Essays on Short Story

As readers we pore over words and words and words. Through the earliest reviewer’s of James Joyce’s Dubliners tended to see the work as a group of completely unconnected short stories, more recent commentators have pointed out there is a definite structure to the sequence...

The Town of Dawndale wore the night as its cruel second skin. It had been twilight hour and the moon was full, casting emotionless shadows along the horizon. Under the cover ni of darkness, hazy grey clouds deteriorate under the fluorescent silver beams of the...

Everyone has dreams and desires, but sometimes these can make it hard to think of someone besides one’s self. In the story “Raymond’s Run,” Squeaky is a determined and confident girl who is in the process of refining her value and personality. At the beginning...

The short story “Letters from My Father”, written by Robert Olen Butler, and the poem “The Writer”, written by Richard Wilbur, both depict family struggles. “Letters from My Father” is about a Vietnamese girl who grew up without a father because of troubles with immigration...

James Joyce’s short story “The Boarding House” is a story that largely examines the nature of identity and perception. More specifically, the text examines the lack of autonomous identity as a self-defining idea in favour of a means of contextualizing oneself within society. Joyce is...

The connection between history and art is similar to the law of Causality in physics, otherwise known as the “cause and effect” law. As history progressed through multiple ages, fashions, and mentalities, so did artistic styles and tendencies. Art is important to the historic field...

When a storm hits, it strikes with a sudden climax, and fades away into oblivion. In The Storm, a short story by Kate Chopin, an adulterous affair occurs during a rainstorm between Calixta, mother to Bibi and wife to Bobinot, and Alcee, husband to Clarisse....

Chekhov’s stories often describe the little intricate moments in Russian life, focusing in on one character’s experience of a normal event and in doing so commenting on the character themselves. Agafya is one of Chekhov’s longer short stories, and is told from the perspective of...

Sister Lilith is a short story written by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers that tackles the reconfiguration of the origin of man’s existence on earth. The character of Lilith, the first wife to Adam, functions as the protagonist and narrator of the story. She gives the reader...

In the short story, “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, follows Sylvia and her group of friends as they explore a new world. Sylvia and her friends are led by the educated and successful Miss Moore out of the slums of their predominate African American...

In Our Town, Thornton Wilder develops the idea of appreciating life because what’s taken for granted will eventually be taken away then you ended up missing what you least appreciated. The play takes us to a small town and we see how simple life is,...

In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the main character is seen to be insane. He tells us he is not a madman, but only has some type of nervous disorder, and gives examples to justify himself. Many people in the...

Perfumes are often fragrant, pleasant smelling liquid-based products that many people employ in their everyday lives. Whether it be part of a daily routine, or strictly for special occasions, there is no doubt that perfume today plays a fundamental part in an individual’s personal identity...

I really did not know what to write about, but I was reminded this morning as I stopped to fuel the car up, of one of my most embarrassing moments since I moved back “home”. It was an early morning and I was off to...

Dorothy M. Johnson’s short story “A Man Called Horse” transgresses some of the conventions of the classical Western genre. In this sense, Johnson’s text can be read as a “revisionist Western”, in so far as Johnson does not merely adhere to the dominant norms and...

The fictional world of Haruki Murakami is famously populated by solitary people. But they like stories and do not mind telling them. A characteristic feature of Murakami’s novels is that they draw references to many stories or tales which are totally unrelated to the primary...

Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word, paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me...

James Joyce’s Dubliners is a fearlessly candid portrayal of his native city, providing his readers a glimpse of a “dear dirty Dublin”, and to his countrymen “one good look at themselves”. Joyce’s collection of stories, virtually chronicling the stages of maturation within a human life,...

“Araby” by James Joyce is a short story whose basic external story is easy to follow. However, typical of Joyce, it is actually deeply layered allegorical story, with autobiographical themes and references to medieval, religious, and classic references. Though when the story is read for...

Much of Dubliners revolves around the weary contemplation of mortality, the apex of which appears in the novel’s endpiece, “The Dead,” which serves as the perfect counterpart to “The Sisters,” bookending the collection of stories with a cyclic emphasis on the intersection between life and...

Life is an unexpected combination of ups and downs. This continues to be true and evident in James Joyce’s short story “Araby”. This story is centered on a young, unnamed boy who is undergoing many challenges. These include family issues, first love, and growing up...

Robert Olen Butler’s story “Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed” is narrated by the ghost of a victim who died on the Titanic, whose spirit continues to haunt the waters in which he dwelled. Making his way from the ocean, to a cup of tea, and...

The most unique and well distinguished American of the 19th century was writer Edgar Allan Poe. He was inspired by events that occurred in his life and decided to make a living by writing about them, he also became one of the first writers to...

In The Storm, we are first introduced to Bobinôt and his four-year old son Bibi. They are waiting out a storm in a store while Calixta, dutiful housewife to Bobinôt and mother to Bibi, is home alone. When she notices the oncoming storm and steps outside...

Setting is one of the most significant elements in a story. It also has various functions in literature. In general, it is a place where the chain of the events exists, where people live and then discover their own existence. However, by examining the setting...

In the short story The Shining Houses by Alice Munro, Mary is a young inquisitive mother who explores the lives of her neighbours in the community. The story follows her day on the way to a child’s birthday party, the characters in the story all...

Tom Perrotta’s Bad Haircut is a collection of short stories about Buddy, a boy growing up in New Jersey in the 1970s. In these stories, Perrotta often introduces characters who bear false facades that do not resemble their true selves. Later on in the book,...

In “The Monkey’s Paw,” author William Jacobs delivers a cautionary tale about unexpected consequences and how achieving what we wish for might prove catastrophic in ways we would not expect. This terrifying story follows the White family who receive a talisman, a monkey’s paw that...

Raymond Carver’s preferred method of delivering information to readers in his short story “Cathedral” is one that is entirely coherent with the underlying theme of the impact of alienation and isolation upon those who fail to master the art of communicating with others. Carver employs...