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 History of the Short Story

Just how old is the short story? Old. It may not be the oldest thing in the world, but the short story has been around for a very long time. In fact, the earliest known short stories came from the tombs of ancient Egypt and date back to 3,000 B.C./B.C.E.

Short stories also circulated south of ancient Egypt.  A couple of these stories involved a spider named Ananzi. One was called “Ananzi the Spider and Turtle” and the other, “Ananzi and the Make-Believe Food.” Both stories taught lessons including treating others as you would want to be treated and avoiding greed.

The Bible also made its share of contributions to the development of the short story with stories such as Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, Moses and the Red Sea, David and Goliath, Daniel and the Lion’s Den (written between approximately 1440 B.C. and 164 B.C./B.C.E.) . Later in the New Testament, Jesus Christ used stories to make his points more effectively ( between A.D. 30 and A.D. 33).

India made its contribution to the history of the short story with the Jatakas and the Panchatantra Hindu beast fables. In the beast fables, talking animals made moral points and taught important lessons. Other famous animal tales in ancient literature included those told by the Greek slave Aesop. Aesop's Fables originated sometime in the sixth century B.C./B.C.E. One of the stories was the popular “Tortoise and the Hare.”

The Middle Ages witnessed the birth of Chaucer's famous Canterbury Tales (1387-1395). One of these is the “Miller's Tale,” a sultry tale of an old carpenter whose voluptuous eighteen-year-old wife, Alisoun, has a fling with a border who is an astrology student with the keen ability to predict the weather. However he is not her only admirer. A parish clerk named Absolon would also like a chance with Alisoun. But things go awry and both lovers find themselves getting burned in the end, one of them literally.   

Despite the greatness of all these stories, the short story did not reach the zenith of its true potential until the nineteenth century when mass marketing and commercial magazines made short stories more accessible to more people.

One such short-story writer who benefited from this era of mass marketing and commercial magazines was Washington Irving (1783-1859), now considered by scholars and critics to be the father of the modern short story. He is most remembered for his stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”

Instead of teaching a lesson, Irving believed that the primary purpose of the short story was to entertain. For instance, the “Legend of Sleepy Hallow” tells the story of a lanky school teacher who has a terrifying encounter with a legendary headless horseman. There is no lesson to speak of, just a literary thrill ride.

Later, Edgar Allen Poe and Anton Chekhov fine-tuned the short story giving us two distinct types: the well-made short story and the slice-of-life short story, both of which are still used today.