What is the difference between
poems, short stories, and novels?
Poems/short stories/ novels
• Short stories resemble poems—both tend to
rely on compression rather than expansion
• Short fiction –’the art of the glimpse’
• Short stories tell much less than novels do:
they demand that you understand and
evaluate characters on the basis of just a
few details and events
What are the elements of short
fiction?
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Plot and structure
Point of view
Characterization
Setting
Imagery
Language
Theme
Plot and structure
• Plot – What will happen next?
• Williams’s story – Is the girl concealing an
infected throat?
• Structure: ABCDE formula
• Action
• Background
• Development –takes the reader a step closer to the
main event
• Climax- peak moment of drama
• Ending –may relate to the beginning
Point of view
• A story may be told from a particular character’s
perspective or point of view
• First person – pronoun I
• The narrator may be psychologically complex
• How objective does the narrator seem in depicting
other people and events?
• How reasonable do the narrator’s judgments
seem?
Point of view
• Omniscient narrator – ‘all-knowing’
• A seemingly all-knowing, objective voice
• Describe Welty’s, Kafka’s,
Achebe’s,Mhafouz’s,Chekhov’s, and
Williams’s narrative voice
• Free indirect style – a narrator otherwise
omniscient conveys a particular
character’s viewpoint
Characters
• You may want to judge characters according to
how easily you can identify with them
• Reading a short story involves relating its
characters to one another
• Protagonist – when a particular character seems
to be the story’s focus
• Antagonist – in conflict with the protagonist
Setting and imagery
• The characters are located in a particular
place or setting
• Short stories vary in the precision with
which they identify their settings
• Short stories use imagery to convey
meaning –they appear in the form of
metaphors or other figures of speech
Language
• Title --usually you have to read a story all the way
through before you can sense fully how its title
applies
• Predominant style – not all stories have a
uniform style. Some feature various tones,
dialects, vocabularies, and levels of formality
• Dialogue – by reporting various things, characters
may provide you with necessary background for
the plot
Theme
• Theme --The main claim a work of art
seems to make
• An assertion, proposition, or statement
rather than a single word
• An observation or a recommendation
• What are the themes of Welty’s Williams’s,
and Chekhov’s stories?