Introducing…
Short Fiction
Short-Short Stories.
Symbolism, Point-of-View, Myth, and Themes in Short Stories
Guidelines for Class Discussion
• Each of us brings unique experiences and ideas to the works we
discuss.
• Respect each others' opinions. When you disagree with another
student’s ideas about a work, argue with the idea, not with the
other student’s personality or moral character.
• Be ready to back up your ideas/comments with evidence from
the text. (This is where annotating is useful.)
From Last Week: The Shortest Story
• Earnest Hemingway famously offered up the following six words
as the shortest short story in history.
“For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”
• How does this story fit into (or defy) the definitions of fiction and
narrative that you have read in your textbook?
• What about your own personal definitions?
Defining The Short Story
• On page 68, your textbooks defines some of the characteristics
of short story:
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Has roots in oral tradition.
Has specific expectations and limitations as a result of its brevity.
Is usually focused on a single incident
Has limited number of characters
Begins close to or at the height of the “action” of the story
“Is often focused around an epiphany or a moment of realization or
illumination in which something hidden or not understood becomes
clear”
• Sometimes the epiphany belongs to the reader and not to the
characters
• “Hills Like White Elephants” may be an example of this.
• Has anyone read it? If so, why is this a good example of an epiphany on
the part of the reader rather than the character?
Group Work With Short Shorts
Reading: “Snow” by Julia Alvarez and “Love and Other Catastrophes” by
Amanda Brown.
• Note: we will be reading a few of these other short shorts later in the semester.
Questions:
• Is each of these stories "complete"? What, if anything, do you feel is
missing?
• What is unique about the way each of these stories are told?
• How would the story change if it were not compressed?
• (compressed = short and packed with meaning in a small space)
• Can you identify a moment of realization or epiphany in each of these
stories? Is the realization experienced by the character or the reader?
• How is the realization significant? Is it related to the title in any way?
• Titles are often very significant in hyper-compressed fiction. Why do you
think this is?
• Practice annotating, looking beneath the surface.
• When your group finishes discussing these questions for one story, start on
the next.
• Each group should take notes and hand in ONE paper. (Please make sure
that all names, first and last, are on the paper you hand in.)
Going Beyond the Literal
Symbolism and “The Secret Lion” p. 401
We read literature on two levels:
• The first level is the literal level. It is important to
understand what happened on a literal level before trying
to analyze a story more deeply. Questions we might ask
while reading on a literal level are:
– Who are the characters in the story? What are their
relationships to each other?
– What happened in the story? What are the events that
took place?
– In other words, what are the “facts” of the story?
The second level is symbolic or figurative
• This requires us to look past the literal events that took place,
and discern meaning that goes beyond “this is what
happened.”
– What themes or ideas might various characters, events, and
objects symbolize?
– What meaning can we draw from the story that goes beyond a
literal interpretation?
– For instance, in the short-short “Snow,” which we read earlier, a
little girl sees snow for the first time and is afraid because she
thinks it’s ash from an atomic explosion. So what?
– Why do those events matter?
– What does the snow represent?
– What is the author saying about larger events? Putting this another
way, what might the story reveal about life, society, or the human
condition?)
Recognizing Symbols:
• From your text book: “A symbol is a person, object, action, place
or event that, in addition to its literal meaning, suggests a more
complex meaning or range of meanings” (292).
– Things that are symbolic are usually given a great deal of importance
in the work (this might be description, significance to a character,
etc.)
– They are also usually mentioned in or involved with important plot
points in the narrative.
– In “The Secret Lion”, for example, the most obvious symbol is an
object. But there are also events, places, and even a person that
act as symbols in this short story.
Questions for “The Secret Lion”
• On a literal level, what happened?
• What happened on a figurative level?
– What do the literal events mean?
– What ideas about the human experience is the author exploring?
• What are some of the symbols in this work? How do they
contribute to the story’s theme?
• Discuss with a partner. What are some important objects in this
story? How do they have suggest a more complex meaning than
their literal meaning?
• What is the antagonist of this story?
• An antagonist is a force or person that opposes the main character.
Setting and “The Secret Lion”
• The settings (the locations where the story takes place) are very
prominent in “The Secret Lion.”
• What are the settings that you feel are most interesting or
important to the story?
• What do each of those settings tell us about the characters in the
story?
A Critical Analysis of “The Secret Lion”
• “The Secret Lion: Everything Changes” on page 20 is an
example of a paper which critically analyzes the use of
symbols in “The Secret Lion”.
• I highly suggest you read it to get an idea of what its like to not
only write a paper about literature, but also how to specifically
analyze symbol in short story.
• Later in the semester we will be discussing how you can use a
variety of critical theories as “lenses” through which to focus
your analysis of literature
For Thursday:
• Thursday, February 20
• Topics: Discussing Short Fiction, continued.
• Homework Due for Reading Response:
• Read Neil Gaiman “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” p. 118-126
• Additional Assigned Textbook Reading!
• Not on your schedule! Write it down!
• no Reading Response necessary for this, but it will be extremely useful
for our discussion Thursday!
• Read “Point of View” p. 198-203 (about 4 pages)