Essay on "Short Story"

Unit-III
Prose

Short Story

Introduction

A short story is prose narrative briefer than the short novel, more restricted in characters and situations, and usually concerned with a single effect. Unlike longer forms of fiction, the short story does not develop character fully; generally, a single aspect of personality undergoes change or is revealed as the result of the conflict. Within the restricted form, there is frequently concentrations on a single character involved in a single episode. The climax may occur at the very end and need not involve a denouement, though many other arrangements are possible. Because of limited length, the background against which the characters move is generally sketched lightly.

The short story is a separate literary form. It must not be regarded as a shortened novel. The short story contains all the major elements of fiction, such as plot, characters, dialogue and setting. The short story tends to focus on a single plot, concentrates on one character or a very small set of characters, in a single setting and the main action covers a short period of time. The plot is usually not complicated. The short story is a concentrated form of prose narrative. The writing is economical and compact. The denouement (the final unfolding of the plot) is swift, and the ending is usually abrupt and open to interpretation. The short story can end in suspense, with a surprise, an anti-climax, an epiphany, or in many other ways.

1. Introduction

A short story could be defined as a short piece of fiction that concentrates on a single incident, a single character (or very few characters) or the creation of a single effect. It is marked by an economy of expression and tightness of form and can be read in one sitting.

2. Origin

Stories in one form or another, have existed throughout all history. Some three hundred years before the birth of Christ, we had such Old Testament stories as those of Jonah and of Ruth. Christ spoke in parables. The Greeks and Romans left us episodes and incidents in their early classics. In the middle Ages, the impulse to storytelling manifested itself in fables and epics about beasts, and also in medieval romance. In the middle of the 14th century, Boccaccio assembled a hundred tales in a book called The Decameron. In the same century, Chaucer wrote his framework collection, The Canterbury Tales. In the fifteenth century Malory, in Le Morte D Arthur, gathered a series of long narratives recounting the exploits of ancient knighthood.

3. Growth

Under Italian influence, prose romances continued to be translated and written in English during the 16th and 17th centuries. But none of these can be claimed as direct ancestors of the modern short story. In the 18th century, Steele and Addison evolved the tale with a purpose to drive home a moral. But the short story was recognised as a major literary form only in the nineteenth century. The decisive step, however, was taken in America about 1830 by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe who, both by precept and example, formulated the modern theory of Short Story writing. Each laid stress on a final impression' in the story, holding that' plot alone was not enough. Poe's influence on modern short story writers cannot be overestimated.

4. Modern Short Story writers

From America, the short story passed on to Europe and England. In England, Maupassant, Balzac, Anton Chekov, Leo Tolstoy etc., are its acknowledged masters. They are perhaps the greatest continental short story writers, standing alone in grace, wit and charm. Conan

Doyle, Galsworthy, Kipling, H.G. Wells, Somerset Maugham are a few of the many masters of this art in Great Britain. Mention should be made about the tightly constructed "surprise-ending story" of O.Henry. Afterwards, the short story came to be thought of as corresponding to a

"Formula" is a pattern that is still repeated in endless retellings of its limited variations in the popular short story today.

5. The impact of "Realism' and 'Naturalism'

Around the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the impact of realism and the advent of naturalism joined with the example of Chekhov's "slice of life" stories to force the "formula" open for the serious writer, and such masters of the form as Somerset Maugham and Katherine

Mansfield in England and Ernest Hemingway in America began producing short stories of great integrity which reflected the complex formlessness of life itself. Famous collections of short stories include Poe's. Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Dubliners by James Joyce, and Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.

6. Short Story to-day

Today, the short story is a very popular form all over the world and appears in almost every language. Famous writers of short stories include Anton Chekhov, Arthur Conan Doyle, D.H. Lawrence, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, R.K. Narayan, Isaac Asimov, Khushwant Singh and Alice Munro, to name just a few. The short story will long continue to meet the needs of authors and readers alike and to find new material for its special purposes in a constantly changing World.