¶ … narrative structure common to short stories of the past cannot be found in modern examples of the literary form, and that in short "nothing happens" in modern short stories. When one examines the modern short story on its own terms, however, exploring the text for what it contains and extracting meaning and action from the words on the page (and the words not on the page), rather than trying to read modern short stories according to the frameworks and preconceptions of the past, it becomes clear that this stance simply doesn't hold water. While it might be true that a direct narrative structure is less present in modern short stories than in examples from the past, it is far from true that nothing happens in the modern short story. An examination of two canonized and gripping short stories, William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" and Andre Dubus' "Killings," reveal that though narrative structure might have faded in important, character, setting, and even narrative distance can create very compelling "happenings."
Plot in the Modern Short Story
The "happenings" of a short story can generally be equated with the story's plot, and while this plot consists of the narrative events in a classic or traditional short story, it has increasingly been directly if not solely related to character development in modern short stories. Even when events make up a significant element of the plot, as they do in both "A Rose for Emily" and "Killings," the manner in which these events are communicated to the reader gives a stronger emphasis to character and the internal reactions to these events than it does to the events in and of themselves. In Faulkner's tale, all of the events of the story are related in the past tense, and in fact the titular protagonist of the tale...
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PARK The aim of my project was to create a short story, which combines the textual elements of fiction, plus illustrations ranging from digital photographs to illustrations. My goal was to be experimental and to satisfy a need that has not been done before. I was frustrated by the fact that there are hardly any fictional works that combine both text and picture and illustrations aimed at the adult audience. Currently,
But by using an 'instructional,' distanced format, the reader is able to both laugh and sigh at the same time, as the implied meaning of Diaz's phrases is slightly softened by the harshness of the satiric tone. The use of deliberately offensive terms like 'halfie' indicates Diaz's dual project of parodying racial and gender norms while also showing the humanity behind them. Even when talking about dating whites, Diaz elides
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