Short Stories Thesis

Of the eleven short stories I read, the stories I read independently were: The Girls in Their Summer Dresses, The Rocking Horse Winner, and The Kugelmass Episode. A common pattern I found in them all was the cycle of desire and satisfaction. The main characters in every story desired something – Kugelmass, being able to be with his current wife as well as another woman (fictional from a book) from The Kugelmass Episode, Paul, the son who wanted to bring luck to his mother from The Rocking Horse Winner, and Frances, wife of Michael who wants attention given to her from him and not towards other women from The Girls in Their Summer Dresses.

Common literary elements that I identified in those three stories were point of view and the temporal setting. They all have a third person omniscient perspective. Each of these stories seem as if they take place in the past, not set in modern time (from the vocabulary, the social rules, and physical setting). These elements matter because they all tie into how desires in the past are very similar to what people desire today, and how desire leads to satisfaction, which leads to more desire. As demonstrated in these stories, the stories end with the main characters with their unresolved problems – still having a craving for something even when they were temporarily satisfied.

I can't decide which story to choose for my thesis, but for the next few days I'll be considering which story to use and a strong thesis to correspond with it.

Reading Times

10/23 - The Girls in Their Summer Dresses - 50 min., 10/24 - The Kugelmass Episode - 60 min., 10/28 – Jillian Michaels, Master Your Metabolism - 60 min.

Total: 170 min.