A NOTE ABOUT YOUR
NOTEBOOK
Introduction to
 Narratives and
Course
Routine Writing
 Unit 1: Short Story  Sentence Skills
 Unit 2: Poetry
 AP Literature
Exam Practice and
 Unit 3: Drama
Preparation
 Novels/Novellas
 Graded Papers
 Analyses

Short Story
Notes
Mrs. Bakahai Litman
Unit of Study #1
Reading Focus:
Literary
Short Story
Essential Questions
 1.
What debatable, recurring,
thought-provoking questions
will guide inquiry and point
toward the big idea of the unit?
 2. How does literature help us
understand ourselves and
others?
Essential Questions
. How has writing become
a communication tool across
the ages?
 4. How does literature
express universal themes?
3
The Pleasures of Reading Fiction
 We
read stories largely for the
emotional and intellectual
pleasures they bring us, the
pleasure of being surprised or
disturbed by an unexpected turn of
events or of being satisfied as our
expectations are met.
The Pleasures of Reading Fiction

Well-told stories involve us emotionally
in the lives of their characters. They
provide us with pleasures of
recognition-in the worlds they portray
and in the behavior of the characters
who inhabit them. Stories do more than
entertain. They instruct us by showing
us things about our world we had known
before reading them.
THE SHORT STORY
 The
short story became popular in
the 19th century. During this
period, fiction tended toward a
detailed representation of
everyday life, typically the lives
and experiences familiar to
middle-class individuals.
THE SHORT STORY

Besides its realistic impulse, the modern
short story differs from the ancient forms of
short fiction in the ratio between summary
and scene. Parables, fables, and tales, tend
to tell what happens in a general overview
of the action. Short stories typically reveal
characters in dramatic scenes, moments of
action, and exchanges in dialogue.
FEATURES OF
THE MODERN SHORT STORY
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Typical features of the modern realistic short story include the
following:
1. Its plot illustrates a sequence of casually related incidents.
2. Its characters are recognizably human, and they are
motivated by identifiable social and psychological forces.
3. Its time and place are clearly established, with realistic
rather then fantastic settings.
4. Its elements-plot, character, setting, style, point of view,
irony, symbol, and theme-work toward a single effect, unifying
the story.
THE NONREALISTIC STORY

In an effort to break away from the prevailing
conventions of the realistic short story, some
modern storytellers have mixed features of the
early forms-elements of the supernatural, for
example-with realistic conventions. The important
thing about nonrealistic stories is to accept them on
their own terms. In accepting their break from
realistic conventions, we increase our chances of
responding fully to the pleasures they offer. We
also enlarge our understanding of what a short story
can be.
THE SHORT NOVEL

The short novel, sometimes call the novella, shares
characteristics with both the novel and the short
story. Unlike the short story, which must make its
mark quickly, the short novel can allow a slower
unfolding of character, incident, or idea. The short
story’s brevity demands a single snapshot of time
rather than the collage or mosaic that can be
created in a novel, long or short. Yet like the short
story, the short novel relies on glimpses of
understanding, flashes of insight, and quick turns of
action to solidify theme or reveal character.
THE SHORT NOVEL

What distinguishes the short novel from the
novel is its greater efficiency and sharper
focus. Lacking time and space to accumulate
incident, develop character, and amplify
theme, the short novel cannot achieve what a
novel achieves. Its advantage lies in a
consistency of style and focus and a
concentration and compression of effect that
are the hallmarks of the short novel form.
THE METAMORPHOSIS

ONE SHORT NOVEL WORTHY OF SUCH
HIGH PRAISE IS FRANZ KAFKA’S
THE METAMORPHOSIS.
Understanding Literature:
Experience, Interpretation,
Evaluation

This course’s approach to reading,
understanding, and appreciating literature is
divided into three major parts:
(1) experiencing and responding to
literary works
(2) interpreting literary works
(3) evaluating literary works by
considering the values they express.
Experience

Our experience of fiction concerns our
feelings about the characters, our
sense of involvement in the story’s
developing action, our pleasure or
confusion in its language, or our joy or
sorrow at its outcome. We are
concerned, in short, with what the
story does to us, how it affects us-and
why.
Experience

When we read a literary work, something
happens to us. A poem, for example, may
provoke our thinking, or evoke a memory,
elicit a strong emotional response. A short
story may arouse our curiosity about what
will happen, engage our feelings for its
characters, or stimulate our thought about
why things happen as they do. A play may
move us to laughter or tears or may prompt
us to link its dialogue & action with our lives.
Interpretation

Our understanding of literary works results
from our effort to interpret them, to make
sense of their implied meanings. Our
interpretation of literature provides an
intellectual counterpart to our emotional
experience. When we interpret literary
works we concern ourselves less with how
they affect us and more with what they
mean. Interpretation, in short, aims at
understanding.
Interpretation

In reading fiction, for example, we rely
on analysis of such elements as plot,
character, setting, and point of view.
In interpreting poems, we analyze their
diction, imagery, syntax, and structure
to understand its meaning.
In viewing or reading plays we focus on
dialogue, setting, plot, and character.
Interpretation

Interpretation, in short, relies on our
intellectual comprehension rather than on
our emotional response to the literary work.
Interpretation involves four related
intellectual acts:
1. Observing
2. Connecting
3. Inferring
4. Concluding
Evaluation

An evaluation is essentially a judgment, an
opinion about a work formulated as a
conclusion. Our evaluation of literary works
involves two kinds of judgments:
(1) our assessment of their quality and value
(2) our assessment of the cultural, moral,
and social values they display.

Evaluation of a literary work, which is a complex
process, is closely related to our experience and
interpretation of it. It may change over time.
Rhetorical and Literary Devices
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1. annotate
2. annotated bibliography
3.analysis
4. argument
5.atmosphere
6. audience
7. characterization
8. climax
9. conflict
10. dialogue
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
diction
dilemma
engage
epiphany
flat character
foreshadow
genre
imagery
inference/infer
irony
Rhetorical and Literary Devices

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21. prose
22. round character
23. setting
24. static character
25. style
Literary Devices Quiz
You will have a quiz on the definitions of
the literary devices on:
“A” Day: Friday, August 29th
“B” Day: Thursday, August 28th
*You may find the definitions in the

Rhetorical and Literary Vocabulary Glossary.
*An electronic copy may also be found on
my CHS Teacher Page.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin

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Please bring your copy of the book to class
on the following dates:
A-Day: Wednesday, August 3rd
B-Day: Tuesday, August 2nd
The entire book is available on-line for free.
If you would like to borrow a hard copy of
the book from me, let me know asap!
How to Do a Close Reading
and
Annotations
“The Story of an Hour”


“The Story of an Hour” is one of Kate
Chopin’s famous short stories.
Vogue magazine first published the story in
its December 6, 1894 issue under he title
“The Dream of an Hour”. On January 5,
1895, Sue V. Moore, a journalist and friend
of Chopin, reprinted the story in St. Louis
Life, a newspaper in which Moore was the
editor.
“The Story of an Hour”


Over the years, the story was republished
again and again under the title “The Story of
an Hour”.
The story observes the classical unities of
time, place, and action. These unities dictate
that the events in a short story should take
place (1) in a single day, (2) in a single
location as part of (3) a single story line with
no subplots.
“The Story of an Hour”

French classical writers, interpreting
guidelines established by Aristotle for
stage dramas, formulated the unities.
Over the centuries, many writers began
to ignore them, but many playwrights
and authors of short stories continued
to use them.