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Guide to Literary Analysis. Evaluating a Story

  • A close scrutiny of a fine literary text may be in itself a richly satisfy­ing and rewarding experience as it enhances our intercultural sensitivi­ty and awareness that there are universal truths and sentiments that bind us all. To be able to do it a student should be aware of the literary devices writers use to enrich their language and create complexity with­in a story. The short story is usually concerned with a single effect con­veyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form en­courages economy of setting and concise narrative; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed.

  • The way a story is presented is a key element in fictional structure. This involves the angle of vision, the point from which people, events, and other details are viewed, and also the words of the story. The view aspect is called the focus or point of view, and the verbal aspect the voice. It is important to distinguish between the author, the person who wrote the story, and the narrator, the person or voice telling the story. The author may select a first-person narrative, when one character tells of things that only he or she saw and felt. In a third-person narrative the omniscient author moves in and out of people's thoughts and com­ments freely on what the characters think, say and do.

  • The author's choice of characters, events, situations, details and his choice of words is by no means accidental. Whatever leads us to infer the author's attitude to his subject matter is called tone. Like the tone of voice, the tone of a story may communicate amusement, anger, affec­tion, sorrow, and contempt. One of the clearest indications of the tone of a story is the style in which it is written. In this sense, the notion of style means the language a writer uses and includes such traits as the length and complexity of sentences, the choice of words (abstract or concrete, bookish or colloquial) and the use of such stylistic devices as simile,

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