Terms to Know for Analyzing Fiction (Stories)
In addition to the pages where concepts are discussed (listed below), see the list of questions on pages 48-50. Terms are also in the glossary beginning on p. 2173.
Character: a person in a story or play. Pages 123-124, 126-128
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What we may know: personal and family history, personality, values, etc.
 How we may know it: The characters’ own actions, words, or thoughts; the narrator’s description; other character’s description of and behavior toward the character.
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A character may be flat or round, dynamic or static
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A character may be a foil for another character
Point of View: the perspective from which a story is told, the relationship between the narrator and the action. Pages 218-219.
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First-person (or participant): narrator may be a major or minor character, unreliable or naive
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Third-person (or non-participant): narrator can be omniscient, limited (or focalized), or objective (or dramatic); an omniscient narrator can be neutral or editorial
Plot and structure: The action of the story and how it is arranged. Pages 67-68 and 73
(bottom)-75
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Exposition
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Conflict, protagonist, antagonist
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Rising action, Climax, Falling Action
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Denouement, resolution, revelation
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Flashback, Foreshadowing
Setting: When and where the events in the work take place. Description of time, place, weather, etc. may contain imagery and symbolism. Pages 182-4.
Imagery is a general term for description that helps call attention to important ideas
(theme, character, etc.). Symbols are images that take on metaphorical meanings.
Pages 270-73.
Tone: the attitude of the narrator, or of the writer, toward the characters, events, etc.
Pages 341-42. Irony. Pages 342-3.
Theme: The significance of a work of literature; what it is “about” beyond a plot summary; the questions it raises or statements it makes about larger issues. Pages
304-307. Arguably, our text defines
“theme” too narrowly. A story (and especially a novel or a play) can have more than one theme, and we can legitimately identify as a theme a question the story invites to ask (without giving us an answer) or something the story simply invites us to feel or contemplate (like the grief, if that’s what it is, of the parents in the very short story “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”)