Commenting on a short story. Plan

Commenting on a Short Story   .

t      Theme: in essence answers the question what the story is about. There are stories about family relations, love, friendship, or on the anti-war theme.

It shouid not be confused with the message or the main idea: a broad topic like life and death or some aspect of the writer's philosophy.

2. Short Summary: A brief and comprehensive presentation of facts, essential points, a concise commenting on events described in the story,
3. Plot: is what happening in a story. It is the relationship of the incidents to one

another in a meaningful pattern of action and movement beginning with the exposition or introduction of the main situation, scene and character. It includes the setting which links the plot to a specific time and place. It plays an active part in presenting the whole story, establishing mood and may even reveal the aspects of the protagonist character, Then follow complications or development of a story, a climax, or turning point at which the action reaches its peak and moves towards a solution and the denouement, or resolution. There are different ways in which fiction writers develop plots. In some stories the incidents occur in strict chronological order, they follow one another according to a time sequence, moving from the beginning of the action to the end. In others the time sequence may be rearranged. The authors may present the conclusion first and then work toward an explanation of it or introduce information about the past relevant to the present, without interrupting the narration for a long time (flashback).

Another method of establishing unity in a story is foreshadowing: hinting what is to come through an incident, symbolic detail, dialogue or the title.

IV. Narrative Method: The first person narration. The story may be told by the main

character (the protagonist) or by a minor character.

This type of narration has immediacy, authority and naturalness, the speaker persuades you of the truth of the story because he is the eyewitness. However, disadvantages of first-person narrators are that they can be biased observers or participants who reveal only one aspect of situations and may be unreliable or unsympathetic and opposed to the values implicit in the story. The third-person omniscient author reproduces the characters and comments on their actions, analyzing and summarizing them. The third-person observer-author speaks in a neutral fashion, from outside the action, merely recording the speech and actions of the characters. The weakness of the third-person narration is that the author, or narrator, reports everything at second-hand and does not always reveal actions in a direct way.

Characters: in a story, there are different types of characters: a major, main 
character, or protagonist, and minor characters: a foil, with distinctly opposing 
features to another character. The characters may be described directly or indirectly 
-through their actions, speech, psychological portrayal, appearance, environment or 
their names. They may be involved in conflicts: internal (an individual against himself, an individual against environment, another individual), to individualize, particularize and specify the characters, the writer may resort  to various stylistic devices and means of expressiveness relying on his power to make his words convey more than they actually say. The character may also reveal himself in inner monologue or in a stream of conscience. In the first, the character's thoughts come in forth in orderly fashion. The purpose is to show what the character is thinking. In the stream of conscience the protagonist's thoughts come forth as a daydream, with no logical order. The purpose is to show how, as well as what the character is thinking.

4. The TONE (MOOD) of a story is the light in which the chareachters and events are depicted. It may be formak, informal, serious, humorous, ironic, unemotional, matter-of-fact, dramatic, lyrical, cheerful, dry etc.
5. The LANGUAGE of a literary work:

1. Colloqual (short elliptical sentences, direct word order in questions, contracted forms, colloquialisms, phrasal verbs, etc.

2. Literary (long, complex sentences, formal vocabulary, terms)
3. Expressive or Neutral