Short Story Summaries Essay Example For Students

Short Story Summaries Essay Short stories, magazine articles, poems, essays, reports and many more forms of literature can be written with informative aspects in ways that are interesting. Authoras often prefer to gain the readers’ attention during the beginning lines of their pieces and to keep that attention throughout their writing. They do this by strategically using interesting and informative writing. This essay will show how authors use interesting and informative writing by reviewing four selected pieces of prose: Sherwood Anderson’s Hands, James Joyce’s Araby, Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, and Toni Cade Bambara’s The Lesson. Banbara’s ethnical essay, The Lesson, immediately jumps out as being judgemental. BAmbara catches the attention of her readers not only nby setting the scene and showing the characterization of her characters, but more profoundly, by showing the menatlity and immaturity of her leading lady who slams almost everything with insults. The Lesson is somewhat botherson because the reader must try to relate to the characters and at the same time must try to overlook the language to be able to understand what is going on. In addition, this story is filled with foul language. The reader understands that this is intended to show characterization but feels that this extremity could be better described with amouther choice of words. Bambara’s technique for giving informatiove and interesting information falls short in her four-page story. Hemingway’s choppy Hills LIke White Elephants leaves much to be desired. It takes the reader teh entire length of the story to half-way figure out what the subject is. Hemingway’s evasiveness regarding the subject confuses the reader and adds instability to the writing. Although he sets the scene quite descriptively and allows tthe dialogue to flow naturally, many would recommend that he actually say this story is about abortion. This emotional story would have been much more interesting and easier to follow if Hemingway decided to give his readers more hints that pointed to the subject of abortion. Joyce’s passionate Araby is a pleasant reading experience. Joyce is not the easiest author to understand; his wordiness and abstract views complicate his story structure. Joyce does, although, have excellent sensory details and uses down to earth colloquialism that make this piece very interesting. His first Person Perspective gives an additional edge that keeps the reader thinking about what might happen next. Joyve also informs his readers quite naturally just by telling them where things are, what they look like, how he feels and so on; a breath of fresh air that seems to be missing from many other pieces. Anderson’s detailed Hands seems very wordy. Although the reader easily feels that Anderson wants to over explian almost everything. Anderson does a great job with informative characterization throughout this piece. The ‘interesting’ aspect takes time to evolve. The reader wants to put the piece down several times to put scenery with the words because teh epiphanies seem to jump around sporadically. Anderson minimally describes the surroundings. If Anderson’s goal wras to let his readers fill in all athe blanks, he succeeded. Every author has his or her own way to include interesting and informative aspects in their writings. Some do this job quite well, others do not. Every piece of writing can not include every style of writing. The author has to chose which aspects he will emphasize and which ones he will not. The way the authors chose to make them interesting and informative are all different; some are more effective than others. Any peice written is subject to criticism. Readers’ opinions will also vary. This ‘give and take’ game of author-vs. -rader will continue to be interesting as ling as there continues to be no conforming of opinions.