Short Story Themes

The Yellow Wallpaper

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman

- gender roles + patriarchal oppression

- mental illness + failure of medical understanding

- confinement + imprisonment

- identity + self-expression

- power of language + storytelling

- stigmatization of mental health

The Swimmer

- John Cheever

- illusion of youth + vitality

- social decline + alienation

- time + memory as unreliable

- denial + self-deception

- loss + emptiness

A Modern Marriage

- Grace Oluseyi

- identity + belonging

- power, class, + social status

- deception + self-deception

- desire + emotional dependency

- cultural expectation + female worth

Hills Like White Elephants

- Ernest Hemingway

- communication + miscommunication

- choice + consequence

- gender roles + power dynamics

- freedom vs. responsibility

- ambiguity + human condition

The Red Convertible

- Louise Erdrich

- brotherhood + bond

- trauma of war

- loss + grief

- cultural identity + displacement

- changing symbolism of car (initially represented freedom, adventure, youth, + brothers' strong bond, but after war, became relic of unreclaimable past)

- silence + expression