Narratology of the Short Story: Double and Multiple Closures

UGC Emeritus Fellowship Project (2009-11) Report

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya

PART 1

The short story: a neglected genre

The short story is one of the youngest genres that is widely read but largely neglected

in critical studies. Another such victim of critical neglect is the one-act play. There are

marked similarities between the two, both in terms of length and the impression they

seek to produce. A newly-created branch of study called narratology sometimes refers

to short stories in passing but very rarely (if at all) to one-act plays.

The reason is not far to seek. The kind of taxonomy indulged in by narratologists

stems from a grand design. It purports to embrace almost everything under the sun

except lyric poetry. Epics, novels, films, advertisement copies, pantomimes, dance,

what not. Books on history as well as gossips and psycho- analytic sessions are not

excluded. One elementary book of literary terms has proposed a species called

“Narrative Fiction,” which would include novels, short stories and narrative poems). I

am yet to come across a full-scale study of drama (including the one-act play) in terms

of narratology. Mention has also been made of drama as a special kind of “narrative

without a narrator”. Since drama too tells a story it is claimed to fall within the domain

of narratology. The denotation of the term is thus too wide to be subjected to genre-

wise treatment and wholly unhistorical, for all the forms of narrative did not appear at

once; each of them has its particular, historically determined origin.

What is a short story?

Defining the short story is a serious challenge. The so-called grammar of stories

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proposed by Gerald Prince states the following conditions: no story exists until three or

more events are conjoined with at least two of them occurring at different times and

being causally linked (Reid 5). Thus temporal movement and logical linkage are

considered to be enough to turn a recital of events into a story.

This may appear to be the basic minimum but actual evidence goes against it.

Many events described in newspapers everyday have both the characteristics but they

can hardly be called stories. In some cases the authorial comment at the end of the

recital of the event is what transforms the events into a story (for example, Manik

Bandyopadhyay’s “Primeval”). Events then are not enough. A short story has to be

regarded as an artifice, events presented in such a way that with or without this kind of

authorial comment they would produce a unique impression on the mind of the reader.

It is the impression created that is to be regarded as the hallmark of a story.

A single impression but an effective one is thus essential to the success of a

short story. Several devices such as flashback or flashforward (prophecy, for example)

are therefore resorted to build up the final impression. Whip-crack ending (as in the

stories of O. Henry) or a twist in the tail (as in the stories of Jeffrey Archer) is possible

only in short stories, not in novels or in any other form of narrative. This kind of ending

makes the whole set of events more ‘dramatic’ that any other device.

This again suggests that there should (if not must) be something extraordinary

or at least out of the ordinary either in the events or in the authorial comment that can

lift the recital of events into the domain of art. An art work, wholly mimetic or product

of fantasia, must have an element of the unexpected and unsuspected that constitutes

the artifice called the short story. Unless the unexpected or unsuspected turn of events

accompanies the recital, a short story would fail to create the impression that is sought

to be created in the mind of the reader.

Plotting thus involves (1) selection of events that are real enough in appearance

but not a part of everyday experience, and (2) an authorial comment at the end of the

story that points to an element that might have escaped the reader in course of

reading.

These two elements, however, do not inhere in all short tales, orally transmitted

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or written. Many of them pass for the name ‘short story’ but most of them do not

mention even the names of the characters and lack precise spatio-temporal identity. An

orally transmitted tale may just mention father, mother, priest, carpenter, placed in no

particular country and time. (A specimen will be given below).

A short story proper would not be convincing unless the reader is make to know

all the specifics, such as the names of the characters, where and when they live, etc. In

other words, an impression of verisimilitude. Thus the illusion of semblance with real

life has to be created. The tale itself may remain the same but the kind of unwritten

contract agreed upon by the reader and the writer has to be fulfilled.

The contract I am speaking of would promise to assure the reader that a real-life

incident is being told, although the writer knows full well that the whole tale is a

fabrication, not of what actually happened but might or should have happened. The

reader too would like to be assured that he or she is not being fed with a yarn,

something that had never happened. Without having this kind of contract agreed upon,

the short story would lose much of its force. That is why actual names of persons,

localities and some sort of dating, however vague, are so essential to the “willing

suspension of disbelief” that constitutes poetic faith (as Coleridge said in relation to the

supernatural stories written by him in verse in the Lyrical Ballads). Now let us take a

short tale:

Two little boys, ages 8 and 10, are extremely mischievous. They are always getting into trouble

and their parents know all about it. If any mischief occurs in their town, the two boys are

probably involved. The boys’ mother heard that a preacher in town had been successful in

disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys. The preacher agreed, but he

asked to see them individually.

So the mother sent the 8 year old first, in the morning, with the older boy to see the

preacher in the afternoon.

The preacher, a huge man with a booming voice, sat the younger boy down and asked

him sternly, “Do you know where God is, son?”

The boy’s mouth dropped open, but he made no response, sitting there wide-eyed with

his mouth hanging open.

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So the preacher repeated the question in an even sterner tone, “Where is God?!”

Again, the boy made no attempt to answer. The preacher raised his voice even more

and shook his finger in the boy’s face and bellowed, “Where is God?!”

The boy screamed and bolted from the room, ran directly home and dove into his closet,

slamming the door behind him. When his older brother found him in the closet, he asked, “what

happened?”

The younger brother, gasping for breath, replied, “We are in BIG trouble this time. God is

missing, and they think we did it!”

There are elements of excellent craftsmanship in this bald narrative. The whole

story hinges on the question, “Where is God?” The younger boy, because of his guilty

conscience, took the import of the question differently from what the priest had

intended. So the boy misconceived the meaning and smelled BIG trouble when the priest

had meant it to be an innocuous question, apparently expecting the obvious reply, “In

Heaven.” When he was greeted with silence, he lost his temper and thundered the

same question again. This only convinced the boy that he suspicion was true: God

Himself was missing and the priest thought that he (the boy) was involved in it.

For a tale all actual references to the names of characters, location, date and

every other element that would give it the semblance of an actual happening are

unimportant. The failure to understand the significance of the question intended by the

priest is enough to make it an excellent tale. There is the element of the unexpected or

unsuspected that contains the seed of a short story inhering in it; that in fact is the

focal point of the story. But in the absence of actual details about the identity of the

persons, etc., the tale cannot be called a short story proper.

Critiquing Narratology

Unanimity among the narratologists in various matters is not to be found, nor is it

expected. The basic domain of narratology is yet to be properly outlined and the

technical terms used mean one thing to one narratologist, another to other.

