The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven setting

The Setting of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a bit different than other settings as in a way it sort of seems like there is two settings but there is only one. Also Seattle is mentioned more than the reservation which may some think that the setting is Seattle but it starts at the reservation and ends there as well which shows that the setting is the reservation. Seattle is more like a side setting and the 7-11 is just a place. Seattle of course is in the past so its more of a side flashback setting but not even close to the main setting. The reservation of course is the main setting even if its near the beginning and end of the story. So the circle plot is incorporated into the story as the type of plot by ending at the reservation the same place the story began at. Also it seems like more characters in the story exsist outside the main setting and most of the time the main character seems like he's the only one there even though he isn't the only one on the reservation. As for the Seattle the main character lived there for a while but still those parts are memories throughout the story as flashbacks. Also it suggests that while a setting may be the main setting it doesn't have to seem like it and in a way the reservation doesn't seem like it is the main setting.

General Statement-Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" seems to say that power is held by professionals and males of a family.

Annotated Bibliography

(Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, 1993, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)







This story is narrated by the main charcter who is Indian. In the beginning he says its to hot to sleep so he heads out and goes to a 7-11. He has quite a few flashbacks which give more to the story and adds a lot to the style of the writing. He goes on and points out racial issues and profiling. He speaks as if he never fits in. Also he mentions he knows the cost of things in a 7-11 because he admits he works in one. He goes over how he has returned to the reservation and how he left his girlfriend who is back in Seattle. He gets back home and still cannot sleep. He mentions how near the end of the story his ex-girlfriend calls and asks how he is doing and he says how he is working and has stopped drinking. As for the sleep promblem he feels no lose there because he says "I know how all my dreams end anyway," and they all seem to end with him dying which kind of shows that he doesn't give a damn about himself or anyone else in the end.















(Atwood, Magaret. Happy Endings, 1983, Short Stories for Students)







This stories style differs from most in the fact that it is broken up into 6 different parts and it may have the same death ending the scenarios and roles change up a bit in the first three parts. Then, from part three onward its one storyline and the last part is just the author talking about how writing the beginning of a story is easy but the middle is the most diffucult part. As a writer myself I must argree with her assesment. Section A has the two major charcters getting married. (Later Fred and Madge take over the main roles) Mary and John are in love and have two children, live together, and die in the end. Section B Mary is the only one in love with John but John isn't in love with her. He only uses her for sex and eats her meals but never once does he take her out for dinner. Mary is hoping if she stays at it he'll fall in love with her or a nicer side of John will come out. Her friends later inform her of John being seen in the restraunt with another women named Madge. Mary doesn't get mad becasue John's with another women, its the fact that he never once has taken her to a restraunt. So she drugs herself and leaves a note hoping John will come and take her to a hospital and save her life. John never comes and Mary dies. Section C the roles are flipped. John is much oldier and worried about losing his hair and he loves Mary but Mary only feels sorry for him and she loves someone else named James but James has to much freedom still left in his heart to settle down. John is married to Madge and he says a commitment is a commitment and stays with Madge even as he cheats on her with Mary. Mary is only really staying with John because he is a oldier man and can keep it up longier. She get tired of hearing him gushing on about his wife though and he even tells her in a way he loves her. Later James enters the scene and Mary and him get high. John catches them and with his handgun shoots and kills them both and then blows his own brains out. Madge mourns but then marries again to a man named Fred. Section D goes over a bit of Madge and Fred's life. A tidal wave kills many but Fred and Madge manage to stay alive. Section E goes over how Fred has a bad heart and dies but this time Madge doesn't marry again. Instead she devotes herself fully to charites. Section F is some last words from the author to the reader.















(Baldwin, James. Sonny's Blues, 1957, Sonny's Blues)






This story is about someone named Sonny but Sonny's brother narrates the story. Sonny's brother is in fact a school teacher. The events are arranged to show the building of a understanding bewteen the two brothers. After the narrator's (Sonny's brother who has no name apparently) daughter dies he decides to reconnect with his brother or at least try to. Sonny had spent jail time for peddling heroine and he has alot of built up anger and pain. He takes a possible turn for the best with his discovery of jazz. He starts to play and enjoys it very much but at the end the reader know that Sonny's fight with his drug addiction can sway either way, for good or for bad.











