Study the scene wherein the women, with an eye for little things, arrive at the truth. Is their solution stated, or is it suggested?
What do you deduce from the stove with the broken lining? From the crazy stitches in the sewing? From the bird-cage of the broken hinge?
What double meaning lies in the concluding sentence, “We call it—knot it, Mr. Henderson”?
Setting. Has the actual setting an influence on the characters with respect to the story action? How is the setting given in the finished narrative? How is it connected with the theme?
Characters. Make a list of the characters and state the reason for the existence of each with regard to the action, to the verisimilitude, and to the need for contrast. It is a difficult thing to focus clearly before the reader a character who never “comes on the stage.” Has Miss Glaspell succeeded in evoking for you the person and the individuality of Minnie Wright?
Does one desire in a story of this nature types or individuals? Which character should be most individual, here, as regards the author’s purpose?
THE SILENT INFARE
Starting Point. “Most of my dialect stories have some basis of fact in their incidents,” says Mr. Gordon, “and in them I have sought to depict phases of the life and characteristics of the negroes whom I grew up among as a boy, and have known more or less intimately since.
“‘The Silent Infare’ was a real occurrence, as was the pillow episode in ‘Mr. Bolster’; and the story of ‘Sinjinn Surviving,’ in Harper’s Magazine, is in its main features true. Nearly all, if not all, of the stories in the ‘Ommirandy’ book had some foundation of fact, and the characters are amplified portraitures of ‘darkeys I have known.’”
Classification. Not a short-story, in the limited sense of the term, but an interesting reflection of life in the story that is short. The action is not all directed toward one end; the main episode is almost incidental in the casualness of its occurrence—as incidents occur in life;—character is the connecting link between the earlier and the later stages of the narrative phases. Incidental action contributes, rather to character than to action; e.g., the business of the guinea nest is a high light on Ommirandy, on the boy, Tibe, and on the mistress of the house, whereas it has only slight suggestive value for the plot. Emphasis on the nest at the close emphasizes the realistic qualities of the story.