Saturday, March 13, 2010

May's Realism vs. Romanticism

In his book, The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice, Charles May follows and outlines the progression and evolution of the short story. He begins with the birth of the short story as an allegory and ends with its progression to the more contemporary Postmodernist short story. As he outlines each step in the evoloution of the short story, May gives examples of the authors and their works that would fit into each step. Hawthorne and Poe wrote allegory, Chekhov and Joyce were linked in realism and Hemingway was a formalist writer.

In doing this part of the project I had some difficulty. Many students chose works by authors who were featured in May's book and thusly could flip to that section, read exactly what and why May would have classified them as and proceed with their project. I chose and author who May never makes mention of. This was not on purpose (I actually would have preferred an easier route to the solution to this part of the project), but nevertheless it made it difficult. In order to link "The Man in the Well" to May's theories regarding the evolution of the short story I read the descriptions of the various stages to see where I thought my story would fit in.

Upon finishing that task I believe May would have considered Sher's piece in the realism category, but more accurately in with postmodernism. To categorize a story as realistic it must contain "as-if-real" characters. It is my belief that Sher has created characters in his story that could be real. Although the story is fiction the characters could have very well been people Sher knew or even he himself. There is not one character in his story, from the children playing in the field to the man trapped in the well to the sobbing mother, that I belive is too far-fetched to exist.

As May points out in his book, "there is a clear relationship between Chekhov's sense that "in short stories it is better to say not enough that to say too much" and Hemingway's conviction that a writer "may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them (May63)." This notion of leaving things unsaid hold true for Sher's story as well. It might have been nice if he would have just told the readers what the children's motivations for not saving the man were, but it makes a more interesting story if the reader undertakes the mission of figuring that out for themselves.

In postmodernism, "contemporary fiction is less and less about objective reality and more and more about its own creative processes (May83)." Sher's story pushes into that category because it follows that ideal that the situation could be realistic, but at the same time not too realistic that is impedes the creative flow of the story. It is true that we can picture the characters as real people, the situation with the man in the well could certainly happen, but if the children followed the most realistic path of getting help immediately or at all then the story would be creatively less entertaining. While it is staged in realism it also undetakes postmodernism.

The beginning stage of the short story was Romanticism, which was made up mostly of allegorical short stories. In allegory the plot is based mainly on fanciful things that might never happen, but are used to convey some sort of message or moral. As was discussed in class, the allegory uses psychic projections of basic human fears/desires such as those used in "Little Red Riding Hood". While we could say that being tapped in a well could be the manifestation of the human fear of dark, cold, wet and clostrophobic scenarios thus making it an allegory, I believe it was Sher's intention to showcase the more realistic issue of what horrible things a human being will do to another if they ever get the chance.

The final point May uses to establish realism over romanticism is aesthetic patterning. This consists of patterns that appear within a story that we might not know why they are repeating. This occurs as we move from allegory to realism and can be seen in many places throughout "The Man in the Well". Some of the patterns we can figure out while others we cannot. A few that I particularly noticed were that of the sobbing mother (one that I could admittedly not figure out fully), the importance of the question about name, and finally that of the question regardng the rain. All three will be discussed in depth later in the project.

In conclusion, it is my belief that May would have lumped Ira Sher's story "The Man in the Well" into the category of realism and more specifically postmodernism as opposed to romanticism. "Postmodernist short fiction often makes its own artistic conventions and devices the subject of the story as well as its theme (May84)" and "the human meaning is communicated by the simplest of gestures and the most seemingly trivial of objects (May106)." "The Man in the Well" encompasses both of those statements.

1 comment:

  1. Oh I see that you don't know why the mother is crying either. I thought it was just me

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