The Old Grandfather And My Grandmother Short Story

We have recently finished reading “The Old Grandfather and His Little Grandson” retold by Leo Tolstoy and “The Wise Old Woman” retold by Yoshiko Uchida. “The Old Grandfather and His Little Grandson” is about an old man who gets treated harshly by his son and daughter-in-law, who take care of him. In “The Wise Old Woman” the young lord of the village makes a rule that anyone a certain age or older are to be abandoned in the mountains to die. The wise old woman’s son then has to make the decision of following that law or breaking it for his kind mother. Both of these stories are different in their own ways, but share a similar universal theme. They both share the same universal theme of “respecting your elders.”
Although both short stories share a similar universal theme, the two elderly characters

The old man’s son and daughter-in-law are the people mistreating him in “The Old Grandfather and His Little Grandson.” In “The Wise Old Woman” the woman is mistreated by the cruel young lord. They also get mistreated in two different ways and because of two different reasons. The old man’s son and daughter-in-law make the man eat by himself in a corner by the stove, and they only let him eat out of a wooden dish. They do this to him because he is not capable of eating properly, and he accidentally broke a glass bowl. Unlike the old man, who is mistreated by his son because of his disability, the old woman is mistreated by the lord because of her age. The wise old woman has to be abandoned in the mountains to die because she is over seventy-one and, according to the lord, anyone over seventy-one must be banished. When the woman’s son can not face doing this to her, he keeps her hidden in a room under the floor. This way no one will find her. Although the elders are mistreated in different ways, the universal theme in both short stories is starting to appear even