SOCIAL INJUSTICE AND HUMAN DIGNITY IN ERNEST HEMINGWAY'S "THE KILLERS" AND ABDULLA QAHHOR'S "THIEF": A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract

This article compares two short stories from two very different literary traditions: “The Killers” by the American writer Ernest Hemingway and “Thief” (“O’g’ri”) by the Uzbek writer Abdulla Qahhor. Both stories were written within a decade of each other, and both place an ordinary, powerless person in front of a force he cannot control — organized crime in one case, a corrupt local government in the other. The article looks closely at how each writer builds this conflict, what it reveals about the value of human dignity, and how each author’s cultural background shapes the way the story is told. It also compares the two writers’ craft: Hemingway’s short, restrained “iceberg” method, where most of the meaning stays under the surface, against Qahhor’s rich, emotional, and detail-driven storytelling. The study argues that although these two stories grew out of completely different histories — one from Prohibition-era America, the other from an Uzbek village under colonial and early Soviet rule — they share the same underlying question: what remains of a person’s dignity when the world around him refuses to be fair.