Short Stories Essay

Andres Bejarano

Mr. Filo-Carroll

ENG4U

Oct. 26, 2009

How authors describe their characters

In all short stories authors need to describe clearly the characters so the readers can understand the story. This is called characterization and is needed for the reader to fully understand why things happen and why certain things happen in the story. The way the author narrates the story is one of the most commons way of characterization because he may describe the characters just telling the story without being specific and you will infer how the character is. The stories that I will talk about in the following essay are “The Lamp at Noon” by Sinclair Ross, “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, “A Handful of Dates” by Tayeb Salih, and “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury. Characterization in these stories is very common and it is described in a narrative way in most of the stories.

In the short story boys and girls the main character is a girl which is the narrator of the story. She describes herself and how she is by the way she narrates the story. She also describes her father in the most specific way that someone is described in the story. The girls or the narrator say:

“My father was a fox farmer. That is he raised silver foxes, in pens; and in the fall and early winter when their fur was prime, he killed them and skinned them and sold their pelts to the Hudson’s Bay Company or the Montreal Fur Traders”.( Munro 45)

She describes how his father acts and how he works in the beginning of the story. She is the narrator and in this time she doesn’t describe the way her father is like physically, she describes him with actions he make and you can infer he is a strong man and he fights and work a lot so he can have a good life.

        In the short story “The Lamp at Noon” written by Sinclair Ross, the narrator shows how characterization is clearly shown in this story when the narrator starts describing almost at the end of the story how Paul one of the main characters has a baby on his hands, when he says:

“He walked with a long dull stride, his eyes before him, heedless of her weight. Once he glanced down and with her eyes she still was smiling. Such strong arms, Paul—and I was so tired just carrying him”. (Ross 72)

We can see how the narrator describes how Paul has in his arms the baby and how he looks physically, this time they are describing him in a physical way. This is a different way to characterize a person in a story, Paul its fully described as how he seem in that moment.

          In the story, “A Handful of Dates” written by Tayeb Salih the main character is narrating the story and he is telling about his life and the story how it started when he was young. The narrator sows characterization when he says: