A completely new contextual layer is introduced to the language of “Ada”, because of how simple the vocabulary is. Maybe it's an accurate representation of Ada's disjointed thought process, maybe it's Ada's last memories before death. The story’s stripped back vocabulary leaves it more open to interpretation, but it also introduces a meta element into the story. Its simplicity and openness make it possible for the one story to become many stories through interpretation. This is, we believe, emphasized by the story’s continuous mentions of people telling people stories. This could be interpreted firstly as a person telling truths, which are uncomfortable to some people. But it could also be broadened to mean that all of life is comprised of stories we tell, and “Ada” lays this bare before us in both content and form. The writing in Ada is also very cyclical, using heavy repetition to achieve its effects, it contributes to its hypnotic and musical feeling. In conclusion, “Ada” blurs the distinctions between prose and poetry, Stein's style of writing is on its face a lot more experiential and open to interpretation than Hemingway's.
Hemingway’s style is very understated, concise. The language lets the emotional endings of the stories play out in the reader's head without doing the interpreting work for him. The stories present multiple points of view (not focalizations but rather worldviews) but it favors none, showing the ambiguity and moral judgement (if one is to be made) on the reader. In this ambiguity it is reminiscent of modernism, Hemingway’s storytelling is still, of course, much more conventional than, for example, Woolf’s or Joyce’s. Specifically in “Up in Michigan”, however, Hemingway deliberately even plays with focalization to blur readers experience of the story and its contents.