Short Story Analysis Omnibus
Little Red Cap – Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html#grimm
Based off our in-class discussion of Vladimir Propp’s functions as the apply to folk tales, I’ve chosen to do a close reading of “Little Red Cap,” where I break down the story into its numerous functions. While “Rumpelstiltskin” and “Snow White” did not adhere perfectly to Propp’s model, this story conforms to it rather faithfully (with a few notable exceptions).
1. The Initial Situation:
· Little Red Cap’s mother explains that she must take the basket of food and drink to her Grandmother
2. The Interdiction:
· Little Red’s Mother tells her to not stray from the path while she is walking to her Grandmother’s house
3. Departure: Little Red Cap leaves home
4. Reconnaissance:
· The Wolf spies Little Red walking along the path and begins asking her questions: Where are you going? What are you carrying? Where does Grandma live?
5. Delivery:
· Little Red willingly gives this information to the Wolf
6. Trickery:
· The wolf tricks Little Red into straying from the path by describing all the beautiful flowers and birds in the woods
o "Listen, Little Red Cap, haven't you seen the beautiful flowers that are blossoming in the woods? Why don't you go and take a look? And I don't believe you can hear how beautifully the birds are singing. You are walking along as though you were on your way to school in the village. It is very beautiful in the woods."
7. Complicity:
· Little Red is complicit in the Wolf’s attempts to make her stray from the path, and is quickly distracted by the beauty of the woods
o “Little Red Cap opened her eyes and saw the sunlight breaking through the trees and how the ground was covered with beautiful flowers. She thought, "If a take a bouquet to grandmother, she will be very pleased. Anyway, it is still early, and I'll be home on time."
8. Violation:
· Little Red violates the interdiction put in place by her mother – she strays from the path to pick flowers in the woods
o “And she ran off into the woods looking for flowers. Each time she picked one she thought that she could see an even more beautiful one a little way off, and she ran after it, going further and further into the woods. But the wolf ran straight to the grandmother's house and knocked on the door.”
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As a result of Little Red’s violation of the interdiction, the Wolf is able to arrive at Grandma’s house long before her. As a result of the information gained through his reconnaissance, the Wolf is able to easily gain entrance to Grandma’s house.
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9. Villainy:
· The Wolf eats the Grandmother, puts on her clothes, and slips into her bed
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There is no real mediation or counteraction within the story, as Little Red is not made aware of her Grandmother’s fate, and thus is not able to act on it.
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10. Testing/Interrogation:
· Little Red arrives at her Grandmother’s house and comes face to face with the Wolf
o This specific part of the story could also be labelled as “Trickery,” since the villain is clearly disguised and attempting to take something from Little Red (i.e. her life). However, I chose to name this function an interrogation, as her confrontation with the Wolf is essentially a test: she is being tested on her ability to recognize the villain and act appropriately. However, she fails. She recognizes that something is wrong with her “Grandma,” but fails to put the pieces together and a result she succumbs to the Wolf’s villainy.
10. Villainy:
· The Wolf eats Little Red just as he ate her Grandma
11. Intervention of the Donor:
· The Woodsman passes by Grandma’s house and peeks inside, only to discover the Wolf. Hoping to save Little Red and her Grandma, the Woodsman cuts the Wolf’s belly open.
o This function is interesting because usually the function of a donor is to give the protagonist some magical item or other sort of assistance that enables the protagonist to face the villain – in this case, however, the donor (the Huntsman) preforms the act which resolves the villainy – Little Red has no agency within the story at all
12. Villainy is Resolved:
· As a result of the Woodsman’s actions, both Little Red and her Grandma are saved
13. Punishment:
· They fill the Wolf’s stomach with heavy stones, so that when he wakes up from his sleep, he falls down and dies
14. Conclusion:
· Little Red Cap learns that she should never violate the interdiction / stray from the path
There are essentially two things happening here; the main conflict of the narrative is the Wolf’s trickery and villainy in eating Little Red and her Grandmother: the drive of the story is in rectifying this villainy. However, this conflict only exists to demonstrate the consequences of violating the interdiction – the “moral” of the story, as explained by Little Red at the end, is that staying on the path and not talking to strangers is the right thing to do. The villain only exists within the narrative to teach this lesson.
