ENGL 4310

I've been thinking all weekend about what defines a short story and also trying to remember some of the ones I've read in the past so that I can better define, for me, what a short story embodies. We talked about in class how a short story seeks to tell a story with a revelation whereas a novel seeks to tell a story with a resolution. Nearly all of the short stories from both Porter and O'Connor do have some kind of revelation at the end, but I was wondering if the definition I mentioned above applied to the reader or the characters in the story. In "He," "Good Country People" and many others, the characters ultimately have some kind of revelation and we are left wondering how they are changed by that experience. However, I have read other short stories that I felt left the main characters relatively unchanged at the conclusion of the story, while I, as the reader, have experienced some kind of revelation.

One example of a short story I was thinking of was Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat." In the story, we begin with four men (I think) stranded in a boat out in the ocean and the entire story focuses on their struggle for survival. At the end, all but one of the characters reaches land alive. Undoubtedly, these characters have been changed by this experience, but I don't feel like they had any kind of revelation. As I was reading, I didn't really feel like I had some huge revelation either. However, looking back on the story, there are several small things that I think the story was trying to point out. Since this story was created out of the literary movement of Naturalism, perhaps Crane was more focused on showing the reader the powerful forces of nature rather than giving us some deeper insight into the lives of the characters. If this is the case, I'm not sure that the previous definition applies.