Short Story

Background:

1)      Folktale or Marchen (short form of mare—short narrative)

a.       Oral tradition

b.      Grimm brothers—19^th century German philologists (collected oral stories) Romantic movement: interested in folk/people/orality/unexplained/metaphysical/ghosts, etc.  (Wordsworth/Byron/Coleridge/Blake/Shelley/Goethe/Hawthorne/Transcendentalism

c.       “Singing Bone” (no. 28)

                                                                           i.      begins with disordering Nature attacking human order

                                                                         ii.      characterization is simple, rudimentary but clear—morality clear:craftiness/evil vs. simplicity/good—reflects cultural values (selfish brother vs. brother concerned about the village as a whole)

                                                                        iii.      dwarf: helper—represents that spark/goodness in all of us—intuition/conscience

                                                                       iv.      confrontation between good son and boar—aggressive, out of control, kills itself (through “fury”)—what’s the lesson for the child/listener—be prepared, stand your ground, fury leads to destruction

                                                                         v.      unfinished part of story—evil brother (there is nothing in a story that’s not in there for a reason—beware of hanging plot-lines)

                                                                       vi.      party scene—older brother relying on drink for “courage”—needs external motivation not internal—taking minds of problem, not working together? Attitude of partiers to boar—let somebody else handle it, maybe even kill the younger brother

                                                                      vii.      character—evil brother tries to get younger to drink (character is “shown” through actions/words)

                                                                    viii.      brother kills brother—in middle of bridge?  (symbolic content of bridge—liminal—place between two states of being/mind/place

                                                                       ix.      especially heinous about evil brother’s character—pretends to kill boar and gets brother’s rightful wife (kill, lie—untrue to himself—man without a self or conscience—without humanity)  He’s as bad as the boar

                                                                         x.      magical element—singing bone  “God” (but is this a latter-day addition?)  Nature has a sense of right and wrong—balance of nature must be righted—here the bone reveals the truth

                                                                       xi.      folktale—must have proper conclusion  (evils be avenged, wrongs righted, things must reach a stasis point, reachieve original balance—yin-yang symbol--harmony)  Does the punishment fit the crime?  (tells us about culture)   beautiful grave in church—is that enough?  Proper burial, recognition, we all die (metaphysical older beliefs in soul/spirit living near the grave—part of the natural order/beauty)

                                                                      xii.      Questions that are not dealt with by the folktale: What the daughter think?  Like folktale, short story will often omit or elide details that might be tangents taken up at length in a longer work of fiction