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As to including drama in the field of narratology, I do not consider it advisable. It

is not proper and logical to use the umbrella term “narrative” under which any form of

story-telling could find its place. Narratologists in their preoccupation with the GCM

(greatest common multiple) tend to obliterate every peculiar aspect which makes one

genre distinct from others. Despite the proliferation of a large number of supposedly

technical terms related to narratology, it has to be stated that a one-act play is as much

different from a short story as from a five-act play and a novel. Any play, whether long

or short, calls for a different approach, a new set of terms and a proper understanding

of the devices it uses. A play does not merely tell a story, it shows all events as they

happen, not through narration but enactment. This major distinction – a story told in

the past tense and a story unfolding in the present tense (happening before the eyes of

the audience) – are two different propositions altogether. The point common to both is

overweighed by the differences in presentation. In his definition of tragedy Aristotle at

the very outset distinguishes tragedy from epic which consists of both narration and

dialogue, instead of dialogue alone. Speaking of the component parts of tragedy, he

includes song and spectacle, which are essentially theatrical. Aristotle states that the

other four components, namely, plot, character, reasoning (thought), and dialogue

(diction), are common to both epic and tragedy. There are other points of resemblance

too. The plot of an epic may be simple or complex as in a tragedy. Yet Aristotle does

not try to equate epic and tragedy on the basis of the fact that both tells stories.

Ancient Indian consider both poetry and drama as kavya, but called the former sravya-

kavya (poetry to be heard) and the latter, drisya-kavya (poetry to be seen). In this

respect, I believe, both Aristotle and the ancient Indian writers on poetics were wiser

than their postmodern counterparts.

That Aristotle viewed tragedy as belonging primarily to the theatre, not the

closet or the library, is apparent from several chapters of the Poetics. And, in spite of

his pronouncedly formalist approach, he does not believe that all the genres appeared

at a time. Thus tragedy has its root in dithyrambs, while comedy has in lampoons.

Anthropologists today may not agree with Aristotle’s view of the origin of tragedy but it

should be remembered that he attempted to trace the developments of new forms from

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the old. Similarly he noted that tragedy appeared later than epic and it proved to be a

superior mode of mimesis. His estimate of the comparative merits of epic and tragedy

ends with the declaration that tragedy is in several respects superior to epic. It is not

just his preference for the new but his recognition of the intrinsic merit of tragedy that

is admitted to surpass epic.

Narratologists in their zeal to establish new categories of analysis and a purely

structural approach evince complete lack of historical sense. To them all art-forms

seems to be coeval and coexisting at every age. They appear to be totally unconscious

of the fact that all art forms and literary types have histories of their own. Certain art

forms wither away with the passage of time, not because they were lacking in merit but

for the simple reason that the social and ideological basis of such art forms had ceased

to exist. Marx in this connection cited the case of Greek epics which were based on

myths, and not any myths but the myths that arose in Greece in the heroic age, not any

myth from any country. With the disappearance of the old Greek society epics of the

Homeric kind were no longer possible. When epic reappears in Virgil’s Aenied in first-

century Rome, it is no longer of the same kind but the conscious imitation of the older

epic. It did not grow in Rome but was transplanted from Greece.

Similarly, when tragedy resurfaces during the Renaissance in Europe, it is

different both in structure and intent. The similarity between Sophocles and

Shakespeare is merely on the surface. In Shakespeare there is no formal chorus,

playing its role by commenting on the episodes following one after the other. Scenes of

murder and maiming are shown on the stage, not reported by a messenger. And

unhappy ending becomes an essentially characteristic of tragedy. Elizabethan and

Jacobean tragedies are much longer than the Greek serious plays (that is what

“tragedy” implied to Aristotle, not necessarily a play with an unhappy ending). There

are subplots, comic relief and such like items which are never to be found in Greek

plays. And when we come to modern tragedy, more changes in form are visible.

These changes are not purely accidental or fortuitous. The form and content of

any genre change with time, disappear altogether or hibernate for a long time (pastoral

poetry is a case in point). Viewing any genre in terms of story telling, irrespective of the

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changes the genre undergoes, betrays not only parochiality but critical blindness as

well. Story telling is not the be-all and end-all of a narrative. Apart from entertaining the

narratee(s), a narrative aims at edifying and moving them. With this aim in view such

early oral narratives as fables and parables came into being. By devoting all of one’s

attention to the plot-structure and conceiving characters as “roles”, narratology

dehumanizes the function of literature and reduces its purpose to a set of pseudo-

algebraic formulas. They are of no use either to a narrator or to a narratee.

Fondness for neologisms and jargon-dropping are two other maladies that

narratology is beset with. In addition to the traditional terms, such as plot, character,

time-frame, etc., narratologists revel in coining new terms and/or bestowing new

significations to time-tested and oft-used terms. Two such words that puzzle the

readers are “discourse” and “text”. Then there are seemingly profound studies of

“voices”, “narrative levels” and the like. The postmodernist predilection for words

ending with –ity and –ization and their derivatives is only too apparent in the works of

narratologists. Such words as facticity, fictivity, focalization and problematization make

students apprehensive and consequently they suffer from a sense of inferiority.

It is all the more true of our students and not a few young teachers in India

today leaving and working in the backwaters. With no access to most of the books and

papers mentioned in the long bibliographies at the end of the works on narratology,

they tend to parrot whatever is written in the available manuals and dictionaries of

literary terms. Our whole mode of teaching and learning is directed to accepting

uncritically rather than questioning the validity of anything in books published from

Europe or the USA. It is for their benefits that I have argued at length why the current

narratological approach is not admissible for a serious student of literature.

The short story and the short tale

What distinguish the short story from any tale, whether an orally transmitted joke, a

folk tale or a simple story to lull a child to sleep, are as follows:

a) A short story is always a written piece which can be told by its reader to a

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listener but the origin is always written. Tales have their origin in the oral tradition. It is

primarily orally transmitted and written down much later.

b) The tale is always told in a chronological order, beginning with the beginning,

through the middle to the end (as the White Queen advised Alice) whereas a short

story can and does alter the order of events by using the flashback technique, that is,

beginning with the middle or even the end of the story and going back to the

beginning. The chronological order of the event of the incidents is thus reversed and

the narrative time need not be identical with the time scheme of the events narrated.

There is of course a grey area between the tale and the short story. Some tales

seem to contain all the elements of the written short story. As has been pointed out

before, characters and places in a short story are expected to be proper names, not just

the vague reference such as ‘the king’, ‘the weaver’, or any kingdom of state.

Historically speaking, the short story like the novel which preceded it, belongs to the

age of realism, when verisimilitude with reality with actual names of persons and

places that can be dated and located specifically have become the accepted norm;

fantastic and supernatural creatures and events are no longer the material of fiction.

This characteristic also distinguishes the novel and the short story from all earlier

romances and tales. The short story in particular is acknowledged to be a “peculiar

product” of the nineteenth century (Gangopadhyaya 251-54).

