Bring Yourself To the Interpretation of a Short Story

• 1). Apply your view of life and your belief system to the short story you are reading. Your framework as a reader affects how you analyze themes, characters and struggles presented in short stories. For example, if your worldview is generally optimistic, you will most likely interpret the plot of a short story in a hopeful light
  
  
• 2
  Edgar Allan Poe suffered tragedy and loss at a young age.Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  Analyze the writer's worldview by learning biographical details about him or her. By doing so, your interpretation of the author's artistic work will be easier. For example, American short story writer, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote stories with macabre themes. His worldview was colored by his own childhood troubles (such as the death of his birth mother when he was almost 3) and his proclivity to drink alcohol. By placing Poe's worldview over his short stories, such as "The Cask of Amontillado," a reader can interpret Fortunato's addiction to wine as something with which Poe may have struggled.
  
  
• 3). Analyze the story you are reading for traditional plot structure. Look for the initial problem or conflict. Then watch where and how the author builds suspense or complications to the problem. The high point of the story is the climax. Often, a climactic action takes place to change the piece's direction. Examine the story for the falling action or the denouement as complications are resolved. Finally, look for resolution to the story's initial problem. Of course, not all authors follow traditional story structure.
  
  
• 4). Make connections to one or more aspects of a short story to help you interpret it. If you excel at playing poker and the protagonist of the story plays poker, you may interpret the short story through the card game. In Flannery O'Connor's story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find," a family takes a road trip. The husband's mother suggests the group take an unplanned jaunt down a side road to see an old plantation. They decide to do what she asks, but they end up having an accident and meeting escaped prisoners. If you have ever gone on a road trip with family members who suggest taking side trips, you may be able to connect to the story.
  
  
• 5
  Composing your own short stories is one way to help you interpret the genre.Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images
  
  Cement the power of the short story you just read by writing a new ending for it or by writing in your journal about one of its characters. You could also compose original short stories. Share them on a blog or in a writing critique group. The short story is a potent literary form. As modern American short story writer, Raymond Carver said, "It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things---a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring---with immense, even startling power."