[As a side note, I find it a little bit disturbing that the moral is the story is, at it’s core, teaching little girls how to avoid sexual assault. The Wolf clearly assumes the role of a predator, and his desire to eat Red – to consume her – is clearly tied to sexual desire. It’s also probably significant that Red is always associated with her Red Cap, despite the fact that it has absolutely no impact on the plot. Given the incredibly streamlined nature of folk tales, the cap is there for a reason. My interpretation is that it has to do with Little Red’s sexuality. The color red is often seen as a symbol of menstruation, and thus her Cap signals that she’s come of age – that she’s experienced a sexual awakening. Not exactly the type of thing you’d want to find in a children’s story. I suppose this ties into the fact that, in their original forms, these stories weren’t actually intended for children – they were tales for any folk person in Medieval Europe.]
The Last Question – Isaac Asimov
http://multivax.com/last_question.html
Widely considered one of Asimov’s best short stories, The Last Question is remarkable in that it takes the scientific principle of entropy – the idea that everything is slowly winding down and that one day all the stars will cease to shine – and uses it as a through-line to tell a story spanning trillions of years. For a weaker writer, doing this while also keeping the story understandable would be a challenge, but here Asimov accomplishes it with ease. In each scene of the work, of which there are five, someone asks the question: How can the problem of entropy ever be solved? To which the Multivac Computer (the only “character” that is present in every scene, who manages human civilization for trillions of years) answers that there is insufficient data. It has no answer.
This story is very interesting to look at from a narrative perspective, as the tale intends to tell a story progressing linearly, spanning trillions of years. As a result, there is no central human character, and no focalization. While the Multivac (whose name takes on several variations throughout the story, such as the Cosmic and Universal AC) appears in every scene, we do not follow its perspective – it is an unfeeling machine, appearing in the story only to answer the questions of the human (and later post-human) characters. Due to the aforementioned breadth of the story, and the resulting detachment from the emotional concerns of any one character, the narrator is completely omniscient. While the narrator does occasionally present the inner thoughts of the characters, these thoughts are never the focus. They are only ever presented through direct and indirect discourse because the narrator’s objective is only to convey immediately relevant information on a surface level, as to facilitate the breadth of the story. This, as well as the narrator’s detached omniscient perspective, once again reflects the fact that one cannot tell a story spanning trillions of years from the grounded, subjective perspective of a single person.
This is also seen in the fact that the story progresses linearly – there are no anachronices, retrospections, or other manipulations of order due to the fact that they would confuse an already detached and ambitious narrative. Asimov essentially streamlines the narrative to facilitate his telling of a trillion years of history in only 4000 words. While there are set scenes within the story (e.g two engineers getting drunk in the year 2061; a family flying to another star system; two aimless voices collecting interstellar gas) they are not in the story long enough to relate what came before. The characters offer no introspection or references to past events, as each scene is removed from the others by thousands and eventually millions of years. While ellipses are often used to convey jumps of hours or weeks, it is another thing entirely to transition trillions of years into the future scene-by-scene within a single story, and still make it work. It’s a testament to Asimov’s ability as a science-fiction writer.
In terms of the style and language of the story, the writing is largely scientific and clinical. There is a strong use of scientific language, such that you probably need to have an understanding of sci-fi tropes and ideas to truly get all of it. The narration and dialogue makes mention of things like entropy, stellar energy, supercomputers, and hyperspace. The only colloquial speech comes from the two scientists at the beginning of the story, as well as the proceeding scenes with the two parents and their children. This reflects their humanity. However, as the story progresses, and the characters become more and more alien to us, their speech becomes more clinical. While they still speak in a language we can read, they are distinctly inhuman, thus reflecting their place in history, and effectively demonstrating to the reader just how far into the future the story is taking us.
Slight Rebellion off Madison (1946) – J. D. Salinger
http://www.ae-lib.org.ua/salinger/Texts/UncollectedStories-en.htm#16
For my last story, I’m going to look at “Slight Rebellion off Madison”. It is, at least to my knowledge, the earliest story to feature Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye. However, unlike the novel, which is written in the first-person, this short story is written from a third-person perspective. Rather than internal monologue, the majority of the text consists of dialogue - mostly direct and indirect discourse. It’s still focalized through Holden (as he’s the only character present in every single scene), but as readers we’re no longer privy to his very distinctive internal voice. While the narrator will occasionally relay the feelings of characters (e.g. “He recognized Sally, as she hoped he would.”) or use slight quasi-direct discourse (e.g. by appropriating Holden’s mid-20th Century voice: “They made a wonderful thing out of the taxi ride home.”), these instances are few and far between. The narrator almost always only presents the external actions and dialogue of the story, and readers are left to puzzle out the depths of Holden’s internal struggle for themselves.