Arnold Kettle has shown that the transition from romance to realism is an

essential precondition of the birth of the novel (29). The same precondition applies to

the short story as well. Kettle writes:

The novel – as I use the term in this book – is a realistic prose fiction, complete in itself

and of a certain length….The words ‘realism’ and ‘realistic’…indicate ‘relevant to real life’ as

opposed to ‘romance’ and ‘romantic’, by which are indicated escapism, wishful thinking,

unrealism. (29)

All these conditions apply to the short story too. The length of course will be

much less than that of the novel, but the point is not so much the length but the

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singularity of interest that distinguishes the short story from the novel, like the lyric, the

short story centres round a single thought, feeling or sensation. However, the lyric does

not narrate the events that produce such a single thought, feeling, sensation. On the

other hand it concentrates on the effect that an event or a series of events produced in

the mind of the poet. A short story, on the other hand, narrates the event(s) that

produced such an effect.

As to the length of the short story, no word limit can be set, for there are

already, in course of one hundred fifty years or so, we have so many different kinds of

short stories with varying length that it will be unwise to specify any given length. In

any case as, Ian Reid has succinctly put it: “Genre is not arithmetically defined.” (10).

‘Longer than a post card but less than a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica’ may

suffice for the length of a short story.

We are now in a position to define the essential characteristics of the short story

as it emerged in the West (both Europe and the USA) and the East (more particularly in

India in the last decade of the nineteenth century). One may of course think of western

influence on Indian short story writing. Yet the fact is that even if Rabindranath Tagore

(1861-1941) had read English short stories, he was prompted or induced to write short

stories for Bengali periodicals like Hitabadi and later Bharati, Sabuj Patra, etc. As in

many other fields Tagore was the pioneer in writing short story in Bangla. Very soon all

Bengali periodicals promoted short story writing. Consequently a number of short story

writers appeared on the scene. It will not be an exaggeration to say that, next to the

lyric the short story is the forte of Bangla literature. Good novelists are not wanting in

Bangla but the short story writers have been both qualitatively and quantitatively more

significant than the novelists. Some, like Tagore, tried their hands in both, but there are

others like Parashuram who never attempted to write a novel but produced no fewer

than ninety nine short stories. [In this study, reference will be made to several Bangla

short stories, more particularly to those by Parasuram (pen name of Rajsekhar Basu

(1881-1961)). Many of his short stories are available in English translation. Sometimes

more than one translations of the same story has been attempted (“Birinchibaba” for

instance). One particular story, “Shadaratna” (The Six Jewels) by Bibhutibhushan

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Mukhopadhyay (1894 - 1987), has been made use of in this study, for it contains a

double closure of rare virtue. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no

English translation of this wonderful story. Yet it is so significant in connection with the

present study that it could not be dispensed with.]

The latest entrant to the already existing genre is science fiction, generally refer

to as SF. There are both novels and short stories, and even novel cycles, in this new

genre. But I have decided to avoid this particular type, not because of any personal

aversion but due to the fact that the SF does not belong to the realist tradition. It

rather belongs to the category of fantasy and thrives on unrealism, in so far as it is not

meant to be a reflection of real human life but of some imaginary and/or fanciful events

and situations that have never taken place and perhaps will never take place either. It

is not a criticism of SF if it is called a modern (or even postmodern) urban folk tale. It

shares with the traditional folk tales many of the features that had generally been

avoided in realistic fiction and fancy plays a greater part in the conception and

execution rather than observation of actual events in human life.

The Short Story and the One-act Play

Let us go back to the question with which I began. The short story and the one-act play

did not fall from the sky all of a sudden. Both of them grew out of tales and full-length

plays respectively – with the difference that, instead of trying to encompass a wide area

and introducing a large number of characters and incidents, writers of short stories and

one-act plays concentrate on a particular event or a special trait of a character. A full-

length novel or drama cannot highlight such a significant event or character trait. The

canvas is too large to allow the novelist and the playwright to engage in such a task.

Herein lies the strength of the short story and the one-act play. The author can

choose a particular character trait to be highlighted or a particular event that is either

extraordinary or at least more than ordinary. Sometimes the authorial comment or the

last speech in a one-act play makes the otherwise ordinary event appear as

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extraordinary or endowed with more significance than the event would at first sight

suggest. Sometimes again the narratee is given a close view (what in boxing is known

as “ring-side view”) of the last lap of a marathon race; everything that happened before

is left untold or barely hinted at.

Such a technique makes the short story and the one-act play nearer in spirit to

the lyric. The way these three genres deal with a single thought, feeling or situation,

bears ample testimony to their kinship.

We have to pause here and think about the basic differences in forms. Can all

the critical yardsticks applied to the lyric be applied with equal justice to the short story

and the one-act play? The answer obviously must be ‘no’. Each of these genres requires

its own yardstick of judgment, pertinent to approaching any tale or a story told

exclusively through dialogue and a poem that does not tell a tale. Some overzealous

narratologists may try to include all the three in their omnibus term “narrative”, but, as

has been shown above, such an approach militates against and is inimical to the basic

difference between diegesis and mimesis, as found in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s

Poetics. In the first case the poet narrates the event and reproduces the speeches of

the character to his or her present audience; in the second more than one actor enact

the events before the spectators. Plato also referred to the dithyramb which is all

diegesis while the epic sometimes resorts to both narration and direct speech. The

short story and the lyric share only one common feature : singularity of theme.

Otherwise the two are wide apart. The same applies to the relation of the lyric to the

one-act play. However, the one-act play differs both from the short story and the lyric

insofar as it belongs to the tradition of mimesis whereas the other two are the

inheritors of the diegetic tradition.

In spite of all these similarities and dissimilarities, it is hard to overlook the fact

that the while the lyric is one of the earliest literary forms, The short story and the one-

act play are more recent than their direct predecessors, full-length novel and five-act

play. What makes a short story different from the older tradition of tales (as found in

the Panchatantra and the Kathasaritsagara, The Arabian Nights, Decameron and The

Canterbury Tales) is the more well-knit structure/ plotting and focusing in the story that

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are not be met with in the earlier short tales. The one-act play shares with the short

story the same two characteristics: DESIGN (plotting, arranging incidents in such a

manner as to bring out the intended effect to the full) and FOCUS (Professor Taraknath

Gangopadhyaya, better known by his pen name, Narayan Gangopadhyaya, used to call

this ‘the pointing finger’(246, 293)). In other words, the short story and the one-act

play are consciously constructed works of art, artifices that are meant to draw as much

attention as an object of art as to the story they tell. For example, flashback and

flashforward are two plot devices that are not to be found in tales, whether orally

transmitted or written.

Why then are the short story and the one-act play so neglected in the critical

studies? Perhaps it is assumed, however unconsciously or unintentionally that whatever

critical terms (including jargons) apply to novels and full-length plays would also apply

to short stories and one-act plays. So no special attention is to be given to the latter

literary types.

Such a view utterly misconceived. Both the short story and the one-act play

demand closer study of the selection of events (why one particular event in the life a

person is selected in preference to the others) and where the focus of the story lies.

Thus these two newcomers called for new approaches in relation to their design and

focus.

