The method of the author shows that he is “a born story-teller.” He has an appreciation of the life about him, he has the gift of literary expression, and he writes perfect dialect. Interested in larger literary worth, he can afford to disregard the technicalities of the short-story—which may be, or may not be, a very well executed piece of work and still fall short of permanent excellence.
Characterization. Who is the main figure? What pictures of herself do her own speeches contribute? How does her attitude toward Mis’ Nancy emphasize the portrait? Mis’ Nancy’s relations with her emphasize what qualities? Does the author’s own comment help the reader to an appreciation of Ommirandy? Where?
Give several examples of contrast and comparison noticed in your studying the portrayal of the various figures.
Plot. Studying the leisurely progress of the story, should you pronounce it a growth or a construction? Is there a struggle? Is the main incident presented in its chronological order? How is it enhanced by being given through the words of Ommirandy, rather than from her point of view, as she looked through “de winder over de kitchen do’,” but in the words of the author?
Setting. What is the locale? Measuring the “local color story” by the dictum that it could have its action nowhere except in the time and place indicated, would you agree that this is a story of local color? What other Virginian has used similar scenes? What stories akin to this, in regard to the value of setting, do you find in Mr. O’Brien’s collections?
Mr. Gordon once said in a letter to Rudyard Kipling, so he states, that he regarded as the four best stories in the English language, “Wandering Willie’s Tale” (In “Redgauntlet”), Bret Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” George W. Cable’s “Posson Jone,” and Kipling’s “The Man Who Was.” In which of the four is the element of setting foremost?
General Method. “If I should venture to say anything about the writing of a short story it would be this: the first consideration is that the writer must have a short story to tell; and the second consideration that, after having learned by long and constant practice to write clear and vigorous English, he must tell the story naturally, after his own fashion. No one else’s fashion will do.”
This explicit statement of Mr. Gordon should be considered by every would-be writer of stories. Notice that he does not say nothing can be learned from reading other stories, or from studying their mechanism. Would his own stories be what they are if a long line of American writers had not preceded him? Would Shakespeare have written his dramas if his immediate predecessors and contemporaries had not lived? In another age, when another literary genre was foremost, Shakespeare would have foresworn drama for the prevailing style.
THE CAT OF THE CANE-BRAKE
Starting Point. Frederick Stuart Greene wrote this story out of his experiences and observations as an engineer in certain Southern districts. The pine woods, the wretched cabin, the cane-brake, the rattlesnake, the brogan shoes—these are concrete instances of his familiarity with the setting. The immediate germinal idea lies in an incident he recalled of seeing a severed rattlesnake head fastened to the leg of a man in camp.