Analysis Using Five Common Components of a Short Story

There are several ways to explore meaning in short stories when writing an analysis. Below are the most common parts of literature that readers use when they want to go beneath the surface to understand meaning. The web can provide hundreds of examples of how each of these components might be explored or understood, so feel free to investigate.  Here are my descriptive suggestions:

Plot

The simplest approach into a story is to trace the line of the narrative. How does the story begin? Where does it go? How does it end? Each question helps create a plot on a timeline to show readers the ebb and flow of action that takes place in a story.

While a conventional plot moves from some starting point (called "exposition"), building in "rising action" to a "climax" or crisis moment where some conflict or confrontation occurs, and then ebbing away in "falling action" to a "resolution," many stories deviate from the conventional. A good question to ask of any story is how does the plot compare to the convention? If it follows a predictable path, then decide where the climax occurs and what led up to it. Even if it is unconventional, decide where twists and turns occur and whether action rises or falls as the story progresses.

Character

Since a short story is primarily about one main character, you could certainly explore the nature and makeup of that individual as a way of understanding the story. Issues about behavior and relationships within the story could be teased out by examining, perhaps, the character psychologically: how is the character conflicted? How is the character motivated?

Or perhaps consider the moral conditions of the character: what are his/her virtues and vices? Do the character's values contrast with the other characters in the story? Or even consider how the character reacts in relation to others in the social dimension: who has power? Who has control? How does a character exercise or maintain that authority? Do characters rebel against the customs and beliefs of the story's community?

All questions of character can be tied together with theme or literary motif (see below). In our sample story, Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," we might write a critique of the story by examining Mrs. Mallard's need for freedom--what motivated her to want to be so desperately freed from her husband? The answer might tie in social issues about marriage and the role of women in late 19th century America. That theme of independence can be best illustrated by examining the character Mrs. Mallard.

Setting

Sometimes setting can be as powerful and influential as a character in a story. The stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Nathaniel Hawthorne or Charles Dickens are great examples where the environment and atmosphere created by the description of place shed much light on how the story might be understood.

Hemingway's story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" almost begs the setting to be seen as important to understanding the story. So does his story "Hills Like White Elephants." Even in Chopin's story, we could discuss how Mrs. Mallard begins the story at first "confined" to her room (what might that suggest?) and very soon turns her gaze to the window and the world beyond the room. Evidence is plentiful in that story to suggest that what she sees (her surrounding backyard, the trees beyond and finally the birds and blue sky) all symbolize a newly discovered release from her marital "confines."

To assess what a story's setting might be showing us, consider: does the author spend a good bit of time describing the scene where the action takes place? Does the setting strike you as unusual or at least constantly present during the story? Does the setting ever seem to mirror the behavior or moods of the characters? Quick answers to these questions might suggest there's more to the setting than background.

Point of View

Since this refers to how a story is told, you may make some deductions about the story based on who gets to tell it.  Authors make a very deliberate choice about narrators: Faulkner in his novel As I Lay Dying used almost every character in the story as a first person narrator to create a story composed of multiple points of view. Each had his or her bias and agenda so that reading the whole story reveals all of the resentments, promises, and greed that made the Bundren family haul their dead mother on a mule wagon across rural Mississippi to bury her.

If the story is told from the first person (narrator is identified as "I" and is a part of the story), how does that shape the story that gets told? Can you trust the information the narrator gives you? If the story is told from the third person (either omniscient, where the narrator knows all, or limited omniscient, where the narrator only knows as much as any one character in the story), how much information is revealed? Exactly who is telling the story? Even from an omniscient point of view, questions about what you're told and how much you're told should be asked.

In "The Story of an Hour," who gets to tell the story? Now consider the story from the husband's point of view--would a different attitude about the events produce a different story? How about from the point of view of Mrs. Mallard's sister, Josephine?

Theme or Literary Motif

I would recommend considering questions about theme or literary motif or meaning last. After reflecting on characters and plot and setting and point of view, you are then ready to make some assessments about the overall impact of the story.

Remember, good short stories contain several layers of meaning. Your assignment isn't about identifying the "one" meaning behind the story. But arguing for certain interpretations or understandings becomes the initial stage of crafting potential thesis statements. Consider the following for starters:

    1. Does the title suggest anything about the purpose of the story?
    2. Does any object or image or action stand out as significant in your reading?
        (Why a "goddess of Victory" for Mrs. Mallard?)
    3. Is there a pattern evident in the story (for example, images of spring in Chopin's story)?
    4. Does the story contain figurative language that points to deeper ideas?

Follow-on questions to these might also serve to expand the possibilities for themes in any good short story.  Practice the Socratic method in your discussions--asking questions of each other to understand why each of you says what you believe to be true in the story--and take notes on all that is said. Once you distill the information by re-reading the story in light of answers to these questions, you will be ready to construct candidate thesis statements and gather evidence from the story to support them.