Some short stories are truly short; some, however, are rather long. No hard-and-

fast rule regarding the number of words can be laid down. The basic distinction that

makes the short story and the one-act play quite different from tale on the one hand

and the novel or the full-length play on the other, holds true. If a short story goes on

rambling till its end, with no focus appearing even then, it is bound to be called an

unsuccessful tale. The same is true for the one-act play. If the characters only come

and go, and merely speak to one and other without any focus emerging out of them,

the one-act play cannot be called a successful one.

The point then is that in any critical analysis of the short story and the one-act

play, the task of the critic is to grasp and place before his/her readers the design and

the focus of the story. Characterization and plot-construction are of secondary

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importance for the artifice should appear as a small but single whole, not as a

combination of parts (several episodes). The characters too need not be portrayed in

the round: the spoke of the story will not permit the necessary space and time for

enabling the readers/viewers to look at the characters from all sides. If these two

characteristics, design and focus, are accepted to be the hallmarks of the short story

and the one-act play, much needless brain-wracking about definitions of these two

genres can be dispensed with.

The short story and the one-act play have sometimes been described rather

disparagingly as dealing with ‘a slice of life’ (Maupassant has in fact been condemned

for being a “cutter of life” (Gangopadhyaya 264)). Admittedly the scope of these genres

are narrower than that of the novel and the full-length play, consisting of several

chapters or acts with a subdivision of scenes. A slide pondering would show that such a

remark is meaningless, no novel or full-length play can ever hope to comprehend the

whole of life, even of a single person, not to speak of the lives of all the characters

appearing in the work. A novel or a full-length play at best can have more episodes

than a short story or a one-act play has or may have. Yet ‘the whole of life’, all the

slices of the loaf, is too much to be expected in any work of art. The crux lies in how

many events can be represented within the span of the story, and how and where the

story is made to end. A short story or a one-act play, because of its narrow limits, can

never hope to relate more events than are strictly necessary for the purpose of

focusing. This condition also entails relatively less number of characters. But these

apparent limitations are not to be considered deficiencies on their part. A single painting

and a panel of drawings have their limitations as well as their points of strength. So to

judge a short story on the basis of the criteria meant for judging a novel would be

inappropriate. Each must have its own distinct criteria.

The word, criteria, needs some clarification. To find fault with a short story, on

the ground of length or multiplicity of characters, would lead us nowhere. Some of

Chekhov’s short stories have several incidents and quite a number of characters: they

are short stories still. The criteria will be design and focus, as mentioned above.

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Chekhov’s “Darling” contains several episodes and several characters. Yet the focus is

unmistakable: the inability of the sweet girl, Olenka, to have a mind of her own. Her

capacity for devoting herself with her whole being to one she loves – be he a husband,

a lover, or her lover’s son – appeared to Tolstoy as “not ridiculous but wonderful and

holy.” All the episodes in the story are designed to provide parallel events which bring

out the focus.

It is well-known that Tolstoy read the story in a way quite different from what

Chekhov had intended. Tolstoy was all praise for Olenka as a self-effacing person. On

the contrary Chekhov had wished to portray her as a stuffed brain.

This is a problem of reader response. In spite of all the claims of the reception

theories, one can never expect any uniform response to a story (or any literary

production, for that matter) from all readers. Responses are bound to vary from reader

to reader, from time to time, and from place to place. This fact, nevertheless, does not

hinder us from deciding whether “Darling” is a short story or not.

Focus does not merely imply the subject matter or even the theme of the story.

The short story has one advantage over the novel: it may have a whip-crack ending or

may be tail-twister. The Cumulative effects of the events of the whole story may be

annulled by a single sentence at the end. It may also accompany the second closure of

a story (closure is the focus of this study and will be dealt in detail in the subsequent

chapters). Ambrose Bierce’s “The Coup de Grâce” provides such an example. Both

Caffal Halcrow and his horse are badly wounded in battle. They cannot be saved. Mercy

killing is the most humane at. Captain Madwell shot the horse between the eyes. He

also wanted to deliver the same kind of coup de grace to Caffal. But Madwell found to

his despair that he had used the last cartridge for the horse. So he drew his sword from

the scabbard and thrust it down to the heart of the dying man. “At that moment three

men stepped silently forward from behind the clump of young trees which had

concealed their approach. Two were hospital attendants and carried a stretcher”.

This is not all. The reader may wonder who the third man was. Bierce adds a

new, one-sentence paragraph: “The third was Major Creede Halcrow”, brother of

Caffal. Readers have already been shocked at the arrival of the hospital attendants

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carrying a stretcher. The appearance of the third man numbs their reaction. Such an

effect cannot be produced at the end of a novel.

Thus we have a double closure and a whip-crack ending. Such closures negate

the claim that the short story is marked by “one climax” (Gangopadhyaya, 263) and

contradict the definition of the short story as proposed by Fred Lewis Pattey, “…the

impressionistic prose tale, the conté, short, effective, a single blow, a moment of

atmosphere, a glimpse at climactic instant” (qtd. Gangopadhyaya 251, 259).

Let us admit that no logically sound definition of the short story has yet been

offered. It is doubtful whether such a definition that would apply to all short stories in

the world, past, present, and the future, can ever be formed. Although there are very

scholarly discussions on the Kurzgeschiscte (literal translation of the English name ‘short

story’), no satisfactory definition is to be found that cannot be contradicted by one or

another example. Edgar Allan Poe, himself a short-story writer, proposed to contrast

the short story (which he in the absence of generally accepted nomenclature called

‘tale’) with the novel by suggesting a differentia: “As the novel cannot be read at one

sitting, it cannot avail itself of the immense benefit of totality ” (qtd. Miller 278. Italics in

the original). One wag, however, objected that some people could seat far longer than

others (Reid 9)! This is mere nit-picking. Aristotle could define a tragic plot as having “a

certain magnitude” (Poetics 6.2) without specifying at least how many lines or words

there should be. No attempt to find or fix a definite length of a short story is desirable

or necessary. Reid has very succinctly put it: “Genre is not arithmetically defined” (10).

The two criteria, design and focus, should suffice to describe the short story as

distinct from all sorts of tales, novellas, etc. Many of W. Somerset Maugham’s rambling

tales (for example, “The Lotus Eater”) lacks both. So the more generic word ‘tale’

should be applied to them. It is not so in Maugham’s case alone. Rabindranath Tagore’s

Nashta Nir (The Lost Nest) is a similar kind of tales also it is included in his collection of

short stories called Galpaguccha. To put it more briefly, the short story, like all other

prose narratives, long or short, is a tale, but all tales are not short stories.

This is why it is futile to search for the precedents of the short story in the

ancient, medieval or the early modern world. Reid mentions Panchatantra as the ‘most

16

indefatigably migratory’ loose collection of tales or tale-clusters which was known both

to East and West. The Thousand and One Nights is also such a collection of unrelated

tales, one leading to the other. It is no joke, for the life of Sheherzade depends on her

capacity to generate story after story every night. As to the European parallels,

Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and the like come to mind.

