Short Story---- pg99, 100, 70 Eng B
Short Story
Short ; short work of fiction
Narrative which appeals to feelings
Selects small aspects of life or personality and develops it
Usually flat characters
Few characters, few traits for good focus
Limited time, plot, character/s and setting unlike the novel
Attempts to achieve a connection to readers swiftly
Economy of words like poetry but with maximum power
Has unity , economy and singleness of effect
Short story:--
Realistic Impressionist
Realistic--- narrative of action or event
Usually has unexpected twist of events
Characters
Conflict and characterization are very important to development
Conflict is normally physically
Characterizations leads to the revelation of theme
Structure usually follows the structure---
Introduction
Complication
Climax
Resolution
Impressionist:-
Deals with feeling, mood or thought
Psychological, concerned with revealing qualities of people and places
Point of view critical to understanding of the story
Events often loosely plotted more focus on characters growth in self –realization
Insight into characters, mood or human behavior
Analysis of Short Story
Use the 5 W’s
What happens ? (This asks about Plot? Structure)
To Whom does it happen? (This asks about Characterization)
Why does it happen?---(This asks about theme/concerns)….
Ask:__
Plot—is it loosely or tightly plotted?
Conflict?
The initial situation; complication; climax?
Qualities of character/ character changes
Setting and its influence on theme, action; character
Point of view
What does the title contribute to understanding?
Which element is dominant?
About the overall impact of the story?
POINT OF VIEW_/NARRATIVE FORM/VOICE pg. 29 Beka__Who tells the story
Why is point of view important?
Three narrative voices, either 1st person singular; or third person limited; or omniscent
Involved teller—protagonist
Outside looking in--- limited 1st person
Third –distance
Omniscient or limited
Know terms—narrator, protagonist, antagonist
Introduction format:_-See BEKA LAMB pg 56; 30
Make a comment about the story/play
Theme of overall work
Writer’s intent, setting , character, conflict
Incorporate comment on the actual question pieces
Eg.the issues, characters and story telling features of OLD STORY TIME (OST) make it appealing to the readers…it inculcates the imageries…
QUESTIONS:-
Write your response in essay format.
2 Watching Ms. Aggy’s story unfold involves being torn between admiration and condemnation.
A) Why do we admire Ms Aggy?
B) Why do we condemn her?
C) What is your final opinion of Ms Aggy? Justify your answer.
D) How is Rhone able to influence this feeling?
Themes In English B:----
Love/family relationships
Women in society
Attitudes to power and authority ( how do those who exercise authority do it?)
Dreams and aspirations
Heroism (courageous deeds), freedom (rights and liberties) and the individual and the environment
Themes in Poetry:-
All of the above in addition to
The supernatural poverty colonialism
Nature injustice discrimination parental expectation
Human cruelty loss of innocence childhood experiences
Deception faith in God death warfare greed
Questions on Prose:-
(Can be used for any story)
1 Briefly outline the plot of the short story given.
2 Classify the type of conflict shown.
3 What was the conflict/
4 How was the character viewed by the other characters in the story?
(refer to i) the children ii) the adults in the story)
5 Is there a difference between “Berry “ and Berry? Explain.
6 What were the main themes in this story?
7 How did the writer develop these theme
8 Account for the difference in the children and the adult’s attitude to Berry?
9 From whose point of view is the story told?
10 Write a character sketch of Berry?
11 How was the main character/protagonist presented
12 Explain the difference between the protagonist and the antagonist
13 What is meant by anticlimax, complications?
14
15
A "shabine" is a light-skinned, black person. Basically someone of Negro roots who has light/white skin. However not to be mistaken with an albino.
A connotation is a commonly understood subjective cultural and/or emotional association that some word or phrase carries, in addition to the word or phrase's explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation.
Both connotation and denotation are important for your understanding of literature. One book defines connotation this way:
The cluster of implications that words or phrases may carry with them, as distinguished from their denotative meanings. Connotations may be (1) private and personal, the result of individual experiences (2) group (national, linguistic, racial) or (3) general or universal, held by all or most men [sic]. The scientist and philosopher attempt to hold words to their denotative meaning; the literary artist relies on connotations to carry his [sic] deepest meanings.
So does the advertiser or the propagandist. In fact, we all use connotations all the time. However, the scientist and the philosopher try to control the use of connotations as much as possible because connotations can vary and be difficult to make explicit or to agree upon. Denotations, on the other hand, can be made exact. When we think denotatively, words can seem to be made to mean no more and no less than what we define them to mean. People turn to dictionaries to discover the agreed upon denotative meaning or they construct their own quite bounded meanings that they agree on. When reason is the strategy, neutral or clearly defined terms are preferred.
But when writers use words that have associations and emotional overtones that are harder to pin down or agree upon, they use them primarily to convey and create auras of contexts and emotional force.
The connotation of a word can be thought of as its aura or aroma, a kind of smell the word has. If you can tell the associational company the word keeps, then, that smell is meant to rub off on the words around it or the subject the word is aimed at. A word might connote guy talk, for example, if it is the word guys sometimes use. It then might connote a male or masculine world.
The denotative meaning of the word, dog, is a four legged, carnivorous, domesticated mammal known to biologists as canis familiaris. However, the connotative meaning would depend on the context of usage and the experiences of the interpreter. No one would call another person’s mother a "dog," unless they wanted a fight, because the connotation is one of insult. Names for animals frequently have connotative associations, and not all negative. Think about teams, for example, that are named for animals—strictly because of the connotations of the animal’s name: Bears, Rams, Jaguars. Think of some impossible team names, again because of the connotations: caterpillars, spiders, gnats, anthrax. Just think: "Bear down Chicago Gnats!"
If you search for connotations and denotations on Google.com, you will find hundreds of pages from the simple to the complex that will define Connotation and Denotation for you. Some involve exercises. If you work with these pages, you will gradually develop strategies for investigating the tone of a literary text through an examination of the connotations of its language. That is our goal--to work with literature. However, literature is not the only discourse that makes extensive use of the connotative capacity of language. Persuasion, propaganda, advertising are obvious users of connotations.
- Bedford/St. Martin's tutorial on poetry defines connotation and denotation and provides some exercises for help as well. Go there and work with the connotations in Elizabeth Bishop's The Fish. http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/denotate_def.html
- Check out these definitions from Bob's Byway: Connotation and Denotation (While you are on these two pages, check out his definitions of ambiguity and pun.)
- And here is the UVic site: connotation and denotation <http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/LTConAndDen.html>
- The Literacy Education Online page <http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/connotations.html> from St Cloud State suggests three categories for connoative words: favorable, neutral, unfavorable. Look at their table for examples.
- Finally, here is the most extensive explanation of all: Daniel Chamber's Semiotics for Beginners page on these two. We will return to his site for explanations of figures of speech as well. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem06.html
My solution is this. First we must think in terms of what difference is made when a poet or any writer choses one word out of a pool of synonyms that could be used? What shades of difference happen? But I am aiming for you to get a sense of it with these exercises:
Exercise 1 : Playing with triplets
Go to a little self-test quiz on connotative terms to see if you can pick the term that seems (to me at least) to leave the most favorable impression on a listener regarding the subject of the sentence.
Example:
Sentence: My mother thinks of herself as a ___.
a. home-maker
b. house-wife
c. stay-at-home wife
If the above were your choices for this sentence, you would choose the first term, home-maker, since the overtones of "home" are much more appealing for your mother than "house," and "making" a home sounds much more active and responsible. Notice, I did not make it easy by including really negative synonyms for her such as "ball and chain" or "old lady" or ridiculously positive ones like "domestic engineer."
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