Presentation. Who is the narrator?
Characters. Who, specifically, is Chautonville? Why is the description of his voice put before his physical personality? Value of the contrast?
Details. What determination of the narrator is used to create suspense? How is the determination overcome?
Try to recall other examples, in literature, of the power of music. Study its whimsical use in Kipling’s “The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat”; its use to recall the past in O. Henry’s “The Church with an Overshot Wheel.” See how it is employed in connection with the climax in Mary Synon’s “The Wallaby Track,” and in Kipling’s “The Brushwood Boy.”
What tonal values exist in the suggestion of sounds?
What relation exists between the rhythm and the theme?
Is the story pre-eminently one of theme, character, or setting?
LAUGHTER
According to Mr. Dobie, “Laughter” was a work of the imagination in every detail. It had nowhere a starting point from reality, though—as he says—he now and then draws a character from life, such as that of Josef in “Four Saturdays,” and he occasionally shapes an incident to the needs of the story, as he did in “The Failure.” In “The Failure” and other stories, however, as in “Where the Road Forked,” (Harper’s, June, 1917), he states that the incident was really a mere pivot or peg on which he hung a cloak of almost pure imagination.