Short Story
In our English class, we were prompted to write a short narrative story, about three to five pages in length, with a strong main character experiencing conflict and a resolution. Personally, I found this assignment challenging in the aspect that I had great difficulty coming up with a compelling main character and an interesting conflict they would experience. My inspiration finally ended up stemming from my desire to create a character that most of my peers would not have created, (an elderly man), with a somewhat boring lifestyle, in order to give myself the challenge to take an ordinary character and have them experience something interesting and unusual.
Before we started writing, we were assigned to complete plot maps and a character questionnaire in order to help create a basis for our story. The character questionnaire, a 50-question assignment covering every minute detail of our main character, helped me the most in creating the basis of my narrative.
After adequately planning out the theme, layout, and characters of my story, I assembled each detail into one full narrative short story titled “Espresso Depresso”. In addition, in Digital Media, we were given the opportunity to record a reading of our story and design its cover design. In Pro Tools, I edited together a recording of my voice with background music and several sound effects to bring the story to life. Later, in Adobe Illustrator, I created an original design related to the theme of the story with its title as an album cover. Here are both the recording and the story below:
“Espresso Depresso”
December 3rd, 2005
Dom knew his day hadn’t started well when he found that his beloved photo of his late wife had fallen over on his bedside table. Grunting, he placed it upright carefully, put on his fuzzy slippers, and went outside to pick up the Charlestown Times. He buttoned up his centuries-old, rumpled plaid shirt, combed back his few remaining hairs and went out on his everyday stroll to Blue Rock’s coffee shop.
Dom arrived 5 minutes before the opening shift on Mondays to be the first customer of the day. He rarely took anything other than a triple espresso with two shots of caramel and sometimes ice, topped with whipped cream. He paid with exact change – three dollars and 75 cents.
Dom picked up his drink, feeling the warmth trickle into his fingertips and letting the steam fog up his glasses. Today was a chilly kind of day – the ones where he felt like the emptiness inside of him was impossible to fill up. He took a sip of his drink to make up for it somehow. Suddenly, an arm jabbed him in the back, making the lid of his cup fall and his coffee spill everywhere onto his clothes. His favorite button on his shirt clattered onto the floor. Dom frantically took to his knees and began to look for it, feeling a sense of horror he hadn’t felt in a long time.
December 3rd, 1955
Dom looked up to see a young woman his age staring at him wearing a satin blue dress and a flower-printed headband. Giggling, she disappeared quickly and came back with a towel, handing it to him. Her kind eyes shone brighter than her pearl earrings – they entranced him, making him get lost in the moment, swimming in the empty abyss of her pupils.
“Do you need a new shirt? I’ve got an extra,” she said, bringing Dom back into focus.
He nodded in reply, too embarrassed to utter a single word.
The young woman pulled out a plaid button-up shirt from her purse, explaining to him how she always carried extra clothing in case of emergencies. As she talked about her past incidents working at her day job, he noticed the peculiarities of her shirt – its blue and white stripes were not the same width, the collar seemed crooked, and, oddest of all, the top button was missing. He gestured to the missing button as if asking where it was.
“Oh! I didn’t even notice the button was missing. Here, I’ll make a new one,” the lady said as she pulled out her right earring and fastened it to the shirt. She ushered him to try it on. The pearl earring’s shape worked perfectly as a button. Dom mustered up the courage to utter a quiet “thank you”, all the while mortified. As she gathered her belongings and headed towards the door, he knew he would treasure the shirt forever. He caught a glimpse of her lone left pearl earring as she left, the last time he thought he would ever have such a vision.
December 3rd, 2005
The jingle of the door opening knocked him back to the present. Dom re-adjusted his glasses and began searching for his button once again when suddenly a hand grabbed a tiny, shining object from the ground in front of him. He looked up to see an elderly woman staring at him, with pupils as deep as his espresso. She handed him his lost pearl button with a knowing smile and turned to go before he had a chance to thank her. He caught a glimpse of her ears peeking out under her silver bob: one pearl earring in the left, the right one empty. A gust of chilly winter wind surrounded Dom as the door swung open after the woman, as if ushering him to follow her. Dom replaced his pearl button, picked up his drink, and headed out the door, knowing his life might never be so dull again.
