Guide to Literary Analysis. Evaluating a Story

A close scrutiny of a fine literary text may be in itself a richly satisfy­ing and rewarding experience as it enhances our intercultural sensitivi­ty and awareness that there are universal truths and sentiments that bind us all. To be able to do it a student should be aware of the literary devices writers use to enrich their language and create complexity with­in a story. The short story is usually concerned with a single effect con­veyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form en­courages economy of setting and concise narrative; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed.

The way a story is presented is a key element in fictional structure. This involves the angle of vision, the point from which people, events, and other details are viewed, and also the words of the story. The view aspect is called the focusor point of view,and the verbal aspect the voice.It is important to distinguish between the author, the person who wrote the story, and the narrator, the person or voice telling the story. The author may select a first-person narrative,when one character tells of things that only he or she saw and felt. In a third-person narrativethe omniscient authormoves in and out of people's thoughts and com­ments freely on what the characters think, say and do.

The author's choice of characters, events, situations, details and his choice of words is by no means accidental. Whatever leads us to infer the author's attitude to his subject matter is called tone.Like the tone of voice, the tone of a story may communicate amusement, anger, affec­tion, sorrow, and contempt. One of the clearest indications of the tone of a story is the style in which it is written. In this sense, the notion of style means the language a writer uses and includes such traits as the length and complexity of sentences, the choice of words (abstract or concrete, bookish or colloquial) and the use of such stylistic devices as simile,

metaphor, synecdoche, etc. One of the chief devices is the symbol.It may be a person, an object or an action that represents something else because of its association with it. It is frequently a visible sign of some­thing invisible.

Every plotis an arrangement of meaningful events. No matter how insignificant or deceptively casual, the events of the story are meant to suggest the character's morals and motives. Sometimes a plot follows the chronological order of events. At other times there are jumps back and forth in time (flashbacksand foreshadowing).The four structural components of the plot are exposition, complication, climax and denoue­ment. Expositioncontains a short presentation of time, place and char­acters of the story. Complication is a separate incident helping to un­fold the action, and might involve thoughts and feelings as well. Climaxis a decisive moment on which the fate of the characters and the final action depend. Denouementmeans 'the untying of a knit' which is precisely what happens in this phase. Not all stories have a denouement, some stories end right after the climax.

Any work of fiction consists of relatively independent elements — narration, description, dialogue, interior monologue, etc. Narrationis dynamic, it gives a continuous account of events, while descriptionis static, it is a verbal portrait of an object, person or scene. It may be de­tailed and direct or impressionistic, giving few but striking details. Through the dialoguethe characters are better portrayed, it also brings the action nearer to the reader, makes it seem more swift and more in­tense. Interior monologuerenders the thoughts and feelings of a char­acter. The interrelation between different components of a literary text is called composition.

A short story is more than just a sequence of happenings. Its settingmay be no less important than the events themselves. The term setting is generally taken to include not only the geographical place in which the events in a story happen, but also a historical era, the daily lives and customs of the characters. Such details as the time of the year, certain parts of the landscape, the weather, colours, sounds or other seemingly trivial details may be of great importance. The setting can have various functions in a given story: 1) it can provide a realistic background, 2) it can evoke the necessary atmosphere, 3) it can help describe the char­acters indirectly.

Most writers of the short story attempt to create characters that strike us, not as stereotypes, but as unique individuals. Charactersare called roundif they are complex and develop or change in the course of the story. Flat charactersare one-sided, constructed round a single trait. If two characters have distinctly opposing features, one serves as a foilto the other, and the contrast between them becomes more apparent. Round

and flat characters have different functions in the conflict of the story. The conflictmay be external, i.e. between human beings or between man and the environment (individual against nature, individual against the established order (values in the society). The internal conflict takes place in the mind, here the character is torn between opposing features of his personality. The two parties in the conflict are called the protagonistand his antagonist.When the author describes the character himself, or makes another do it, it is direct characterization. When the author shows the character in action, and lets the reader judge for himself, it is indi­rect characterization.

The themeof a story is whatever general idea or insight the entire story reveals. In some stories the theme is unmistakable, in others, it is not so obvious. That is, it need not be a moral or a message; it may be what the happenings add up to, what the story is about. Frequently writ­ers are interested in suggesting rather than explaining the theme of a story, leaving it to the reader to infer, or deduce, the hidden meaning. They have a variety of means at their disposal, such as parallelism, con­trast, repetition, artistic details, symbols, etc. Indeed, plot, focus and voice, and character are not so much interrelated, as they are fused and inseparable.

There are few absolute rights or wrongs when it comes to analyzing a short story. Nevertheless, the underlying premise of our approach is that students must read each story twice at home.

The following questions may be useful in evaluating a story.