(Bambara, Toni Cade. The Lesson, 1972, Blues ain't No Mocking Bird)





This is fairly complex. Sylvia is a African American and seems to be mad at everything along with her friend Sugar. Ms.Moore is a African American lady who decides to teach the young kids things that live in the neighborhood. Even though Ms.Moore teaches the kids Sylvia doesn't like her. Ms.Moore then one day decides to teach the kids the value of money. During Ms.Moore's dicussion Sugar says "american democracy isn't fair because most can't rise to wealth," which angers Sylvia. Sylvia is either the person who can't or won't admit that she understands the social system of america. She's too angry at the world to care. She runs away from the group and at the end she is thinking over the day's events by herself.











(Kincaid, Jamaica. Girl, 1978, At the Bottom of the River)





Girl is a long non-stop sentence and it leads right into the story with no beginning set-up. So immediatly it differs in writing style than most stories. The never ending sentence is also not just any non ending sentence but a dialogue bewteen a mother (narrator) and daughter. The mother is teaching her daughter how to be a proper lady but it clearly show throught dialogue the mother is not very good at communicating, even though she does have her daughter's best intrest at heart. This shows how women have been treated and are taught to be like. It shows the believe of some that women are inferior to men.











(Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper and other writings)





A women married to a man named John is kept in a room to herself under doctors orders in the hopes that it will cure her depression. As time goes on the room to her becomes like a prison. We see this through her eyes because she writes in a journal that her husband doesn't know about. The walls have strips like bars and the window is barred thus adding effect to the prison look. Then as her mental state deterates she starts seeing other women in the walls and their relationship becomes fairly interesting. At points it looks like they are reaching out for her. She then goes insane. She get on the floor on her hands and feet and begins to crawl along the wall. Her husband comes in and sees her and in shock he faints. She doesn't stop, she jsut steps over her husband. This has a similar gender theme to it like Girl.









(Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman Brown, 1835, New England Magazine)




Goodman Brown goes on a evening journey. Throughtout the story it seems Goodman Brown is presented with evil personally from the devil himself. He doesn't walk with him but with the people who walk beside him. The story is fairly confusing but religious themes is strong in the story.

(Connor, Flannery O'. A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1955)
Flannery O' Connor's stroy is told by a third person narrator, but the focus is on the Grandmother's perspective of events. The Misfit another character is a escaped murder and he later runs into the grandmother and her family. One by one each member is killed. Till at the very end the grandmother is killed. It seems like every person in the story is religious but not very kind. Religion is a key theme in the story.

(Carver, Raymond. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, 1981, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love)

This is a love story about two couples. Mel and Terri as well as Nick and Larua. They are drinking gin and tonic at a kitchen table in Albuquerque. The major theme is true love as the two couples talk about it. Mel, Terri's husband can't grasp romantic and emotional characteristics attributed to the heart, but ironically he is a cardiologist thus knowing about the physical properites. The concept of true love eludes him throughout the story.

(Guin, Ursula Le. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, 1973, New Directions)

A utopian society in which Omelas' happiness is made possible by the sacrifice of one child for the sake of the group. Symbols and images try to illustrate univeral truths. The narrator never idenitfies him or herself. It seems like the narrator is ignorant of the people of the city of Omelas and their lifestyles. A child must be kept in filth, darkness, and misery for the utopia to last. Thus a major them is morality. The people didn't know of this till the child comes of age. Disgust and shock presents itself coming to the surface by the people. The story ends with a quote, "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exsist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

(Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, 1955, Leaf Storm)

