What it Means to be a Short Story

Edgar Allan Poe classifies the short story based on its “unity of effect and impression.” Building on

this idea, literary critic Brander Matthews (1901) adds that this “essential unity of impression”

“shows one action, in one place, on one day. A short story deals with a single character, a single

event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a single situation.”

Poe’s and Matthew’s definition of a short story isn’t wrong, but it doesn’t apply to all short stories. In fact, most of the short stories we read deal with more than “a single character, a single event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a single situation.” In Sherman Alexie’s “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” we see further, that the short story goes into different time periods as well. While there is a single situation being the death of Victor’s father, the short story is more complex than that. Not only does Alexie’s story deal with the situation in the present, but it also incorporates flashbacks into it as well. 

The story follows Victor and his old friend Thomas and as the story progresses we see that the story is more about their relationship than it is about the death of the father. In the first flashback Thomas tells Victor a story and then it ends with Victor saying, “I wish I could be a warrior,” (Alexie, 4) and Thomas responding “me too” (Alexie, 4). In the next flashback we see that before they turned fifteen they had “long since stopped being friends” (Alexie, 4). The complexity of their relationship is shown when Thomas still chooses to accompany Victor on his trip to claim his father’s belongings. Later on you find out that Thomas went “because of [Victor’s] father” (Alexie, 8). 

It is clear that while this story does support the definition of the short story that is given, there are many other aspects to a short story. The way that the short stories deal with time is different from the way that novels deal with time because in novels, the time is day-to-day mostly and you actually see both night and day. In a short story, if you progress through time, you jump and you only see one part of that time period.

The Evolution of my Family

I would give the story, “The Evolution of my Brother” by Jenny Zhang a different title.
Throughout the book, we do see how her brother evolves over time, but we also see how she evolves
from her childhood years to when she became an adult in college. Additionally, even though we don’t
really see an evolution in the parents, we do see an evolution in the family relationships. Therefore,
I believe the title should be, “The Evolution of my Family.”

The reasons for this change is that the family relationships in this story are all over the place.
In the beginning, when it was just the narrator and her parents, they were very indulgent and would
spend tons of money at Sizzler, but when her brother was born, they stopped eating so much and ate
more at home. Furthermore, we can see an evolution in the family because at the beginning, we can
see that the mother doesn’t want her daughter to go away, but then at the end, it seems that the
mother’s relationship with the narrator has gotten better, while her relationship with her brother has
gotten worse. The character we don’t really see is the Father.

Besides that, the character grows up and realizes that she too doesn’t want her brother to grow up,
realizing that this is exactly how her mother felt about her when she was just younger. Her parents
have to start paying her brother to speak to her and then in the end, the narrator figures out that she
cannot control her brother, no matter how much she wants to. We see more evolution in the family
relationships than we do in the brother alone.