Short Story Notes

1. Short Story Notes Mrs. BakahaiLitman

2. Unit of Study #1 Reading Focus: LiteraryShort Story

3. Essential Questions • 1. What arguable, 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?

4. Essential Questions • 3. How has writing become a communication tool across the ages? • 4. How does literature express universal themes?

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. FEATURES OF THE MODERN SHORT STORY • 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. THE METAMORPHOSIS • ONE SHORT NOVEL WORTHY OF SUCH HIGH PRAISE IS FRANZ KAFKA’S THE METAMORPHOSIS. SAVE THE DATEYou must have “The Metamorphosis” read, annotated, and the Questions for Reflection answered in the packet by: A-Friday, August 30th B-Thursday, August 29th

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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

20. 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.

21. How to Do a Close Reading and Annotations

22. “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.

23. “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.

24. “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.