The Two Basic Forms of the Short Story Part 2

While Edger Allan Poe, among others, perfected the well-made short story, Anton Chekhov perfected the slice-of-life short story. As I pointed out before, the slice-of-life short story is simply what its name implies: a slice of life. It is a slice or piece of time, or more specifically, what occurs during a certain period of time. It doesn’t follow the typical story structure in the sense that it builds to a climax in the same way a well-made short story does.

Chekov’s idea of the short story differed from that of Poe and many of those who came before him. To him the short story was like a mosaic, little pieces put together to create a larger picture. Many of his stories lacked plot, a dominant characteristic of the well-made story.

One great illustration of this is Anton Chekhov’s short story “Misery.” This story depicts an evening in the life of a Russian sledge driver named Iona who has just lost his son. It begins like this:

        The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the
        street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer
        on roofs, horses’backs, shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver,
        is all white like a ghost. He sits on the box without stirring, bent as double
        as the living body can be bent. If a regular snowdrift fell on him it seems
        as though even then he would not think it necessary to shake it off. . . .

  

We see from this introduction that our main character is a bit despondent. He sits hunched over, not seeming to care about the snow that is accumulating on his back.

His first customer of the evening is an impatient Russian officer. 

      “Sledge to Vyborgskaya!” Iona hears. “Sledge!”

       Iona starts, and through his snow-plastered eyelashes sees an officer
       in a military overcoat with a hood over his head.

     “To Vyborgskaya,” repeats the officer. “Are you asleep? To Vyborgskaya!”

The officer gets in and Iona drives on in a rather distracted manner almost running into others.

      “Where are you shoving, you devil?” Iona immediately hears shouts
       from the dark mass shifting to and fro before him. “Where the devil
       are you going? Keep to the right!”

     “You don’t know how to drive! Keep to the right,” says the officer angrily.

After getting the sledge back on course, Iona then tells the officer how he has lost his son.  However while telling the officer the details of the situation, Iona continues to drive off course, almost running into pedestrians. When Iona turns back around to the officer after once again getting back on course, he finds that the officer has closed his eyes and is no longer inclined to listen.

His next group of passengers consists of three rowdy young men. One of them he calls the hunchback because he is shorter than the other two and is hunchbacked. The hunchback is loud, obnoxious, and rude. Iona and the hunchback have this exchange:

     “Well drive on,” says the hunchback in his cracked voice, settling
       himself and breathing down Iona’s neck. “Cut along! What a cap
       you’ve got, my friend! You wouldn’t find a worse one in all Petersburg. . . .

  

     “He-he! . . .he-he! . . .” laughs Iona. “It’s nothing to boast of!”

     “Well, then, nothing to boast of, drive on! Are you going to drive like this

      all the way? Eh? Shall I give you one in the neck?”

After some small talk among his passengers, Iona tries to let them know that his son has died. The hunchback responds:

     “We shall all die, . . .” says the hunchback with a sigh, wiping
       his lips after coughing. “Come, drive on! Drive on! My friends,
       I simply cannot stand crawling like this! When will he get us
       there?”

He tries one more time to tell his passengers of his pain, but to no avail.  After a slap on the back of Iona’s neck and more small talk, their ride comes to an end and once again he is left alone. He decides to call it a day and goes back to the stables. There he tries once again to tell a fellow driver of the loss of his son, but the man does not listen. So he must turn his attention to the only one who will listen—his horse.

     "Are you munching?” Iona asks his mare, seeing her shining eyes.
     “There, munch away, munch away. . . .Since we have not earned
       enough for oats, we will eat hay. . . .Yes, . . . I have grown too old
       to drive. . . .My son ought to be driving, not I. . . . He was a real
       coachman. . . .He ought to have lived. . . .”

Iona goes on to lament that his son has died for no reason. Chekhov ends with this:

     The little mare munches, listens, and breathes on her master’s hands.
     Iona is carried away and tells her about it.

