Short Story
Short stories are usually compared to novel and thought as a part of it. Brander Matthews explains the relationship between novel and short stories as, “a good short story is no more the synopsis of a novel than it is an episode from a novel” (75) in The Philosophy of the Short Story (1901). I agree with him on that the short stories are different genre than novels. I will analyse two short stories on infrastructures that makes them different from novels by showing similarities and contradictions of Ray Bradburry’s The Veldt and Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. The Veldt is about the Hadley family which has distorted relations since the parents left the children in the hands of nursery room. The story takes place…show more content… We see in the introduction of Charles May’s The New Short Story Theories(1994) how Cortazar explains the use of symbolized elements are important for the short stories and add depth to story, “short story’s significant element is the act of choosing a real or imaginary happening that has the mysterious property of illuminating beyond itself” (3). The reason why Bradburry changed the title from The World the Children Made to The Veldt is that the word, veldt, symbolizes the abandonment of the children by their parents, and the emptiness of them which gives us more idea about the characters. Also the use of word “misfit” shows us that The Misfit went through his actions and life, and has a realistic idea about himslef, unlike the grandmother. In The Veldt we see how the ideas of “family” and “technology” are criticised. The parents don’t have any concern about the needs of the children since the Happylife House provides everything both for the parents and the children, thus the children think that the nursery room is their mother and father. This makes the reader think about what is mean to be a “family” and how the technology is going to play a role in our daily life in the future. Similarly, the ideas of “good” and “meanness” are criticised in A Good Man is Hard to Find. As a morally corrupted woman, the grandmother always talks about how things should be done and what is “good” or right since she considers herself as a lady and morally superior to everyone. The Misfit, being another morally corrupted character, declares that “no pleasure but meanness” (123) after he has questioned the meaning of the life. These characters make the reader thinks about these