But the birth of the short story is in no way directly related to these examples.

The short story is the product of the nineteenth-century periodicals, whose

editors would like to have short prose pieces of human interest dealing with the life of

commoners, citizens rather than aristocrats. The short story thus has a democratic

origin and its beginning can be dated with some precisions. Whether or not the

Romantic fairy tales are to be regarded as ‘seeds of surrealism’ (as Mary B. Corcoran

says), Germany, France, Russia and the USA are the four birthplaces of the short story

– all in the first half of the nineteenth century. The patrician bias very soon yielded

place to quite plebian themes. Referring to Nicolai Gogol, H. E. Bates remarks: “He took

the short story some way back to folk-tale and in doing so bound it to earth” (qtd. Reid

24).

The statement is significant, for it seeks to re-establish the link between the

orally transmitted folk tale and the written form of the short story. Both the folk tale

and the short story are set to be bound to earth rather than flying up to any cloud-

cuckoo-land.

Yet the basic difference between the folk tale and the short story is not to be lost

sight of. The folk tale is neither consciously designed nor definitely focussed. It does

not care for plotting; real-life human characters rub shoulders with animals or even

preternatural creatures, such as fairies, witches, and gods or demigods, the Devil or

devils too make their appearance from time to time. The short story, on the other hand

is a product of realism: “The Public is learning that men and women are better that

heroes and heroines” (qtd. Gangopadhyaya 229). The existence of a few ‘Gothic’ tales

or ghost’s stories, mostly in two-in-one short stories (having a realistic frame narrative

and a bizarre embedded narrative, as in Rabindranath Tagore’s “Hungry Stones”), does

not nullify this basic truth. Even if the embedded narrative has a supernatural content

17

or gives an exaggerated account of fishing and hunting, or re-tells a sailor’s yarn, the

frame or matrix narrative is generally realistic in all respects. The democratic attitude

found in the folk tales is not be equated to what is prevalent in a modern short story.

And, last but not least, there is a fundamental difference between the oral and written

narratives which no amount of obfuscation resorted to by the narratologists can ever

hope to erase out.

Similarly the sketch, the yarn, or the earliest tradition of fables and parables, or

for that matter, everyday jokes, having a pronounced point to make, are better to be

left out of consideration in relation to the short story. The short story is marked by its

written nature; it is a literary artifice that may conceal the art but still is an artifice. The

technique of story-telling is quite different from that of story writing. Such devices as

flashback, flashforward (prophesying), narrating one story by several speakers in bids

and pieces, etc. are peculiar to the written short story, not the oral one. Likewise,

anachrony in all forms is alien to the oral tradition: the chronological sequence of

events is generally adhered to when a story is told. But in the case of an artifice the

author is free to adopt any point of view he/she likes (first-person or third-person), the

narrator may appear as omniscient, reliable, unreliable, naïve, self-conscious or

whatever. All this is not to be expected in orality. The tail-twisters have to designed

beforehand. The oral version of the same story may have less effect than the written

one. Considering the variety of short stories that have been written in the last two

hundred years or so, the inductive approach is to be taken to study all kinds of short

stories so far produced. Only by empirical verification we may hope to reach a proper

“grammar of stories.” The purely linguistic model adopted by Gerard Prince or the

pseudo-inductive method followed by Vladimir Propp will not do. It is important to

remember that the stories ‘written’ by Prince or Bremond make rather uninteresting

reading in spited of the shock effect they sometimes generate.

Take, for example, the following ‘elementary sequence’ of a story proposed by

Bremond: “Eve took a bite of the apple and then, at her urging, Adam did so too, as a

result which they became crazy and bit each other.” This may very well be taken as an

excellent example of how a biblical story may be rewritten (as a parody), but in spite of

18

Bremond’s insistence, many readers will not be persuaded to accept it as a story: I

would rather call it a poor attempt at evoking laughter.

The same caution applies to Propp’s claim that his morphology would cover all

folk tales. Those who still take his 1928 book as an inerrant guide to narrative as such,

perhaps do not know that “permutation in the genre during the last half-century have

outdated some of their (sc. the Russian formalists’) findings.” (Reid 3)

Not unlike the novel, the short story too contains (a) setting, (b) plotting, (c)

characterization, (d) theme, and (e) closure. However, unlike the novel, all these

aspects are more briefly and succinctly presented in the short story. The setting cannot

be elaborately described; generally there is little or no room for any subplot (although

some short short-stories do have a brief subplot, such as Parasuram’s “Birinchibaba”).

The characters cannot change all their hues within the narrow span of the short story.

The theme too has to be focussed on one particular issue. As to closure, however, the

short story offers more varieties than a novel. For example, a short story may be open-

ended or it may have a double or even multiple closure. More particularly whip-crack

ending or a twist in the tail is peculiar to the short story. Its very brevity allows for a

unity of impression.

It is not that double or multiple closures are never to be encountered in novels.

But the effect is not always as brilliant or as surprising as in the case of the short story.

Why is it so that the short story can be so effective in employing additional

closure(s)? For one thing the short story with its singular plot lulls the readers into

expecting a single ending. The author, however, may deceive the reader by arousing

further expectations (the inevitable question, “what happened then?”) and provide the

answer by offering the additional closure(s). A novelist has every opportunity to defer

the ending. Yet if the ending is deferred too long, the novel may lose its coherence. The

short story writer, on the other hand, can and does offer the additional closure(s) in

quick succession. Even if the reader’s expectation has already been fulfilled by the first

closure, the writer may create new expectations by making a character in the story ask,

“What happened then?” Alternatively the writer himself may anticipate such a question

and provide the answer without anybody in the story asking for it. (Parashuram’s “The

19

Last Journey of Mahesh” and “Saralaksha Hom” offer two appropriate examples).

The technique of a character in the story asking for more is more suitable to the

embedded narrative, the story within the story. The listener/reader in the matrix

narrative (frame story) may ask the question and the narrator of the embedded

narrative answers it. (Parasuram’s “Yadu Doctor’s Patient” is a case in point).

As to anticipating the reader’s question, the third person form of narration is

found to be more effective. The writer himself raises such a question which he knows

must be in the reader’s mind and the writer as an omniscient narrator satisfies the

reader’s curiosity by providing the additional closure (as it happens in “Saralaksha

Hom”)

The two-in-one story has the advantage of combining the presence of a narrator

in the story and one or more than one listeners in the matrix narrative. The matrix

narrative may be in the third-person or first-person mode of narration. The story within

the story must be told in the first person. It is rare to read a story written in the first-

person mode in which the first person himself or herself is the narrator of the

embedded narrative. (Only one example that comes to mind is Shibram Chakraborty’s

“Amar Byaaghrapraapti” which has an unexpected ending which, though absurd to the

utmost, strikes the reader most and consequently the special feature of narration is by

and large overlooked).

