Most short stories teach a very good lesson to the society on how to live there life. Just like in Slawomir Mrozek’s short story “The Elephant” which demonstrates how the director of Zoological Gardens tries to take the easy way out of his problem. His decision was supported by the zoo’s board and after all the work they do, there idea does not go as planned. Also in Shinichi Hoshi’s short story “He-y, Come on Ou-t!” the village people try to throw all of their problems away, but it all starts to come right back. Slawomir Mrozek’s short story “The Elephant” and Shinichi Hoshi’s short story “He-y, Come on Ou-t!” both have characters who try to use shortcuts to help them live better lives which eventually do not help. This is shown through symbols, themes, and characters. Therefore, the reader is left with the decision to take shortcuts in their life. Generally, in short stories, the idea is introduced very quickly catching the reader’s attention. The use of symbols are one of the ideas that catch the reader’s attention quickly. In the short stories “The Elephant” and “He-y, Come on Ou-t!”, the two symbols are used to be solutions for the problems in both stories. In “The Elephant," the symbol was an inflatable elephant, which was supposed to get rid of the director’s problems, but it actually ended up corrupting the society, “The school children who had witnessed the scene in the zoo soon started neglecting their studies and turned into hooligans. It is reported that they drink liquor and break windows. And they no longer believe in elephants” (Mrozek 106). Also in “He-y, Come on Ou-t!” there is a never-ending hole. At the beginning, a young man yells inside of it and afterwards throws a pebble in it. An old man warns him for doing that, “You might bring down a curse on us. Lay off” (Hoshi 153), but nobody listened to him. The old man’s words are important because they predict th