Writers often find significance in their work that others might not see. One can explore the same account written in different forms of literature. Often, there will be similarities found in the comparison of both works. The significance of the mother's painting, "Lot's Wife," in Amy Bloom's "Hold Tight" can be compared to the meaning associated with Anna Ahkmatova's poem "Lot's Wife"; both women find importance in the destroyed city of Sodom as well as the physical pain of loss. The destroyed city of Sodom is significant to both Amy Bloom and Anna Ahkmatova because it symbolizes the destroyed lives of the mother and of Lot's wife.
             In "Hold Tight," the portion of the mother's painting that is the destroyed city of Sodom is described by Amy Bloom as "bright and grim, were the sticky little flames of the destroyed city, nothing, not even rubble, around it." This is symbolic of the Mother's destroyed life because she was dying and her husband and daughter were becoming more dysfunctional the closer to dying she became. Bloom writes "more often than not, we'd end up back in the brown fog of his study, me taking a last few puffs with my legs thrown over his big leather armchair, my father sipping his bourbon and staring out at the backyard." The husband and daughter are dealing with things by smoking pot and drinking, living in a nonexistence, while the mother is dying in her bedroom. Their family life as they know it is pretty much destroyed.
             In comparison, Anna Ahkmatova finds similar meaning in the destroyed city of Sodom. She writes that Lot's wife looks back on the "bitter view." She refers to it this way because Lot's wife has found all of her happy memories in that city of Sodom. When she looks back and sees that it has been destroyed, to her, this symbolizes her destroyed life. Akhmatova writes "Look back, it's not too late for a last sight of the red towers of your native Sodom, the square where you once sang, the gardens ...