As you can see, the story has no plot but simply portrays a moment or an evening in the life of this man, Iona.  It is, in a sense, a slice of time taken from his life. You may be asking what it is that holds stories like these together since they have no plot. What is it that makes them worth reading?  According to professor Laurie Rozakis of Farmingdale State Universiy, it is the character’s moment of realization or epiphany. Or, you could call it an Ah-ha moment. Whatever you choose to call it, it is essential to the success of your slice of life short story.

Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn. The Art of the Short Story. New York, NY: Pearson Longman, 2006.

Laurie E. Rozakis, Ph.D. Creating Writing for Dummies. New York, NY: Alpha Books, 2004.

The Two Basic Forms of the Short Story Part 1

Although there are arguably ten or more types of short stories, especially when you get into the different genres, professor Laura Rozakis says there are really only two basic forms: the well-made short story or the slice-of-life short story.  The well-made short story is one consisting of a definite beginning, middle, and ending. More specifically, it has a well-defined plot and tells a complete or thoroughly developed story. The other, the slice-of-life, is just that—a slice of life. You could think of it as a moment extracted from a particular point in time.

Although most short story writers tend to write their stories in the well-made fashion, Edgar Allan Poe was a master at it. Take for instance his story “The Black Cat,” which is the story of a man’s slow descent into madness resulting from alcohol abuse. This story begins with the narrator awaiting execution. He then proceeds to tell the reader how he got to such a place. Here is how it begins:

 

"For the most wild yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul."

 

The narrator goes on to tell of his love for animals and how he and his wife shortly after they were married adopted a number of pets—birds, goldfish, rabbits, a fine dog, a small monkey, and a black cat. He is most fond of the cat, calling it his favorite pet and playmate. However his relationship with the cat, as well as with his wife, begins to deteriorate with his growing affinity for alcohol. He becomes impatient and intolerant of the smallest irritations. He comes home one day intoxicated and tries reach for the cat whom he thinks is avoiding him. The cat swiftly bites at his hand, causing him to perform a cruel act. He explains:

       

"One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nutured, thrilled every fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity."

 

 

The sight of the cat becomes unbearable to him; therefore, one day he takes the cat and hangs it from a tree near his home. Following this, his house catches on fire and burns down except for one wall. The wall becomes another reminder of what he has done when he realizes that there is a bas-relief upon the wall of a gigantic cat with a rope around its neck. He soon reasons that someone had taken the cat down from the tree and had thrown it through his open window to get his attention, and when the walls began to fall, they fell so as to press the cat into the plaster creating the imprinted image.

 

Sometime later, after the terror of the incident has passed, he comes across another cat at a local pub. Like the first, this cat also takes to him and follows him home. This cat is similar to the first in appearance, and his wife immediately takes to it. He, however, does not. Still haunted by his previous crime, he finds himself despising the new-found cat.

One day the cat follows him down to the cellar of the old building he and his wife are living in. Here the narrator describes what happened:

        

"One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness.Uplifting the axe, forgetting in my wrath the childish dread which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded by the interference into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried thr axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot without a groan."

With his wife dead, he goes into a panic over what to do with her body. After milling around a number of possibilities, he finally decides to wall her up in the cellar. Once he has completed the task, he realizes the cat is nowhere to be seen and begins to bask in his freedom. On the fourth day of his new-found freedom, there is a knock on his door. It is the police. Confident in his handywork, he takes the police down to the cellar to show them his newly built wall. To demonstrate the strength of the wall, he decides to tap on it. This of course proves to be a colossal mistake, for from behind the wall emanates a continuous scream or howl—the cat. At the sound of the wailing, the authorities quickly begin tearing into the wall, and here is what happens:

        

"Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party on the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and awe. In the next a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb."

 

So as you can see, this story, like many of Poe’s other stories, is well developed with a clear beginning, middle, and ending, or more importantly, a plot. It follows the classic story structure.

                                     

To be continued in Part 2

The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Castle Books: Edison, New Jersey, 2002.

Laurie E.Rozakis, Ph.D. An Idiot's Guide to Creative Writing. New York, NY: Alpha Books, 2004.