Salinger, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” AND Ernest Hemingway, Short Story, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
The point of view for both of these short stories might be described as “bleak.”

The essay: Compare and contrast the short stories in terms of their strains of pessimism (i.e., what each writer is trying to express via his pessimism) in an essay of about two pages typed, double-spaced, selecting your own approach to organization.