Reading a Story for Its Elements

1. 1 Reading a Story for Its Elements Literature: Craft & Voice Chapter 1

2. “Your job as a writer of fiction is not to present an ideal world but to try to present the world that you see and hear around you.” — John Updike

3. Craft • A writer creates a story out of material he or she has observed in the world and from incidents or feelings or moods in his or her own life. • But the result will not hold up well if the writer lacks a firm grasp of craft. Craft is conscious artistry.

4. Quotations on Writing • “A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." – Thomas Mann • "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." – W. Somerset Maugham • "There is no great writing, only great rewriting." – Justice Louis Brandeis • "I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter." – Blaise Pascal • “All writing is rewriting.” – Ernest Hemingway

5. Craft • As a noun, craft refers to the elements that comprise a story. • As a verb, craft refers to the process of making or fashioning a story out of those elements. Authors work hard to develop their craft. Writing seldom comes easily even to professional writers.

6. Elements of Fiction Craft involves the author’s use of the following major elements of fiction: • Plot– the artful arrangement of incidents in a story. • Character– the depiction of human beings (and non-humans) within a story. • Setting– the time and place of the story. • Point of View– the perspective from which the story is told.

7. Elements of Fiction • Tone–the implied attitude of the author toward the subject and characters of a work. • Style– the characteristic way in which a writer uses language, tone, and other literary devices and elements. • Symbol – the events and objects in a story that transcend literal interpretation. • Theme– the central ideas of the literary work, its underlying meanings.

8. Types of Short Fiction • Parables – stories that teach lessons through an implied moral, usually of a religious or spiritual nature. Jesus taught in parables. • Fables – brief stories that explicitly state their moral, and frequently feature animals as characters to satirize failings of human nature or character. Aesop’s fables have endured for over 2500 years. • Tales – narrate strange or fabulous happenings in a direct and swift manner, without detailed characterization and usually without intent to instruct.

9. Types of Short Fiction • Modern Short Story– The modern short story developed in the nineteenth century, • presented detailed representations of everyday life, • included more elaborate and dramatic scenes with generally more dialogue, • and was more concerned with revelation of character. • Poe, Hawthorne, and Chekhov are important early practitioners.

10. “A & P” In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits….

11. Discussion Questions • How does “A & P” function as a historical document? Consider how the narrator performs his job as cashier, the dress code, the items for sale, the A & P itself, and the Cold War backdrop. • How is Sammy’s predicament very human? Is he a convincing nineteen-year old?

12. Sammy Consider… • Is Sammy’s action heroic? • Whether heroic or not, is his action offensive or belittling to women?

13. Discussion Questions • Is Sammy full of teenage angst? Does he have an attitude? • Is he a rebel without a cause? • When Sammy quits in protest over their needless humiliation, does he act from mostly pure motives or does he want to impress the girls? • Is it this sincere sympathy that leads Sammy to quit in spontaneous protest?

14. Discussion Questions • Is Sammy sexist? Certainly, he sees the girls as sex objects, and he does dehumanize them, even after he says he feels sorry for them. • Do the girls need Sammy’s defense? Would they be able to handle such a situation on their own, if men would let them? • Is Sammy really a rebel or is he just embracing the values of a male-dominated culture when he defends the girls? • Would Sammy have quit if Lengel had reprimanded three males for shopping shirtless and shoeless?

15. “Story of an Hour” InspirationKate Chopin’s father died in a work-related accident when she was very young. The event may have inspired “The Story of an Hour.” Point of View Chopin presents the story in the third person, but the narrative voice looks most often, but not exclusively, into the consciousness of Louise Mallard.

16. Questions to Consider • Consider how this perspective influences the theme of the story. • By looking into primarily Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts, does the story become a kind of feminist text? • One that concerns itself with the opportunities available for women in the late nineteenth century? (Remember, this story was written some twenty-five years before women were allowed to vote.)

