Sebastian Vela

Professor Gold

Eng. 1121

5/1/2019

Short stories are important to our society because they capture people’s attention very quickly and pull the reader close and from the short stories, I’ve read they also touch on topics that are very relatable for a lot of people. Short stories are meant for people that really pay attention to what’s going on because there’s so much going on in the story and its all condensed so tightly that its very easy to miss important details. Short stories are perfect for people who aren’t dedicated to reading an entire novel but do want that kind of feeling when they read, its important because they keep people connected to literature while not having to commit a lot of time to a novel. Some of the most well-known short story authors are John Cheever, Isaac Babel and Anton Chekov. There’s a lot of history behind short stories they derive from folk tales, fables, legend and other short forms of writing. The earliest forms of short stories come from the late 1700’s coming from England they were written under another title though called gothic tales. There are many phenomenal authors who have written short stories like Stephen King and Charles Dickens, short stories are something really anyone can write it’s not anyone’s main genre they’re usually just side projects.

From the sample short stories, I’ve read I couldn’t find any similarities in the messages they had, they were all so different. They were about love, tragedy, urban fantasy, horror and mystery. “Let it Rain” by Rene Read was a short story about a woman struggling to find happiness and ultimately finds it while working as a waitress in a small-town bar. “The Red Ribbon” by Magela Baudoin is a tragedy about a Natalia the older sister of a cancer patient who was just admitted to a hospice and how she is struggling to accept the inevitable loss of her sister. The theme behind these two stories are similar but the moods are completely different. The audience of these two pieces are probably people who are trying to find hope while going through a dark time in their life.

The two stories are different in how they are presented to the reader, “Let it Rain” is presented as kind of a uplifting story that end up with a happy ending while “The Red Ribbon” is presented as a very dark story that takes you through a journey of someone going through one of the toughest obstacles imaginable. These short stories don’t have a format. The language in the two stories especially the one by Magela Baudoin is very raw and it almost feels like you can see how in real time how Natalia is feeling.  I think the most significant thing about this short story is the fact that it does a good job tapping into the readers emotions even if they haven’t gone through what Natalia is going through.

Read, Rene. “Let It Rain.” Read Love Short Stories Online Free, 11 Oct. 2015, iloveshortstories.com/let-it-rain-part-1/.

“Short Story.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 May 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story.

Baudoin, Magela. “The Red Ribbon.”Short Story Online, 12 Aug 2012,

https://www.shortstoryproject.com/story/-red-ribbtheon/