The identity of the characters in a short story, novel, or any work of literature for that matter can significantly affect its plot and aside from identity, there are numerous indicators that a reader can use as a tool to predict a story’s outcome (e.g. tone, catharsis, among others). There are authors who can make a story that is very leading and there are those who prefer to do it in a misleading way. Either way, readers can always make fearless forecasts about what is going to happen in the end of a story and the only way to prove their theories would be to keep reading it until the end. This is basically the argument that the author of this paper is trying to prove by gathering evidences from the list of seven Best American Short Stories of 2008 that was created.
In the short story Admiral, the theme was animal identity. A dead dog named Admiral was basically cloned for some $250,000 because its owners could not move on from his death. Nisha, whose voice in the story was narrated by Boyle, was the African American woman who was the protagonist in the story. The conflict here was whether the cloned version of Admiral would really turn out to be the same dog or a different dog from the original one, despite them having identical physical qualities. In the end, it turns out that it was the latter.
The setting of Galatea was in a small town where Karen Brown offered the allusion that relationships cannot be perfect; that there will always be conflict. She wanted to prove this allusion so bad that she portrayed a toxic relationship between a young woman living in a small town and a man, and the two’s struggle for power in their toxic relationship. This story makes it, philosophically, hard to consider who among the two main characters is the real protagonist and antagonist, although technically it would turn out to be the young woman.
Man and Wife was a story about a man and his wife who was married after their marriage was arranged. The depth of the conflict and tragedy in the story can be estimated by the foreshadowing opportunity that this quote form the short story brings “Now I now Daddy explained that you’re going to be a wife, but do you know what that means” and “Yeah, I’ll go live with Mr. Middleton, I’ll have to make him dinner” . This created the image that the young girl who was forced into the arranged marriage did not have the slightest clue about being a wife. The conflict and the succeeding conflict resolution went down from there.
Virgin tells the story about Erica (the protagonist) and her experience as a virgin with her friend Jasmine, Michael, and Michael’s older brother, Ron. Jasmine (not a virgin) was not so fond of Michael because of her relatively advanced experience with older guys; at one point in the story he caught a smell of Michael’s sunscreen and said ‘you smell like food, I don’t know why you want to smell like food, maybe that works in Bronxville but ain’t nobody here gonna lick you cause you smell like bananas” . The catharsis of the story’s plot occurred when Michael realized that Erica slept with his brother although the author used the aside that they both liked each other. In this case, Michael’s brother can then be used as the symbol of an antihero in the story.
Straightaway was the story narrated from the author’s point of view where three men worked together to dispose an oil drum with unknown contents but possibly a dead body. When one of the men (Bark) asked “what’s in it”, the woman answered “I have no idea”, arousing suspicion among the men . Still they were willing to move the drum because of the monetary reward involved. The flashbacks helped them get a context of what just happened when they finally realized what was in the oil drum they carried.
In Bible, the setting was at the Hundred Club, the theme of the story was not about sex or money as some may have expected. In the story, the abductor said “This is not about money, drive, please” . Using the tone of the words as an indicator, everything began when Maureen was abducted; she felt fear of course, after all, it was a real threat. In the end, what transpired between the antagonist and protagonist was a brilliant exchange of stories and struggles.
And lastly Child’s Play; it was basically a flashback of a group of girl’s camping story where Verna (one of them) was eventually drowned by the others. The tone used by the author shows that something bad was going to happen to Verna. At one point, Marlene, one of the girls, revealed that there is something wrong with Verna that irritates and even haunts her “something that clings, in the way of love, though on my side it felt like hate” .
References
Piltor, H. (2008). Best American Short Stories 2008. Mariner Books, 01-384.
