Literary Elements Of A Short Story

One of the many important literary elements in a short story is the narrator or the point of view of the story. The narrator in a story is the person who is telling the story and his point of view in it, there are many types of narrators such as participant, nonparticipant, all–knowing or omniscient, limited omniscience or selective omniscience and objective. Ashort story is a small prose narrative that has a fully develop a theme but is shorter than a novel. There are many different literary elements that compose a short story, such as narrative or point of view, character, setting, tone, and style, theme, plot, and symbol. All of these literary elements are fundamental to write a short story, you cannot have one without the other. The ...show more content...

An example of this is when the narrator says, "we did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that (Kennedy, 32)", the narrator is using plural first–person pronouns to tell the story. Therefore, we know the narrator is a character in the story, someone in the small town, but we cannot tell whom specifically. The nonparticipant narrator is the narrator who is not a character in the story, he tells the story from a third person perspective. Also, a nonparticipant narrator is able to see the thoughts of any of the characters in the story and refer to them as "he", "she", or "they". An example of a nonparticipant narrator is the story "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The story takes place in the year of 2081 where everyone is equal in every way and those who are above average have a handicap, the narrator shows a day into the life of George a handicap men and his wife Hazel. The narrator in the story "Harrison Bergeron" can often see what the characters are thinking, describes them from a third person point of view and has no participation in the story. As he states in the story "He tried to think about the ballerinas. They weren't really very good, no better than anybody else would have been, anyway (Kennedy, 193)". Here the narrator has the ability to see what George is thinking and refers to this character as "he" from a third person point of view. Another common type

Get more content

Short Stories Literature Review Fear can have different effects on human emotions. Sometimes fear can keep you from confronting a conflict or situation directly. Being fearful is not the right reaction to have. The right reaction is usually to be cautious. In the five sorties I read fear was a factor in how the character resolved their external or internal conflict in the story. All the short stories share the themes fear, conflict, deception, jealousy, vulnerability and closure. The audience for this literature review is for mature readers who may let fear affect their daily lives. This review was written to show how fear can overwhelm them if they do not take proper steps to confront your fear. Once the reader reads the review they can reflect on the topics for a better way to deal with something they fear. Fear is an overall theme of all five short stories. In each story fear influences the characters to react in different ways. In. "The Cask of Amontillado" Montresor had some type of fear of being constantly belittled. Once Montresor made up his mind to exact revenge on Fortunato he was also fearful of being caught. Fortunato was also fearful towards the end when he realizes that he is not being pranked. The story "The Masque of the Red Death" Prince Prospero is the ruler of countryside. Prince Prospero is fearful of dying of the illness and being lonely. In the "The Premature Burial" the narrator is scared of death, his condition, and being wrongly buried. The royal

Get more content