NCERT Book Class 11 English (Woven Words) Short Stories 1 The Lament

The Lament 1

SHORT STORIES

INTRODUCTION

A short story is a brief work of prose fiction. It has a plot
which may be comic, tragic, romantic or satiric; the story
is presented to us from one of the many available points of
view, and it may be written in the mode of fantasy, realism
or naturalism.
In the ‘story of incident’ the focus of interest is on the course
and outcome of events, as in the Sherlock Holmes story.
The ‘story of character’ focuses on the state of mind and
motivation, or on the psychological and moral qualities of
the protagonist, as in Glory at Twilight. Chekov’s The Lament
focuses on form—nothing happens, or seems to happen,
except an encounter and conversations, but the story
becomes a revelation of deep sorrow.
The short story differs from the novel in magnitude. The
limitation of length imposes economy of management and
in literary effects. However, a short story can also attain a
fairly long and complex form, where it approaches the
expansiveness of the novel, which you may find in The
Third and Final Continent in this unit.