Short Story
Short stories are a part of literature, which have their origins in oral story-telling traditions. A short story is, as the name is telling, not very long, and so, it is coming very quickly to its point.
A very famous example for an author of short stories is Edgar Allen Poe. He is in a way the inventor of short stories. Many authors like him made a collection of short stories and bound them in a book. Some of them became only famous, because of their short stories – some of them wrote anything else.
Characteristics of short stories:
There are a lot of characteristics for short stories, but an author is not forced to conform to all of these criteria.
- Not too many words (3500 – 7000 Words)
- (A short short story has got under 2000 Words)
- No (or a very short) introduction
- A immediate beginning
- An open ending
- A conflict situation
- Only one or two main characters
- Chronologically order (and flashbacks [Rückblenden])
- One Plot and not a lot of side events
- Some metaphors and similes
- The ending is the climax
- Location and time are not very good described
- One major conflict (The “hook”)
A Family Supper
The Plot is set in Tokyo, Japan. A student is coming back home from California, when he heard, that his mother died. She ate a fugu fish and died on its poison. His father picked him up from the airport, and told his son all the details. At home, they were waiting for Kikuko, the student’s sister. Kikuko and her brother went out in the garden and started talking, during their father was preparing supper. She is telling him, that she is smoking, but her father doesn’t know anything, and, that she has a boy friend, but isn’t sure, if she is going to keep him. Then she asked him, if he wants to stay in Tokyo, or wants to get back to America, and he told her, that he isn’t sure.
Before they were eating supper, the father is telling his son something about the kamikaze pilots in the Second World War. During the meal, the son recognized a photograph, but couldn’t see who was on it. His father was very angry at him, because he couldn’t remember his own mum. They were eating fish, but the father didn’t want to say, what kind of fish they were eating.
The story ends, when father and son were waiting for tea. It is an open ending, and so the reader doesn’t know, if the fish was a poisoned fugu, or not, and if they were all going to die in the next hours.
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