Short Story Test Flashcards
What is “Half a Day” about?
- A boy’s first day of school
- By the end of the story, he is an old man
What is “A Rose for Emily” about?
- Townspeople’s fascination with old-time resident Miss. Emily
- Discover she killed her lover Homer and was sleeping next to his corpse
What is “Happy Endings” about?
Divided into different sections which each feature a version of a relationship between a man and a woman
- Making the point that death is unavoidable/ a fundamental part of any story
What is “Lamb to Slaughter” about?
- A wife (Mary) hits her husband (Patrick) in the back of the head with a frozen lamb leg, killing him
- She gets away with it as the police believe her. They end up eating the murder weapon
What is “The Other Wife” about?
- Marc and Alice go out to dinner, but Marc recognizes someone where they are about to sit so they move
- Alice asks Marc who it was. He reveals later it was his Ex-wife, whom Alice knew nothing about and began to question him.
- Alice remains curious about the Ex-wife
What is “Roman Fever” about?
- Two old friends, Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade are at a restaurant in Rome discussing their pasts
- Lots of secrets are revealed, most notably that Mrs. Ansley slept with Mrs. Slade’s husband, who is the father of her much older child
What is “The Story of an Hour” about?
- Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition. Her sister breaks the news to her that her husband died in a fatal railway accident
- She cries in her room for awhile, but then looks out the window and notices the world around her, reaching an epiphany: “I’m free”
- She experiences an unknown happiness she hasn’t before
- Eventually, her sister makes her open the door and they walk downstairs together, where her husband- Mr. Mallard- walks through the front door (wasn’t actually dead)
- Mrs. Mallard dies upon seeing him
What is “Desiree’s Baby” about?
- Desiree and her husband Armand have a baby boy who turns out to be mix-raced
- Armand blames this on Desiree and says it must be her heritage, kicking her and the baby out
- In the end, Armand finds a letter that his mother wrote, revealing that she was mix-raced
What is “A Good Man is Hard to Find” about?
- A grandma and her family go on a trip. She doesn’t get along with her son. They go down a path the grandma suggested and the car flips. The misfit finds them and kills them.
- There is so much going on in this story I can’t even summarize it.
What is “Survivor Type” about?
- Richard Pine is the narrator who is writing in a Diary. He’s stranded on a small island. He has heroin but no food
- He reveals he is a surgeon who smuggled heroin through a cruise before ending up on the island
- He is forced to eat gulls at first since he had no food
- He hurts his foot trying to get a plane’s attention and has to amputate it. he eats it.
- He amputates the other foot and eats it too
- He goes insane and decides to eat his hand and earlobes and the story ends unresolved
What is a static character?
characters that do not change
What is a dynamic character?
characters that change
What is a round character?
characters we know a lot about
What is a flat character?
characters we know little about
Example of foreshadowing?
A Good Man is Hard to Find