In the embedded narrative the narrator may thus tell a story of his or her own

experience or may repeat a tale heard from another person of his or her experience

(Parashuram’s “Svayambara” and “Dakshinray” are two such instances). In either case

the expectation the narrator would arouse have to be fulfilled by the narrator of the

embedded narrative. The ending may lead to additional closure(s) by a question raised

by a listener of the embedded narrative.

Thus the point of closure in a short story need not be one, but not too many. If a

novel has a second closure, it may appear as an epilogue to the narrative. But in the

case of a short story the second closure becomes a part of the embedded narrative. A

third closure too will appear to be so because of the relatively narrow span of time

taken by the short story itself, whether written in the first-person or the third-person

20

mode.

The relatively brief space that a short story occupies is more of help than hindrance in

choosing the right kind of closure, or offering additional closure(s). The additional

closure(s) more often than not continue the same story, beginning immediately after

the first closure. Or the story may take an altogether different turn by the second

closure and yet another unexpected turn to the third. The additional closure(s) may

have humorous effect or they may sublimate the story by adding a new dimension

(Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince” is one of the best specimens, having two additional

closures, one satirical and the other ethical).

A.C. Bradley has shown how even a prose poem by Ivan Turgenev reaches

sublime heights (44). Sublimity does not depend on the length of a story. “The Happy

Prince” begins as a fairy tale and, so far as the first closure is concerned, it ends

unhappily. The death of the sparrow marks the closure quite definitely. The second

closure suddenly gives a humorous twist to the tale. The third closure on the other

hand elevates the story to truly sublime heights. In this way even within a narrow

compass, a short story written for children may attain sublimity as a long novel might.

Characteristics of the Short Story

A single impression but an effective one is thus essential to the success or failure of a

short story. Several devices, such as flashback, is therefore resorted to. The device

itself is quite old. Its ancestry can be traced back to the Odyssey or the Mahabharata.

Its most effective use is found in full-length films too (Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane is the

best known example). Whip-crack ending, as in the stories of O. Henry, or what is also

known as twist in the tail, as in the many stories by Jeffrey Archer (two collections of

such short stories are significantly entitled A Twist in the Tale and Twelve Red Herrings)

are possible only in short stories but not in novels or other forms of narrative. This kind

of ending makes the whole set of events appears more 'dramatic' than any other means

or device.

This again suggests that there should (if not must) be one extraordinary or at

21

least out of the ordinary element either in the event or in a character or in the authorial

comment than can lift the recital of common events to the domain of art. Artwork

(illustration) too helps to create such an effect. Many Shibram Chakraborty’s stories

would not be so effective but for the illustration drawn by Shaila Chakraborty (no

relative of Shibram). Sometime Shri Narad (Yatindra Kumar Sen) provides the finale by

a tailpiece, as in “Shri Shri Siddeswari Limited” or “Mahavidya”. Although the

illustrations are what is nowadays called 'metatextual', they too contribute to the

effectiveness of the story. Such artworks, whether wholly mimetic or a product of

fantasia (as in the tailpiece at the end of Parashuram’s “Bhusandir Mathe”), serve the

purpose of rounding up the story in a visual form, not verbal. The element of the

unexpected and unsuspected is essential to the short story. Unless the unexpected or

unsuspected turn of events accompanies the recital, a short story would fail to create

an impression intended by the author.

Plotting thus involves (a) judicious selection of events that are real but not a part

of everyday experience, and (b) sudden introduction of the authorial comment at the

end of the recital. These two elements, however, do not encompass the variety the

short stories all over the world have. Admittedly these elements are sometimes

encountered in orally transmitted tales, but a short story, I propose should mean only

the written version which is shorter than a novel but longer than a joke or an orally

transmitted tale (such as folktales or bedtime stories for children). Orally transmitted

tales are as much current in urban areas as in villages, and there are every reason to

create a category that may be called “urban folktale”. But, unless they are written down

and read, they should not be treated as short story proper. The short story, let it be

reiterated, is an artifice, a conscious work of art meant to be printed and read by

unknown readers in the author’s absence. The physical presence of the narrator and at

least one narratee is a precondition of the orally transmitted tales. The short story, on

the other hand, dispenses with the physical presence of the author. Once an orally

transmitted tale is transformed into a written short story, the characters have to be

given proper names and the tale itself is expected to have a definite locale, although

rarely it needs to be dated. An orally transmitted tale may just mention a Brahmin and

22

one or two or three rogues but a written short story is expected to be more “realistic”

so each character should have a name.

A short story, however, would not be convincing unless it has some touch with

reality. Even if it is apparently fantastic it is expected to reflect reality in the garb of

fantasy. The difference between the romance and the novel, Arnold Kettle suggested,

lies in the fact that the novel is a creation of realism, whereas romance is purely

fantastic. The same difference applies to orally transmitted tales and the short story.

There is always a kind of unwritten agreement between the writer and the reader. The

writer knows that he is spinning a modified yarn and yet expects the reader to believe it

as true. The reader on his or her part knows that it is a yarn but while reading the story

suspends his or her disbelief. The agreement is of course temporary. Once the reading

is over, the same reader may start questioning the reality of the events and/or

characters but so long as the reading is going on such doubt would hamper his or her

appreciation. To put it more technically, the narrative must give an air of very

similitude. Names and locations are therefore important, for they contribute to the truth

pretension of the story. The narratee in his or her turn would seek to reassure that a

real-life incident is being narrated. The absence of proper names would not help create

this illusion of reality. It is the dialectical tension between belief and disbelief,

knowledge and suspension of knowledge that goes to make story-telling and –listening

a social activity. The unwritten agreement in this way fosters the illusion and at the

same time the illusion is made to appear as something real.

Such a complex process is not to be encountered in the orally transmitted tales

nor is it expected to be so. The written short story, more particularly the printed one, is

a great divider. Written story carries with it a stamp of a replica of a real-life incident

and so must have such elements as would make the story appear as real. So, when we

discuss the technique of short-story writing, we are forced to treat it in a different

plane, sharply distinguished from the orally transmitted tale by its pretension of being

real.

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PART 2

Structure of the Short Story: The Beginning, The Middle, and the End

Like any work of fiction, narrative or dramatic, the short story too is expected to have a

beginning, a middle and an end. However, end and closure are not synonymous. A

short story, like all good things in life, must come to an end, but it may not have a

closure. There are stories which are open-ended in spite of the fact that it has actually

ended at some point. In other words the written story ends but the story itself remains

unfinished.

This is where the question of closure comes in. Every story rouses some

expectation of the ending in the mind of a reader. “When a narrative ends in such a

way as to satisfy the expectation and answers the question that it has raised it is said to

close or to have closure.” (Abott 230).

When such expectation is not satisfied and the question remains unanswered,

the narrative is open-ended.