While this more subtle method of presentation is fine, I feel as though something is lost by not including Holden’s internal monologue – it’s the defining characteristic of the Catcher in the Rye, and the widespread love and appreciation of the novel comes from the fact that the audience is able to understand Holden’s intimate thoughts. The novel’s first-person, almost stream-of-consciousness narration creates a more personal tone and solicits empathy in the reader; the ultimate objective of the work is to create a connection between Holden and the audience. I’d argue that this is the same objective of the short story, and while it doesn’t achieve it as effectively, it still does achieve it: the style of Holden’s voice is still very distinct, and although it’s not as extensive as the novel, we’re still given a very good look at Holden’s character through indirect presentation.
In terms of style, the speech of all the characters in the story reflect the time in which they live, and the place in which Salinger was writing: 1940’s New York City. While the differences to modern speech are subtle, they’re there (e.g. “They made a wonderful thing out of the taxi ride home.” “Boy, I hate school!” “You oughta go on the radio. You know that? You're damned good, boy." "You wanna towel, fella?"”). All these examples recall the distinct, almost stereotypical New York voice.
Style is also seen in the fact that Holden speaks with very colloquial language, as to reflect the fact that he’s a teenager. The lose, rough, rambling, repetitious quality of his voice also serves as indirect presentation of his character:
"Sally, did you ever get fed up? I mean did you ever get so scared that everything was gonna go lousy unless you did something? … Boy, do I hate [school]! But it isn't just that. It's everything. I hate living in New York. I hate Fifth Avenue buses and Madison Avenue buses and getting out at the center doors.” … “But that's all I get out of it. See? That's what I mean. I don't get anything out of anything. I'm in bad shape. I'm in lousy shape.”
As I said, we’re not privy to most of Holden’s thoughts, so the reader can only infer his character through external actions and speech. From these examples of very lose, colloquial, language, we get the sense that Holden is very young and very confused – and most of all frustrated. From the actual content of his speech, we can infer that he’s very upset and psychologically unwell – that his problems extend well beyond teenage angst. While Holden says that he hates school, and New York, and everything in it, these physical places aren’t really the issue – Holden is. Getting away from them won’t solve his problems. Through his actions with Sally (e.g. taking her out on a date, making out in the back of a cab) one might assume that he’s handsome and charismatic (and on some level he is), but when he really begins to talk to her, to engage with her on a personal level, his flaws come out. He wants the two of them to run off and get married, and when Sally turns down his ridiculous idea, he chastises her. And then he calls her in the middle of the night, drunk. From both his actions and speech, we can infer that Holden is extremely troubled, sometimes irrational, and often unwilling to look outside his own perspective and think about things realistically.
If one was to analyse the story from a functional perspective, it would be extremely difficult, as functional analyses are often focused on a problem that is resolved by the end of the story. Slight Rebellion off Madison, however, has no clear resolution, no sense of closure. The problem of the narrative is Holden’s teenage anxieties and mental illness. The “lack” of the story is Holden’s absence of a sense of peace and self-assuredness. Each scene of the story is focused around Holden, in his own way, trying to connect to other people to resolve this lack; he’s looking for this assurance that everything will be okay. But ultimately he fails. The story ends not with a resolution of the narrative problem, or a fulfillment of the lack, but an image of Holden crying at a bus stop on Madison Avenue.
However, as you have made very clear throughout the semester, Holden is not actually a person. He does not fail because of his character, rather, his character was deliberately written with these obvious flaws to justify his eventual failure. He is deliberately written so that his language reflects that of an average teenager, and his struggle is similarly constructed to represent the average teenager’s search for meaning. His ultimate failure within the narrative comes about due to the author’s desire to realistically convey the fact that in life there are no easy answers. More often than not, the average teenager fails too.
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