “faith” in her prosthetic leg. Hulga searches for ways to be misunderstood by her family and claims to believe in nothing. Even though Hulga considers faith in her wooden leg to be no faith at all, a belief in nothing is truly impossible. The common theme of “nothing” lies in both stories. The characters believe in “nothing” for some reason or another, but the reason is all because of different life experiences.