Abott makes a further distinction between “expectation” and “question”. He

explains

By expectations are meant kinds of action or event that the narrative leads us to expect

(the gun introduced in Chapter One that has to go off in Chapter Three). King Lear, for

example, satisfies the expectations that are aroused early on when we perceive that its

narrative pattern is tragedy, we expect, among other things, that Lear will die, and he does. But

major questions are raised over the course of the play that for many viewers are not answered

by the conclusion. So, for many, Kind Lear has tragic closure (giving satisfaction at the “level of

expectation”) but not closure of understanding (giving satisfaction at the “level of questions”)

(p. 230)

What the present study seeks to prove that there need not be one and only one

closure in a short story, but there may be two or even more closures. So far as I know,

24

this aspect has not been noticed by any contemporary narratologists, not to speak of

earlier critics of short stories. Yet there are quite a number of short stories in different

languages that have a double closure (a closure followed by another) or even multiple

closure (a closure followed by two or more closures).

Such additional closure(s) can be traced back even in ancient tales, meant either

for edification (such as the Hitopadesa) or entertainment (as in a tale in the Arabian

Nights).

Closure

Closure of course has been discussed in some detail in narrative theory. So far as

narrative structure is concerned we hear of epic, tragedy and novel of simple and

complex stories and the storyworld. (Routledge Ency., 366-70) We are told of ‘anti-

closural’ or ‘open-ended’ character of some narratives. Others have distinguished

between ‘inertial’ from ‘non-inertial’ endings, the first arriving according to expectation,

the other not, yet neither necessarily yielding nor failing to yield closure (ibid, 66). The

general tendency is to focus on the formal qualities in the text to attitude brought to

the text by readers. Obviously reader-response theory is at work. As to closure in the

short stories one theorist mentions ‘a modulated tension, at every point, between

suspended outcome and imminent closure’ (ibid 529). In any case closure is not treated

as anything else but a ‘single effect’ (as Edgar Allan Poe said) [ibid 528].

The problem is that no mention is made of any additional closure, that is, one or

two more closure(s) after the first closure. In this study it will be pointed out that no

closure in the short story can be treated as final, there is always a possibility that a new

closure is added to the already existing one. Such a possibility is not hypothetical. In

actuality there are quite a number of short stories which have one or two closure(s)

after the first closure.

H. Porter Abbott has sought to make a distinction between ‘expectations’ and

‘questions’. For example he cites the case of the play, King Lear:

25

We expect among other things that Lear will die, and he does. But major questions are raised

over the course of the play that for many viewers are not answered by the conclusion. So for

many King Lear has tragic closure (giving satisfaction to the “level of expectation”) but not

closure of understanding (giving satisfaction at the “level of questions”). (230)

Such a distinction however is made solely from the point of view of the reader.

The main objection that can and should be raised is that, what “many readers” may

want at the level of questions cannot be foretold and many other readers may have

very different questions to ask. In closure, whether the first one or those that follow,

must concern events, not speculations. In a story within a story, a listener in the

embedded narrative may very well ask the most relevant question, ‘What then?’ The

answer naturally would refer to an event that follows the first closure. Metaphysical

speculations cannot form the staple essence of a story. In any case the so-called level

of questions should better be relegated to the domain of psychology or ethics or any

other. Literary appreciation and hence literary criticism should confine itself to the

domain of the storyworld alone.

Frank Kermode’s study of ‘the sense of an ending’ has been highly praised

because of its offering the conclusion that ending marked by narrative closure arise out

of the minds natural inclination to convert the raw contingency of events into a shape

that conveys order and meaning. Similarly Hayden White has proposed that history as

practised in modern western culture is a narrative art in which closure plays a key role

of imposing ‘moral meaning’ on events. (Routledge Ency. 66). Both these approaches

go beyond the domain of literature. Kermode thinks in terms of the reader’s role in

reshaping the story in his mind and White treats of history books, not of fiction. So the

kind of ending they had in mind has nothing to do with ending in fiction. This is why I

have decided to avoid such discussions in relation to the short story.

The question of factuality and fictivity is a debated one. In spite of the fact that

the short story, like its predecessor novel, appeared late, when Romance was replaced

by realism, both the novel and the short story are basically fictive in nature. Even if a

novel or a short story deals with actual events and real personage, so long as the

26

names of the characters and/or the locale of the events are replaced by a different set

of names, it is a work of fiction, not a newspaper report. Add to this the conscious

plotting describing events happening simultaneously in a different sequence, the

distinction between the fictivity and factuality becomes crystal clear. The short story is

as much an artifice as the novel and often indulges in non-sequential narration of

events. Even the so-called ‘faction’ which retains the names of actual characters and

does not alter any event, is a kind of fiction: facts are represented in a way that makes

the story more interesting than newspaper reportage. Such considerations are always

to be kept in mind when we deal with any kind of narrative. Once the word story is

employed a sharp distinction is made from history although in some languages the

word ‘history’ is used to refer both to a fictive tale and history proper.

Closure: One or Many

The problem of closure has been studied in relation to the novel by Marianna

Torgonnick. She has described five types of relationships between the ending of a novel

and its preceding parts:

a) Circularity (an ending that looks back to the beginning)

b) Parallelism (an ending that recalls numerous points in the narrative)

c) Tangential (an ending that introduced a new idea)

d) Linkage (an ending that anticipates a sequel)

e) Incompletion (an ending that omits expected important material,

even if it exhibits some circularity or parallelism) (Murphin and Ray 62).

It may be argued that all these terms could be applied to the ending of a short

story as well. What I would like to point out is that a double closure or multiple closure

(hereafter both will be mentioned as ‘additional closure(s)’) has quite a different kind of

relationship between the first closure on the one hand and between preceding parts of

the same story on the other. This is why additional closure(s) should be treated as a

category exclusively relevant to the short story, not to all forms of narrative, specially

the novel. It will be shown that an additional closure is not a sequel, but something that

27

emerges from the events in the preceding parts of the story itself. Nor is it a going back

to the beginning of the story.

Admittedly stories having additional closure(s) are not common or many. Such

stories having additional closure(s) are indeed rare. Yet the fact is that additional

closure(s) are met with even ancient and medieval tales.

Before defining additional closure(s) it is necessary to point out some features of

this study:

1) Open-ended stories are excluded from the purview of this study. Incompletion

is not my concern. I propose to concentrate on only such tales and short stories that do

already have a closure. My point of interest is that even after satisfying the expectation

of the reader and even after answering the question that the tale or the short story

raised, additional closures are added without losing their links with the preceding parts

of the tale or the short story.

2) In case of multiple closures, the relationship between the third closure with

the preceding two is more complicated. It continues the same story by adding new

events that provide further information to the reader. In this sense the third closure

rouses further expectation after the first two. Only when the reader comes to the actual

end of the story (the final full stop after which there is no other sentence to follow), the

reader comes to understand that more was known to the omniscient narrator that the

first, or even the second closure had provided. Yet the additional closure(s) do not

appear to be mere appendixes to the main story. On the other hand they blend so

harmoniously with the first closure that the reader feels indebted to the author for

letting him or her know what happened after the first closure.

