prose short story

ANALYZING LITERARY WORK

PROSE – SHORT STORY

THE GENERIC STRUCTURE

A.     INTRODUCTION

1.       General Information

a.       Prose definition

The word “prose” comes from the Latin expression prosa oratio, which means straightforward or direct speech. Prose is a form of language that exhibits a grammatical structure and a natural flow of speech, rather than a rhythmic structure as in traditional poetry.

According Aminuddin, (2002:66) Prose is the narrative or story carried by certain actors with head-acting, background and specific stages and series of stories that starts from the results of the author's imagination to weave a story.

b.       Short story definition

According to Merriam – Webster online dictionary, short story is an invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot.

c.       The work to analyze

Kind of literary                   : Prose – Short Story

Title                                   : A Horseman in the Sky

Writer                                : Ambrose Bierce

General Description            : It was published on April 14, 1889 under the title The Horseman in the Sky in the Sunday edition of The Examiner, a San Francisco periodical owned by William Randolph Hearst. It is set during the American Civil War and is one of Bierce's best known war stories. Bierce had the story revised for an 1892 edition of his works.

d.       The elements to analyze

1)      Characters and Characterization

Character Is that a character is a person, an animal, or an imaginary creature that takes part in the action of a literary work while characterization is all the techniques a writer uses to create and develop a character.

2)      Theme

Main idea or an underlying meaning of a literary work that may be stated directly or indirectly.

3)      Setting

In literature, the word ‘setting’ is used to identify and establish the time, place and mood of the events of the story. It basically helps in establishing where and when and under what circumstances the story is taking place.

B.     Work Summary

A soldier lies on the ground on the lookout for the terrain and any potential enemy soldiers that might arrive. He falls asleep but luckily is not discovered by his sergeant as it would mean his death. When he awakes, he sees a man standing on a ledge on a horse who is of the Confederacy. He contemplates to shoot the man but finds himself morally challenged. In the end, he shoots the horse. Both the man and his horse leap off the ledge.

An officer who happens to be in the forest under the ledge looks up and sees a man on a horse, seemingly running through the sky. It shocks him and he all but passes out. When he recovers he goes searching for the man but does not find man or horse. When he returns to camp, he says nothing. Meanwhile, a superior comes up to the soldier to ask what he's seen and the soldier tells him that he shot at a horse in order to kill the man. When asked to identify the man, he explains the man was his father and a Confederate soldier.

C.  Analyzing the Elements

1.       Character and Characterization

a.       Carter Druse – main character

Young soldier Carter Druse, the hero of the novel is a normal peasant, was born in Virginia. He loved his parents and home, but he loved more his country. He decided to join the Union Army. He is a brave, hesitative, but above all he is patriotic. Because he is a person that could kill his father for the victory of his country.

“Carter Druse grew pale; he shook in every limb, turned faint, and saw the statuesque group before him as black figures, rising, falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles in a fiery sky. His hand fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested on the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardy soldier was near swooning from intensity of emotion.”

That indicates that he still having a hesitation when he was about to shoot his father on the fatal area of his target’s breast, the horseman. He couldn’t pull the trigger of his rifle, but he then decided to shoot at the horse and then they both fell down the cliff as mentioned to the quote below,

“Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley and fixed them again upon the group of man and horse in the sky, and again it was through the sights of his rifle. But this time his aim was at the horse. In his memory, as if they were a divine mandate, rang the words of his father at their parting: "Whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty." He was calm now. His teeth were firmly but not rigidly closed; his nerves were as tranquil as a sleeping babe's--not a tremor affected any muscle of his body; his breathing, until suspended in the act of taking aim, was regular and slow. Duty had conquered; the spirit had said to the body: "Peace, be still." He fired.”

He decided to shoot the horse instead of its rider that actually his father, because he still had his respect for his father.  

b.       Carter’s Father – also the Horseman

The writer shows the Father has a proud, calm and wise personality. It can be seen when Carter Druse asked his permit to join the Union Army and betrays his homeland, Virginia.

“One morning he had risen from the breakfast-table and said, quietly but gravely: "Father, a Union regiment has arrived at Grafton. I am going to join it."

The father lifted his leonine head, looked at the son a moment in silence, and replied: "Well, go, sir, and whatever may occur do what you conceive to be your duty. Virginia, to which you are a traitor, must get on without you. Should we both live to the end of the war, we will speak further of the matter. Your mother, as the physician has informed you, is in a most critical condition; at the best she cannot be with us longer than a few weeks, but that time is precious. It would be better not to disturb her.".”

As shown above, the Father also didn’t want Carter to tell his mother about the problem that Carter was going to join the Union Army.

2.       Theme

The story main idea is about Civil War happened in America. The main problem is about main character’s dilemma between two choices, his nation or family. The feeling of patriotism is occurred when Carter Druse chooses to do his duty as an soldier of Union Army. The story is tells that wars is a hard times, especially hardest times to American people in the time of Civil War.

3.       The Setting

The events in this story happen in the autumn in 1861, the year when Civil War in America began. The story is devided into 4 parts of location, but the main location is in a clump of laurel by the side of a road in western Virginia. The writer described the illustration of the place in very much detail.

"The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a road which after ascending southward a steep acclivity to that point turned sharply to the west, running along the summit for perhaps one hundred yards. There it turned southward again and went zigzagging downward through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was a large flat rock, jutting out northward, overlooking the deep valley from which the road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff; a stone dropped from its outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feet to the tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on another spur of the same cliff. Had he been awake he would have commanded a view, not only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock, but of the entire profile of the cliff below it. "

"The country was wooded everywhere except at the bottom of the valley to the northward, where there was a small natural meadow, through which flowed a stream scarcely visible from the valley's rim. This open ground looked hardly larger than an ordinary door-yard, but was really several acres in extent. Its green was more vivid than that of the inclosing forest.."

The writer also shows a description that might answer what is the situation.

"No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theatre of war; concealed in the forest at the bottom of that military rat-trap, in which half a hundred men in possession of the exits might have starved an army to submission, lay five regiments of Federal infantry" 

D.     Conclusion

The story tells much about historical and cultural aspects, from the places description was described in very much details making the reader clearly imagine the locations are looked like and also the situations. The theme is about American Civil War happened in 1861. The writer illustrated the feeling of patriotism all at once with irony of war that done huge impact on an family of the main character.