How to study "The best short stories"

Chapter 37: WHOSE DOG—?

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About This Book

A practical handbook analyzes a series of annual best-short-story anthologies and extracts the editorial values and technical habits behind successful short fiction. It surveys selected pieces to illustrate structure, point of view, unity, and regional color, and supplements close readings with author testimony and classroom experience. The work supplies study questions, exercises, and concrete advice on revision, pacing, and economy of form while stressing the need to balance artistic aims with the business realities of publication. Its aim is to train critical reading and disciplined practice for aspiring writers and students.

WHOSE DOG—?

Classification. This seven or eight hundred word short-story illustrates the extreme type. The setting is the end of a pier; the time, only a few minutes; the action represents a crisis in the life of one character, the village drunkard; the struggle—which culminates in the suicide of the drunkard—is between him and society. The unities are, therefore, well conserved; the singleness of effect is pronounced. It is a tour de force in its manipulation of story elements.

Is the motivation for John’s suicide sufficient?

What social relation does the policeman bear to the drunkard? What contrast does the author employ?

Thematic Value. Society is not arraigned: a case is posed. Has it propaganda value?