What do Thomas Hardy's short stories reveal about his society? Thomas Hardy was born 1840 and died 1924. He composed most of his writings between 1871 and 1912. From 1912 till death he wrote poetry. Hardy enjoyed writing short stories because he had realised that with the pressures and busy lifestyles of modern day life there was little time to sit down and read a novel. One difficulty of a short story is that it can't give in depth character analyses but they can gradually allow someone to make their own analyses judging by Hardy's content in his stories. They are succinct which made them successful. What is a short story? For Hardy a short story wasn't a tale that explained the details in two sentences and left the reader blank looking for clues as to where the story was going, the background of the story and who everyone was. Hardy's short stories gave as much detail as possible and if something was missing, it appeared later on, he consistently made sure the reader would keep up with the story and never rushed his stories, making sure the reader got the full jist of the story. A very simple example of this is in "The Superstitious Mans Story" where during the story Hardy includes a short paragraph which is told by the narrator of the story, it provides both the listener in and out of the story with a piece of missing information which we need to understand it fully, because in "The Superstitious Mans Story" there are two listeners, ourselves and Hardy's metaphorical Alias Mr. Lackland. Hardy's stories have a personal feel to them, when you read them he is talking to you, explaining and saying everything to you. For example "The Superstitious Mans Story" and "Old Andrey's Experience as a Musician" Hardy uses a conversational tone, he writes his stories in the way they would be told person-to-person, face-to-face as maybe travellers stories. Society has changed greatly since the time of Thomas Hardy, we no longer have the closeness and reliability that everyone had then. Hardy lived in a community and describes a community in his short stories where every member of the community knows everyone else, knows past and present members and they are able to tell stories about each of them. In this community everyone can rely on someone else, be it a friend or neighbour. A community like this is not found in cities as Hardy discovers when he moves to London in his early years, London was one of the first megalopolises. He was introduced to the city which he seen as a
Wilson, Kathleen, ed. Short Stories for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context and Criticism on Commonly Studied Short Stories. Vol 2. Michigan: Gale Research, 1997.
Academic colleagues like, David Greenburg, would have been exasperated, part from envy of McCullough’s ability in not only story telling but to sell and he would object to the approach of this book. The colleagues would tear at the lack of compelling rationale for an overused topic, as well as the scene setting, and meager analysis.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
In many short stories, characters face binding situations in their lives that make them realize more about themselves when they finally overcome such factors. These lively binding factors can result based on the instructions imposed by culture, custom, or society. They are able to over come these situations be realizing a greater potential for themselves outside of the normality of their lives. Characters find such realizations through certain hardships such as tragedy and insanity.
Story Time, by Edward Bloor, Harcourt: United States of America, 2001. 424 pages. Reviewed by Mar Vincent Agbay
“Short Stories." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010. 125-388. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. VALE - Mercer County Community College. 28 February 2014
Wilson, M. & Clark, R. (n.d.). Analyzing the Short Story. [online] Retrieved from: https://www.limcollege.edu/Analyzing_the_Short_Story.pdf [Accessed: 12 Apr 2014].
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson, 2010. 261-263. Print.
Short stories are temporary portals to another world; there is a plethora of knowledge to learn from the scenario, and lies on top of that knowledge are simple morals. Langston Hughes writes in “Thank You Ma’m” the timeline of a single night in a slum neighborhood of an anonymous city. This “timeline” tells of the unfolding generosities that begin when a teenage boy fails an attempted robbery of Mrs. Jones. An annoyed bachelor on a British train listens to three children their aunt converse rather obnoxiously in Saki’s tale, “The Storyteller”. After a failed story attempt, the bachelor tries his hand at storytelling and gives a wonderfully satisfying, inappropriate story. These stories are laden with humor, but have, like all other stories, an underlying theme. Both themes of these stories are “implied,” and provide an excellent stage to compare and contrast a story on.
Magill, Frank N., ed. Critical Survey of Short Fiction. Revised ed. Vol. 2. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1993. 7 vols.
Some of the characteristics of Modernism are: a desire to break conventions and established traditions, reject history, experiment, remove relativity, remove any literal meaning, and create an identity that is fluid. The rejection of history sought to provide a narrative that could be completely up for interpretation. Any literal meaning no longer existed nor was it easily given; essence became synonymous. Narrative was transformed. Epic stories, like “Hills Like White Elephants”, could occur in the sequence of a day. Stories became pushed by a flow of thoughts. The narrative became skeptical of linear plots, preferring to function in fragments. These fragments often led to open unresolved inconclusive endings. This echoes in the short story’s format. The short story functions in fragmented dialogue. Focusing on subjectivity rather than objectivity. Creating characters with unfixed, mixed views to challenge readers.
... In Teaching Short Fiction 9.2 (2009): 102-108. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.
1. If the narrator is the protagonist in this story, who (or what) is the antagonist? With whom (or what), exactly, is she in conflict? What does the narrator seem to want, and what prevents her from getting it?
A writer by the name of Thomas Hardy, was born on the second of June