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71-7547 REA, Paul W esley, 1943- A TEACHER'S GUIDE TO THE MODERN AMERICAN SHORT STORY. The Ohio State University,Ph.D., 1970 Language and Literature, modern j University Microfilms, A XERQXCompany, Ann Arbor, Michigan THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED A TEACHER* S GUIDE TO THE MODERN AMERICAN SHORT STORY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Ohio State University By P au l Wesley Rea Ohio State University 19TO Approved by A dviser Department of English Education ACKNOWLEDGMENT I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Professors Wilfred Eberhart, John Muste, and Donald Bateman, whose encouragement and guidance have facilitated the comple tion of this project. i i VITA February 23, 194-3 Born - Detroit, Michigan 1960-1965............................. B.A., Eastern Michigan University 1965 ....................................... Teacher of English, Roseville High School, Roseville, Michigan 1965-196 6 ............................. M.A., Uayne State University; Substitute Teaching, Detroit Puplic Schools; trip to Northern European countries. 1966-1970 ........................ Teaching Assistant, English Department, O.S.U. Two trips to Europe. 1970 ....................................... Teaching in the English Depart ment, University of Northern Colorado. i i i CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I - THE EMERGENCE OP THE SHORT STORY AS A LITERARY GENRE................................................................... 9 Willa Cather "The Sculptor's Funeral" ............................. 36 "Paul's Case" .................................................... 39 Ring Lardner "Alibi lice" ......................................................... 43 "H aircu t" ......................... ........ 45 Sherwood Anderson "Hands" ......................................................... 48 " I Want to Know W h y " ............................................52 "The E g g "................................................ 56 "I'm a Pool" ......................................................... 60 P. Scott Fitzgerald "Winter Dreams" ................................. 63 Aosolution . ..... ..... o7 "Babylon R evisited" ........................ 70 William Faulkner "A Rose for Em ily" ....................... 74 "That Evening Sun" ........................................... 79 "Barn Burning" ...........................................................82 "Delta Autumn" ...........................................................86 \ E rnest Hemingway "The K i l l e r s " ........................................... 90 "H ills L ike White E le p h a n t s " ......................... 93 "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" .... 98 "The Short Happy Life of Francis K a c o a b e r" .............................102 "The Snows of K ilim a n ja ro " .............................105 iv CHAPTER I I I - -MASTERS OP THE THIRTIES AND FORTIES Katherine Anne Porter "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" . 110 "Flowering Ju d a s" ..............................114 John S teinbeck "The Chrysanthemums" ......................................119 The Red P o n y ......................................................122 William Saroyan "The Daring Young Man. on the Flying Trapeze" .................................. 127 James Thurber "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" . 131 Eudora Welty "Why I Live At The P .O ." ................................ 135 "Powerhouse" .......................................................... 139 "The Demonstrators" .............................................144 Robert Penn Warren "Blackberry W inter" ................................149 William Carlos Williams "The Use of Force" .... 153 Shirley Jackson "The L ottery" ....................................................156 CHAPTER IV - CONTEMPORARIES Flannery O'Connor "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" . 160 Ralph Ellison "King of the Bingo Game" ..............................165 James Baldwin "Sonny's B lues" ........................................... 168 Saul Bellow "Looking for Mr. Green" ......................................172 J.D. Salinger "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" . 176 Bernard Malamud "The Magic B arrel" ........................................ 180 Philip Roth "Defender of the F aith" .........................................185 "Eli, the Fanatic" ................................................. 189 John Updike ....................."A&P"..............................................................193 CHAPTER V - CONCLUSION AND CONFESSION.............................................199 BIBLIOGRAPHY . k. ..............................................................................................205 * V INTRODUCTION I write this, in 1970, in the midst of what I believe is a benign revolution in educational thinking. Given impetus by the youth movement's cry for relevance in subject matter and for genuineness in method, and led by older humanists such as Carl Rogers, John Holt, Neil Postman, and Charles Silberman, this re-thinking (together with my own experience) has led me to believe strongly that liberal education must be reconceived and re-activated. I believe that education simply must reach and interest students, and that it can best do this if it allows them to see that what they are learning holds real significance for their own present and future lives. Education will once again interest young people if it addresses itself as directly as possible to helping them begin to understand themselves and the confusing world in which they must live. For these purposes, modern literature is particular ly useful because it records, in language that makes it accessible to a young reader, modern man's attempts to comprehend and live with the characteristic conditions of modern life—alienation from god and man, the breakdown of traditional beliefs and values, the individual's feelings 1 2 of impotence before the enormous forces threatening to control and even destroy him and his species. Modern fiction is more useful for these educational purposes than modern poetry, since the latter has often become too difficult for the untrained reader. Though modern fiction can also be complex and obscure, it is less like ly to completely baffle the inexperienced reader. Once the student has begun to appreciate literature, thereby developing his sensitivity to language and expanding his awareness of the kinds of problems engaging modern artists, he can read modern poetry with greater satisfaction and understanding. My experience leads me to believe, with Marshall McLuhan, that we are entering an electronic age in which various media Increasingly compete with print for a person's attention. The increased sales of books not withstanding, young people are spending less time reading and more time viewing and listening than their parents did. Acid rock now preoccupies the TV generation. Truly fine films appear as regularly as excellent books, and a film requires only a few hours of a person's time. While I believe that films are enormously valuable for liberal education, and though I urge schools and colleges to build libraries with viewing centers and the complete works of Godard and Antonioni among their holdings, I still believe that modern fiction should become the single most formative 3 influence for the young person seeking to prepare himself a psychic survival kit. At this time, the cinema lacks the variety, availability, and repeatability which lit erature can offer the student. If modern fiction seems best suited to present educational demands, and if it is true that most young people are less willing to spend great amounts of time reading, it follows that students should read modern short fiction. By doing so, they can begin to involve themselves in the issues of modern life, which are treat ed fully in short fiction, just as they are in novels, and they can also heighten their abilities to respond emotionally, and intellectually to literature and life. If they deem it important, they can build a sense of contributions of the major modern literary figures. How ever, for students seeking education for personal growth, literature must not become an end in itself. Unfortunately, many teachers have difficulty meeting the needs of their students, for this is exactly what literature has become for them—a body of knowledge to be conveyed to someone else, not an experience to be shared. Therefore I preface this Guide with a warning, lest it be misused. In no way do I wish to encourage polite deference to authorities with the "right” answers, for teachers and students must constantly be teaching themselves to read literature more meaningfully. Nor do I want teachers to hide behind the august critics cited in my commentaries, 4 for students must learn, above all else, to inquire and react individually, to learn to raise and answer their own questions. How can a teacher who presumes to have all the acceptable opinions expect his students to learn to trust their own eyes and ears, which should offer rather different impressions? I consider any teacher who builds lectures from these materials to be abusing them; I have gathered them to emancipate the teacher from his anxiety that he may not have "enough to teach," in short, to free him to interact spontaneously and non-authoritatively with other students of literature and life. Confident that he is well prepared, this teacher can contribute to his perceptions