17. The Mallards’ Marriage If one were to ask Mr. Mallard if he and his wife were happily married, how do you think each would reply? Mr. Mallard and the couple’s friends and family believe the marriage to be happy. But Mrs. Mallard is decidedly unhappy. The day before the story takes place she “had thought with a shudder that life may be long.” What accounts for the discrepancy between what Mrs. Mallard feels and what everyone else perceives about the marriage?

18. The Mallards’ Marriage Mr. Mallard is a decent man. Mrs. Mallard thinks of his “kind, tender hands” and his “face that had never looked save with love upon her,” and wonders, however briefly, about her “monstrous joy.” She had a comfortable home and he cared for her. The marriage had all the trappings of what the culture would consider a happy marriage. What is lacking is the opportunity for Mrs. Mallard’s self-fulfillment.

19. Louise Mallard’s Epiphany As with many stories, “The Story of an Hour” builds to the protagonist’s epiphany, or moment of sudden realization. Read closely the passages leading to Mrs. Mallard’s epiphany, which is inspired by the “new spring life” outside her window. Note how the sounds, sights, and scents of spring arouse Mrs. Mallard’s senses and how “her bosom rose and fell tumultuously.” She then realizes that with her husband’s death her life is her own and that she will have “a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely,” and that she was now “Free! Body and soul free!” She felt the “very elixir of life through that open window.” Her joy was short-lived, however. When her presumably dead husband arrives home, Louise dies from a heart attack.

20. Discussion Questions The first sentence says that she has “heart trouble”? Is this trouble only physical? The final sentence reads, “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease – of joy that kills.” What is ironic about this conclusion?

21. “An Ounce of Cure” In “An Ounce of Cure,” Alice Munro presents a defining moment in her narrator’s life. “When I say I was expecting extravagant results, I do not mean that I was expecting this….”

22. Point of View It is clear to the reader from the consistent use of past tense, the level of vocabulary, and the mention of key events (first dance, college) that the narrator is looking back to her somewhat distant past. As a result, the narrator can tell her story with playfulness, self-deprecation, detachment, and even fondness. Although the incident caused her genuine pain at the time, she has long since come to terms with it.

23. Tone Consider how the narrator reports the devastating aftermath of her evening at the Berrymans. She was ostracized but uses humorous metaphors to downplay her pain. She reports rumors playfully rather than bitterly. Her final sentence reveals that she has even had the last laugh over Martin Collingwood. Throughout the story, the narrator keeps the tone light and playful, never letting the painful parts of the experience dominate.

24. The Narrator The narrator seems to be a somewhat typical teenage girl who, after being spurned by her boyfriend, takes drastic actions to dramatize her crisis. She enjoys her “self-inflicted misery,” the self pity, and the attention it brings her from friends like Joyce. The breakup makes the narrator feel older, more mature, as if she has now experienced a depth of suffering that links her with tragic film or stage heroines. Before her greatest scene, she describes the uncluttered space in the Berryman home to be like a “stage.” Consider her melodramatic actions leading up to her drunkenness: she plays a sad record, sits in the dark, notices the street light, the partially drawn curtains, and gives up her “soul for dead.” Do you sympathize and empathize with the narrator? Are you reminded of a moment of folly in your own life?

25. Significance of the Events The story is significant to the narrator for several reasons: • The episode is one of those revealing and embarrassing moments in teenage life when we are forced to confront how unsophisticated and how self-absorbed we are, or, put another way, when reality intrudes upon our delusions of self. • On another level, the incident may have brought the narrator closer to her mother, who, in a crowded household, might not have always been as watchful over her daughter as she might have – consider the narrator’s confession about the aspirin, “which was a mistake.”

26. For Further Consideration 1. Short stories often focus on a defining moment in a character’s life. Explain what the protagonists of “A & P,” “The Story of an Hour,” and “An Ounce of Cure” come to realize about themselves and their cultures? 2. How does setting function in each of these stories to reveal character? 3. Rewrite a portion of one of the stories from a different point of view. For “A & P,” you may write from Sammy’s perspective twenty years after the event; for “The Story of an Hour,” Josephine’s perspective, and for “Ounce of Cure,” the narrator’s perspective only days after her experience.