A Deeper Look at Short Stories

Genre Study: Roman Fever by Edith Wharton Roman Fever by Edith Wharton is a typical frenemies-style story that follows two women, Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade as they revisit the city of Rome with their daughters, after many years away. Roman Fever also happens to fit into the category of a short story. Edgar Allan Poe defines a short story through its “unity of effect and impression” and Brander Matthews enhances this definition by saying short stories, “show one action, in one place, on one day. A short story deals with a single character, a single event, a single emotion, or a series of emotions called forth by a single situation.” Although Roman Fever doesn’t fit into every exact aspect of this definition, it certainly comes close, whilst also broadening the definition beyond Poe and Matthew’s contained characterization of the genre. Roman Fever is able to maintain a singular place and day in the present, but offset the situation with flashbacks and reflections of the past that a...

Sentence Analysis: “It was an honor to have T’Gatoi in the family but it was hardly a novelty.” (Butler, 53) Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild” portrays the odd and disturbing relationship between a human boy, Gan, and an alien (Tlic) creature by the name of T’Gatoi. T’Gatoi is the motherly, commanding alien creature of the story's world who takes a parental role over Gan. The sentence, “It was an honor to have T’Gatoi in the family but it was hardly a novelty.”, depicts how although T’Gatoi was a familial aspect of their life, there was something not entirely conventional in the way she was associated with them. The sentence reflects T’Gatoi’s long-standing involvement with Gan’s family and foreshadows how their relationship isn’t necessarily moral to most people’s standards or appropriate in any way. The seemingly innocent phrasing of the excerpt copies the manipulative persona of T’Gatoi and how she uses her closeness to Gan’s family to get what she wants. T’Gatoi’s relationship with...

How does E.M. Forster’s, The Machine Stops , fit into the science fiction genre, and how does it compare to longer pieces of literature in the same genre? The science-fiction nature of E. M. Forster’s, The Machine Stops , is evident almost as soon as the story begins. Dropped in the middle of a picturesque scene of the protagonist's daily life, readers come to the understanding that Forster has created a dystopian universe in his short story. Dystopian universes are often a subset of the larger genre of Science Fiction, as dystopian worlds are just the futuristic version of a science fiction one, and Forster's story is just that. He portrays a dystopian world in which all humans are confined to individual hexagonal housing spaces, as the outside world has bec ome unsafe and too overwhelming for anyone to live. The eminent themes of dystopian society provide both positive and negative renditions of what living within “The Machine” is like. The Machine is this story's version...