– END –
In the English Honors curriculum, I was also prompted to write a Short Story Author Study. I chose to study Ernest Hemingway’s “In Our Time”, as demonstrated below:
Expanding one’s Comfort Zone: a Deeper Look into Hemingway’s “In Our Time”
In his work, In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway stresses the importance of exploring communities, environments, and situations different, and, at times, riskier, than one’s norm, in order to grow as an individual and mature as one comes of age. The author communicates this major umbrella topic within his writing in this short story collection, using different literary techniques to emphasize his ideas, such as the iceberg theory in “Indian Camp”, similes and sentence fragments in “The Battler”, anastrophe and allusion in “The Revolutionist”, and repetition and metaphor in “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot”. Hemingway uses characters in his short stories in order to reflect upon his own personal struggles as a celebrity writer and his life traveling the world. Through writing about characters experiencing hardships and new circumstances, Hemingway transcends his message to his audience of adults in every walk of life to step out of their comfort zones and experience the unconventional.
In the first short story of the novel, “Indian Camp”, Hemingway introduces a young male adult, Nick, bound to experience a tragedy in a foreign land as he transitions from childhood to adulthood. This coming of age story takes place in an Indian camp, in which Nick, his father, and his uncle are sent as doctors to help an Indian woman in labor. Right at the start of the story, Hemingway uses his uniquely claimed literary technique, the “iceberg theory” in his description of the natural settings in which Nick finds himself. This technique, in which readers are prompted to search for deeper meaning within straightforward writing, is found in the detailed depiction of the lake where Nick is seated in a boat: the sentence “It was cold on the water” (15), plainly describes the usual morning temperature of the water, but if analyzed more carefully, may reveal the young protagonist’s mood as desolate, unconfident, and most importantly, ignorant. This is revealed through its contrast in the depiction of the water later on in the story, after Nick has witnessed death and hardship, where Hemingway writes, “It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.” (19). At first, Nick’s usual state of being as an innocent young male is reflected by the usual state of the water of the lake in the morning: cold. Though not very meaningful in literal terms, the audience may infer that just as the water’s state of being, Nick was in his usual state of being as well. Later on, however, after Nick has grown as a young adult, the water is described as warm in contrast to the cold morning, leading readers to understand Nick’s transition into adulthood as being one from a usual state of being to an unusual one; cold water in cold air as transitioning to warm water in cold air. Not only does Hemingway use natural settings to imply deeper meanings, but he expands his use of his “iceberg theory” in other manners as well. For example, after crossing the lake into new territory, the author described how “the young Indian blew out his lantern” before guiding Nick and others to the patients. The obvious transition from light to dark may not hold meaning in its literal sense, but invokes readers to infer its representation of Nick’s transition from his usual comfort zone to that of a dangerous environment. Here, his shift from childhood to adulthood caused by the exploration of new and risky environments showcases Hemingway’s ability to use literary devices in order to examine the themes of coming of age and stepping outside of one’s comfort zone.
While Hemingway often used his own “iceberg theory” in order to imply deeper meaning in his writing, he also used more well-known devices such as simile and sentence fragments, as showcased in his short story “ The Battler”. In this short story, the same protagonist as the first story, Nick, goes on an adventure and encounters a famous ex-boxer with whom he nearly engages in battle. Throughout the story, Hemingway stresses the importance of putting oneself in risky or unusual situations in order to grow as a human being by having Nick move on from his past, younger life to adult life through passing through the encounter with the boxer. Hemingway displays the use of simile first in his story to communicate this idea as he writes, “ It was like putty in color” (55) in order to describe the boxer’s abnormal face. This causes readers to relate the description to a physical image of soft, child-like shapes, which establish the youthful side of Nick that he transitions from within the story. In contrast, later on, Hemingway uses the sentence fragment, “Dead looking in the firelight” (55) in order to depict the dangerous and risky circumstance that Nick is found in, which further emphasizes the contrast between the adolescent and adult worlds that he transitions through. Hemingway effectively uses these two literary devices in contrast with each other in order to strengthen the contrast between the two situations that the protagonist transitions through, which ultimately allow him to mature. At the end of the story, Hemingway describes Nick looking back on his path to “see the firelight in the clearing”, with the firelight representing the danger he has overcome and the distance he has traveled in doing so. Thus, readers gain the message that it is important to expose oneself to unusual and dangerous circumstances in order to move on in one’s journey through maturation.
