One way to tackle the problem of finding similar themes in different stories is to use the same author. I would recommend Edgar Allen Poe. He has written a lot of short stories, and the theme of death, mortality, and/or revenge is usually at the forefront. You could compare "The Cask of Amontillado" with "The Tell-Tale Heart." Both stories feature a narrator that tells the reader how he killed somebody.
You could compare short stories that show man struggling against nature's seeming indifference to his existence. Jack London's "To Build a Fire" works nicely. You could compare that with John Muir's "Stickeen." Those two stories offer a nice compare and contrast too, because in London's story the main character dies because of his overconfidence in himself. Muir's story also has a confident leading character, but he seems to respect nature's power a bit more. He lives. Bret Harte's "The Outcasts of Poker Flats" also works with that theme, because it is about a group of people struggling to survive when a winter storm traps them in a mountain pass.
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