Page 122 - Student: dazed And Confused

'I opened the door and my sadness left me at once.
With a great joy I recognized what it was I had left
behind me, my body lying strangled on the floor. I
ran towards my body and embraced it like a lover'
And we discover that the only relationship in question was that between the body and
spirit.
Our perceptions of ghosts and people are challenged as the young woman travels
between home and work. We are brought comfort by the idea that there is some form of
existence after death. Even the way she has accepted her life as part of the background has
been idealised to the extent that we accept it unquestioningly and even wonder what it

might be like to not be noticed. Spark has used the technique of a romantic element as a
tool to create the world of the story and as a mechanism to move it towards the end result,
much as Woolf has done. In itself, Kew Gardens is not a romantic or rose-tinted story in the
traditional sense but in the way that readers are gently encouraged to connect with the
events on the same basic human level as Behind Me. In fact, even the setting of the park is
romanticised as pretty and, perhaps more importantly, safe. These two short fictions are
both romantic because extraordinary events and important moments are taking place and
there is something very special about being privileged to see that happen. Kew Gardens
ends with the romantic and lush setting of the park suddenly being taken from its' comfort

zone and clashing noisily with the budding technology of the time.

But there was no silence; all the time the motor omnibuses
were turning their wheels and changing their gear; like a
vast nest of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel turning
ceaselessly one within another the city murmured; on the
top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads
of flowers flashed their colours into the air.

To varying degrees, all short stories contain the elements defined as comprising the

traditional short story. Though as James Coates says 'all stories are the same. They just use
different words.' It means that all writing uses the same tools and techniques but in
different ways.
As authors of short fiction are becoming more and more experimental with their
writing, they are more heavily subverting the claim that short fiction should be plausible and
romantic, rather than moving away from it. Indeed, it may well be impossible to ever move
away from the claim completely as these are the very foundations upon which all modern
fiction is based.

TUTOR NOTES - You consider the topic carefully, and you draw upon two very
appropriate stories (i just picked them at random - yay for randomness). The essay would