A very old man with enormous wings is a short story that begins with a couple, Pelayo and Elisenda, finding a very old man in their courtyard during a stormy afternoon. They watch in astonishement, the enormous wings attached to the body of the old man as he struggles to get up from the mud. The couple attempts to communicate with the old man but are unable to as he speaks in a different language. Their neighbor comes over and lets them know that the old man is an angel who has come to take their sick child. Pelyao locks the angel in a chicken coop overnight. Early the next morning the local priest, Father Gonzaga, with the rest of the community in town, test the old man to determine whether he is really an angel, with debated results. Elisenda, tired of having the community at her house, decides to charge an entrance fee to see the angel. The family becomes rich and builds a mansion with the money collected. The crowd soon loses interest in the angel as another freak has arrived in the community. The new town attraction is a woman who disobeyed her parents when she was young and was transformed into a tarantula, and now tells her misfortunes to the audience. In order for her to continue telling her stories, the people of the town tossed meatballs into her mouth as it was "her only means of nourishment." Meanwhile, no longer trapped in the chicken coop, the angel is free to roam around the house until one day he leaves the house and flies off away inot the distance.

(Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Harrison Bergeron, 1961, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)

In the future everyone is equal. The handicap general makes sure people use handicaps to make everyone the same. George and Hazel is Harrison's parents. He busts into a studio and sayss he is the emperor and a ballerina becomes his empress. As they dance the handicap general busts in and kills them. Hazel is crying over it but then she can't remember why. By making everyone equal the bar for everyone is lowered. Structual features of the story is narrated but the characters also make the story move foreward as well. A major theme is equality and it shows what could happen if we try to hard to make everyone equal.

(Kafka, Franz. A Hunger Artist, 1922, Die Neue Rundschau)

This story is told primarily from the perspective of a "hunger artiest," who fasts for up to forty days at a time while sitting in a cage scattered whtih straw, which is placed on display in a public location, as a form of mass entertainment. Near the end the hunger artist dies. The hunger artist is buried with his straw and a young panther takes his place in the cage. A major theme is the joy of life as the hunger artiest can't partake in it as he is locked up and unable to escape.

(Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivener, 1853, Putnam's Magazine)

The narrator is an elderly lawyer. Bartleby is the strangest man he has ever known. Bartleby answers a employment ad put out but later in the story sensing promblems, the narrator asks Bartleby to leave but he rejects the narrator. Later he conveys a rumor that shed a brief insight into Bartleby's life. Though Bartleby has good intentions hsi failures caused him to lose in the end. Morality seems to a play a key role as a major theme in the story.

(Crane, Stephen. The Open Boat, 1897, The Open Boat)

Stephen Crane's The Open Boat is not a story about four ship wrecked men, but the relationship between man, nature, and fate. The entire time, the four men are upset with the two virtuos being, which are referred to as people, but they do nothing to upset the two. Upsetting either would result in their end, and throughout the story, they make it clear that they just want to endure the treacherous water. The captain, the cook, the correspondent, and the oiler are survivors of a shipwreak and are trying to make their way ot solid ground. The captain, who is both old and wise, is injuried, but still in command of the small 'dingy' they travel in. Nature, in a way, is the main character in the story because each of the four men is hesitant to make it angry or to disturb it. The men should ask the sea for mercy, pleading with it to let them pass safely. It is not a happy ending but rather an ending of the correspondent coming to terms with the harsh universe, where the charcters were once described as not knowing the colors of the sky, they have survived an ordeal that allows them to become interpreters. Their ability to interpret, however, does not mean that they have found any definite meaning in the universe- it remains indifferent to them.

(Gogol, Nikolai. The Overcoat, 1842)
The story centers on the life and death of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, and improverished goverement clerk and copyist in the Russian captail of St. Petersburg. He gets made fun of for his fur coat goes to get it repaired but the tailor say's it irreparable. He buys another one but it gets stolen. Akaky dies and supposdly starts to haunt people taking overcoats. Akaky scares the VIP who mistreated him and moves on.

(Joyce, James. Araby, 194, Dubliners)
The unnamed protagonist in "Araby" is a boy who is just beginning to come into his sexual identity. Its narrated in first person. The narrator likes Mangan's sister. This story about the narrator, a child, a hunger for knowledge fo sexuality, and awed by the mystery of the opposite sex.