Though Hemingway stresses the importance of entering unique situations in order to grow as an individual in his book, he also focuses on becoming globally aware and traveling to different foreign lands in order to mature as one comes of age. In “The Revolutionist”, Hemingway centers his plot around a protagonist traveling to Bologna as he moves on from his past life in Italy. This transition from his two walks of life are connected primarily by the act of traveling from border to border, which is emphasized by Hemingway’s use of anastrophe and allusion. In this story, the main character is described very little, which is different from each past story in the novel. However, the lack of qualitative description does not prevent readers from understanding his main values and personality: young, quiet, and hopeful for change in the future. Hemingway surprises readers with his use of anastrophe, in which he reverses the order of the noun and verb in “Mantegna he did not like” (81). This adds to the foreign and unusual feel of the story, as the setting is in Italy, and the characters are not American. The combination of unusual wording and an unusual setting further emphasizes the importance of placing oneself in unusual circumstances in order to mature, which Hemingway uses as an underlying theme in this short story. In addition, the author uses allusion in “Giotto, Masaccio, and Piero della Francesca he bought reproductions of and carried them wrapped in a copy of Avanti,” which allows readers to immerse themselves more in the foreign setting of the story. Hemingway thus uses anastrophe and allusion in order to illustrate his focused idea on individuals’ growth through exploration.
Hemingway finally explicitly combines the ideas of experiencing hardships and traveling the globe in order to grow as a human being in his short story “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot”, and does so through repetition and metaphor. In this story, the main characters consist of a poet and his wife traveling the world and ultimately facing disappointment, though accepting it. This can be inferred to be how Ernest Hemingway viewed his life as a writer, gaining fame and traveling the world, but facing ultimately disappointment and facing several divorces. Throughout the story, Hemingway employs repetition in “they were all very happy” (88), as, after each significant event in their life, the characters accept their situation and find happiness. This illustrates the transition from hardship to maturation, as acceptance in times of struggle leads the characters to grow into more accepting people and tolerant of their lives. In addition, the author uses metaphor in the sentence, “Touraine had not turned out the way it looked when it started,” (88) as a representation of his life as a writer, as fame did not appear to be as rewarding as its reputation. As Hemingway struggled with anxiety, this story represents his rapidly changing emotions in his life. This further illustrates the idea that one must struggle through difficult circumstances in order to grow and mature, as Hemingway did himself in his life, maturing through his mental illness and fame. Despite the range in their characters, plots, and settings, the short stories encapsulated within Hemingway’s “In Our Time” are all connected by their main core theme: the importance of individual exploration of new circumstances and endurance through personal struggle in order to grow and mature as a human being. In “Indian Camp”, Hemingway introduces his readers to the main theme of coming of age in the collection of stories through his protagonist Nick peering at life in an adult’s lens through experiencing hardship. In “The Battler”, this same character continues to grow and mature as an adult, only this time by entering a dangerous situation and traveling away from his home. In “The Revolutionist”, Hemingway puts emphasis on the transition between two walks of life through his character moving out of his homeland and traveling the world in order to become more globally aware. Finally, in “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot”, the author combines his central ideas into one – demonstrating through the main characters of the story that a combination of a global perspective, exposure to risk and hardship, and stepping outside of one’s comfort zone are the three most important factors to coming of age. By portraying his ideals based on personal experience in his short stories, Hemingway encourages us to find ourselves as growing individuals by exploring new and risky situations, in our (own) time.
Overall, I greatly valued this story and recording project, because it not only taught me how to write a full descriptive story but also challenged me to use several forms of digital art to convey the same story in different ways.