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.