(Poe, Edgar Allen. The Cask of Amontillado, 1846, Godey's Lady's Book)
Montresor tells the story of the night that he took revenge on Fortunato, a fellow nobleman. Over a insult he plots to murder his "friend" when he is at the carnival drunk, dizzy, and wearing a jester's motley. He baits Fortunato by telling him he has obtained what he believes to be a pipe of Amontillado, a rare and valuable sherry wine. He finally reached the area, where he Montresor chains Fortunato to a wall, seals him behind a brick wall while still alive, and leaves him to die. He ends the story by saying "In pace requiescat," or may he rest in peace.

(Poe, Edgar Allen. The Fall of the House of Usher, 1839, Burton's Gentlemen's Magazine)
The narrator who is unnamed arrives at Roderick Usher's house, a friend who is ill. His sister Madeline is also ill and he later it is said that she dies. She is to be entombed two weeks later. Later Roderick beomes increasingly hysterical due to sounds that he says his dead sister is making. The bedroom door is blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls onto her brother dead as a door nail who dies out of his own fear. The narrator flees but looks back to see the house of Usher break in two and sink.

(Poe, Edgar Allen. The Tell-Tale Heart, 1843, The Pioneer)
"The Tell-Tale Heart" is narratored by a unnamed narrative where he plots to kill the old man he lives with. He insists he is not insane due to his careful planning of the murder of the old man. He smothers the old man with the old man's own bed, chops the old man's body up, and buries him under pieces of floorboard. A neighbor hears a scream and calls the police. The man says it was him and that the old man is out of town. He hears his nervous heartbeat but thinks its the old man's heartbeat. He admits to the murder and tells the police to pull up the floorboards to reveal the body.

What is a short story?

There are alot of things that makes up a short story but I will mention three basic qualities of a short story. One is all short stories (all stories in genral) have characters in them. No matter if the charcter is a monster or a spirit or even a human a short story must have a charcter or charcters. Without charcters then a short story has no ground to stand on and nothing to move the story foreward. Some short stories may have alot of minor charcters to make up the cast but they are charcters none the less. The second quality is it can't be a entire novel. A novel may consist of many short stories but they are seperate. Short stories are called short stories for a reason. Because they are fairly short in length. Some can be a bit longier than others but they don't have entire chapters that last like 17 pages. The story doesn't last 100 to 200 pages but is shortened down to 4 or 5 pages. Maybe even 10. True some stories like Bartleby the Scrivener and Sonny's Blues may be 25 or so pages long but still practically all short stories (that I have read) has been under 35 pages. Thus short stories are stuck to a limit in length because if it doesn't stick to shortness then it isn't a short story. I once read a story that was called a short story yet it spanned over 45 pages which I don't consider and many others wouldn't consider to be short by any mean. The third and final quality is it has a single ending. Even if the story has multiple plots they should all end the same way. Short stories may create different scenarios but each one should end the same exact way. If it ends differently one not only is it confusing but then I consider that storie to be completly different and if they are to many different stories then it could turn out to be many seprate short stories instead of one product. This may be fine if the product is a novel made up of alot of short stories but if its one short story it should stick to one basic or complex ending not 5 or 6 different ones because then in my opinion you got 6 different stories. There are many other qualities that make a short story a short story but these are three of the basic qualitites that make a short story a short story.

What makes a short story good

There are three specific qualities that makes a short story good. The first is charcters. Characters bring the story to life. Without good charcters the story won't be all that good either. If charcters are bland and plain then no one will want to read the story. Characters are the main part of the story and without fresh believable charcters that have a purpose the story dies. The second quality is plot. This is what the story is based around and what is truely is. Without a good story or plot well the characters will most likely seem to be just doing random things with no real purpose in the story except to amuse the audience. The plot is just as important if not more than charcters because the plot is what makes charcters do what they do and everything in the stories world is based on the plot of the story. The third and final quality that makes a short story good is originzation. Without ideas being orginized it doesn't do much good to have good charcters and a amazing plot because the audience won't understand the story. The story would make no sense if the stories plot had the end of the story at the start of the story and the beginning at the very end. As for the main events of the story they have to be orginized in a way that makes sense. It would make no sense to have the ideas just thrown together in no order at all. Character, Plot, and Originaztion are the three specific qualities that make a short story good but also something someone will want remember.