prompts: the short story

As we start the writing phase of this project, there’s still time to reflect back on the short stories we’ve read—and we’ll also want to do some thinking about what we learned about the form. So here are a few questions you might want to take up about our texts, their relationships, and our sense of the genre category they represent.

1. In class, one major question we had about “The Cheater’s Guide To Love” was about the relationship between the protagonist and the narrator—both in this particular story and in general. What do we notice about that relationship in “The Cheater’s Guide To Love,” and what does it point out to us about short stories?
2. We puzzled over the question of “abolishing Hades” that comes up at the end of “The Diamond As Big As The Ritz.” What’s going on with Hades in that story? What effect does it have on the tone of the story? What role does it play in the ending?
3. When we discussed “The Lottery,” we considered the question of who—if anyone—is really in charge in the village. Some of us argued that the people (men) in charge of the ritual are in a position to manipulate its outcomes to their own advantage, and that’s potentially true (even if the story doesn’t show that happening), but it’s still true that even they don’t always get their way. How do you think this story distributes power or authority? Why is that important?
4. Both “The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” describe societies deeply intertwined with an act of sacrifice. What’s consistent between them about the societies they represent, the central act of sacrifice, and their ways of depicting those things? What’s not? Are both stories metaphors for the same society or societies? Do they share a moral outlook, or do they have different messages?
5. In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” some people decide that they can’t accept the bargain that continuing to live in their utopian society demands, and they walk away. But none of them intervenes—and the story itself doesn’t point that out to us. Does that change our sense of the story’s moral argument, if we think it has one? And does it change our sense of the story as a moral authority?
6. Those two stories were grouped in a week called “Stories of Societies.” Are there any of our stories so far that couldn’t plausibly be put in that category? Why or why not? And does that mean anything about the short story as a form?
7. What’s up with the fascination with stories in “The Husband Stitch”? We were intrigued and puzzled by Machado’s references and relationship to stories, including the directions that the story gives for reading it out loud—this was a question we flagged in class for more thought. How does this story treat other stories? What do we notice about the role they play? Are they the same kinds of story as the one we’re reading, or something different?
8. When we talked about trying to define literature early in the semester, one thing we considered that it might need is plot. How much plot does a short story need? “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” spans only a couple of hours, and all that happens is that four people sit around a table and drink a bottle of gin and talk. “The Diamond As Big As The Ritz,” by contrast, features an action-adventure plot full of big events. Is there a minimum? How might we define plot? What role does it play in the short story as a form or genre?