English Short Story Elements

by: Elie Wiesel summary: It is a true story written about a Elie during his time at a Nazi concentration camp. He is a Jewish boy that goes through a test to see if he will be killed or stay alive at the camp. He is very worried about his father and his friends because his father almost gets taken to get killed. This was one of the most traumatizing experiences that ever happened.

by: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston summary: It is a true story that happened to a Japanese family. This family got taken to a Japanese relocation camp called Manzanar that is near L.A. They are treated poorly and are in bad living conditions. The Wakatsuki's make it through the camp and get released at the end of the war between Japan and the U.S.

It was a terrible event. This family was in the camp for almost their children's whole childhoods.

by: Hwang Sun-won summary: Tokchae and Songsam were best pals growing up, but now that they are older, Tokchae lives on a farm and owns it own in the country side, while Songsam is an officer that arrests Tokchae for being part of a farmer communist group and not fleeing because of the war. Tokchae is going to get killed, but Songsam decides that they need to make one more memory together and they go crane hunting in a field full of cranes.

by: Guy De Maupassant summary: Two men are drunk and decide to go fishing at night, so they leave the French side of the Franco-Prussian War and go into the neutral zone through a gate with a guard, and get a password to return to the French side. The Russians capture them while they are fishing and get interrogated and threatened to be killed. The Russians want them to tell them the password to get to the French side, but they refuse and get shot.

by: Kurt Vonnegut summary: Harrison is much smarter and stronger than anyone else in the dystopia and therefore and sooooo many handicaps to make life harder for him, which just makes him stronger and angers him even more.

In this America, everyone has to be equal and so smarter and stronger people need handicaps to bring them down to the same level as everyone else. Harrison is taken away from his family and put in jail because he is too strong. He breaks out and goes on national television during a ballet and plans to blow up the whole theater, but gets shot only a few seconds before he killed everyone. His parents are sad, but can't remember why because their handicaps make them forget things like that.

1. Character (know main characters) 2.

Setting (when/where) 3. Conflict (man vs. ____) 4. Theme 5. Plot

1.

Elie Wiesel 2. Elie's father 3. His friends at the camp 4. Doctor Mengola 5. The Kapos

1.

Jeanne Wakatsuki 2. Jeanne's Papa 3. Jeanne's Mama 4. Jeanne's (many) siblings

1.

Songsam 2. Tokchae

1. Monsier Morissot 2. Monsier Sauvage 3.

Guard 4. Russian officers

1. Harrison Bergeron 2. George Bergeron 3.

Hazel Bergeron 4. Handicap General

1. man vs. man 2. man vs.

society 3. man vs. self 4. man vs. nature

Buchenwald concentration camp during WWII & Holocaust

Inglewood, California during WWII in 1942

in a Northern Village at the border of the thirty-eighth parallel during the Korean War

France during Franco-Prussian War

in a dystopian America in 2081

the theme is the central idea of belief in a short story

the one word main idea of the theme

Theme: Love can overcome any obstacles Topic: Love - a theme must be a generalized statement about life, not specific to a certain character/story - a topic must be the solid support of the theme

1.

Exposition (background and setting) 2. Rising Action (leading up/building tension) 3. Climax (turning point of story) 4. Falling Action (loose ends are tied up) 5. Resolution (story comes to the end)

1.

Direct (clearly stated) 2. Indirect (disguised in the dialogue)