3) The additional closure(s) may continue the tale by telling what happened after

the first closure. That is to say the time frame of the story is extended. Or the further

closures may tell what happened simultaneously with what is described in the first

closure. The time frame of the story thus remains unaltered: it does not cross the time

frame.

Since the short story can portray only a ‘slice of life’ because of its spatial

limitations, the very idea of closure needs to be defined more closely. Closure is related

28

to readers’ expectations; it is not to be sought in the plot itself. Such is the generally

accepted view. No writer can think of a story without deciding where it is to end.

Admittedly all writers do not write in the same way. Some may chalk up the whole plot

from the beginning to the end. In course of writing they alter the plan. But by and large

the outline of the story is already there in the author’s mind. Some others may start

writing without any end in view, hoping that the story will end itself. Besides these two

there may be other ways of writing stories. But in all cases the writer knows that the

story must end somewhere.

The question of closure is relevant when and only when the story is not open-

ended, that is, the expectation of the reader, deliberately or not, is left unfulfilled (there

are cases when the reader too feels that the author is not really omniscient but having

proceeded with the story did not know how to bring it to an end). The question is did

the story rouse any expectation at all. Some stories, irrespective of their ends, are

interesting in themselves; the ending does not matter much. On the other hand another

kind of story makes the reader curious to learn how it will end. Whip-crack ending is to

be expected in case of this kind of story. In other words, we may think of two kinds of

short story: (a) stories in which the middle dominates over both the beginning and the

end, and (b) stories in which the ending dominates over the beginning and the middle.

Of course it is theoretically possible to conceive of a third kind of story in which the

beginning dominates over the middle and the end. But such stories are seldom

appreciated, even if written.

We may look at the issue from another point of view. A short story, given its

limited range, can arouse the readers’ expectation in the following ways:

(a) Does the end logically follow from the middle and satisfies the expectation of

the readers?

(b) Does the story defy any logical conclusion by taking an unexpected turn?

In the first case the story has a closure but in the second, the ending is

problematic. The sudden twist at the end may not be strictly speaking logical but

it may not be improbable either. In both cases the reader will come to know the

end of the story, whether they expected it to be so or not. Again, the end may

29

not appeal to the reader for he/she was not prepared for it. It may strike him or

her as far-fetched or utterly improbable. Yet he/she would admit that has been a

closure, or at least he or she at last knows how the matter ended.

All stories do not arouse the same kind of expectation. Only a particular kind of

story that opens up several probable endings does so. Recently some authors

themselves provide several probable endings to the same story: each ending either

necessary or probable, that is, the end follows logically from the middle even if the

presupposition made by the reader may not prefer all the alternative endings.

Jeffrey Archer’s short story, ”One Man’s Meat…” is a case in point. At the end of

the story there is an "Author's Note":

At this point on the story, the reader is offered the choice of four different

endings.

You might decide to read all of them, or simply select one and consider

that your own particular ending. If you do choose to read all four, they should be taken

in the order in which they have been written:

1. Rare

2. Burnt

3. Overdone

4. À point (589-90)

All the endings are appropriate insomuch as they follow logically from the

middle of the short story.

All these may lead to the conclusion that as with the beginning with the middle,

the end too must be one, whether it suggests closure or not. But such a conclusion

would be unwarranted in the face of actual examples where there is more than one

closure, each following the first closure and satisfying further expectations of the

reader. It is with this kind of short story that we are concerned.

Any story, whether short or long, orally transmitted or appearing in print cannot

but deal with a sequence of events, not just one event only. The short story writer has

to select a set of events culminating in a significant end. The end may be expected or

30

unexpected. Even in the case of a unexpected ending, there has to be a link with the

beginning and the middle. The sense of ending does not denote an end after which

nothing else can happen. On the contrary, any ending denotes a new beginning – the

beginning of another new story. That is why the author of a short story right from the

inception had to pay attention to the ending more than the novelist ever does. Every

story involves a sort of unwritten contract between the author and the reader: the

author from whichever point of a person’s life he/she may begin must bring it to an end

at another point which will show a logical link. Since there is not space enough to

accommodate a large number of characters and events, the treatment is bound to be

sketchy much will depend on plotting, that is, the arrangement of incident that would

make the set of events appear as a complete whole. By ‘event’ is meant either a

particular incident or more that one episode that gives the story an appearance of

wholeness. Even though it is a slice of life, the slice itself must appear to be (even if it

is really not so) a complete chapter in a person’s life. It is the ending that gives the

appearance of wholeness to a story.

How can double or multiple closures be compatible with the unwritten contract

that the author has agreed upon with his or her reader? Does not the second closure

destroy or at least disturb this appearance of wholeness? The question is more than

structural, for even after the first closure the author goes on to suggest that the first

closure is not a closure proper; the reader must be told something more. The second

closure in “The Happy Prince”, as we have shown challenges the reader’s sense of

having his or her expectation fulfilled. It seems to tell the reader: “You may think you

have reached the closure, but it is not so. Something you must know, and that would

give you proper closure.”

What about the third closure? It is a means of sublimating the story, giving it a

leap from the mundane to the spiritual. An otherwise sentimental story – a series of

incidents dealing with the miseries of the poor and the luxury of the rich - is elevated to

a higher plane. The satire of the first closure is transcended; the third one turns the

tragedy of the swallow and the prince to a much higher plane and uplift from the

unhappy ending to a sublime ending.

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Closure in the Short Story and the Novel

The idea of closure in the short story must differ in one respect from that in the novel.

A novel with its multiplicity of events and characters has to gather all the threads at the

end of the book and tell what ultimately happen to the major characters, at least the

protagonist. The short story writer is under no compulsion to do so. His/her task is to

provide an ending that would appear plausible to the reader, without bothering about

the other characters who are incidental to the story. In other words, a short story

concentrates more on a single character and one major incident, everything else being

subservient to that. Hence, closure in a short story will hinge a significant incident or a

significant comment made by the author at the end of the story (as in Chekhov’s “The

Enemy”).

In case of additional closure(s) the pattern is repeated. After one closure, a new

incident is introduced and a new closure follows. Here is thus a new story beginning in

the wake of a closure. In case of multiple closures, there is yet another incident and

another closure. However, in order to retain the link with the first incident and the final

incident that led to the first closure, new characters are seldom introduced (as in

Bibhutibhushan Mukhopadhyay’s “The Six Jewels”). Wilde, on the other hand, dared to

introduce two new sets of characters at the end of “The Happy Prince” (the councillors

of the municipality and then God and an angel). In spite of the introduction of new

characters the link with the statue of the Happy Prince and its outcome is evoked on

both the occasions. The continuity between the first closure and the additional closures

is thereby maintained.

It has been pointed out before that, structurally speaking, plotting is of seminal

importance in a short story; characterization and everything else are secondary. The

incident or the set of incidents (episodes) that makes up the story must be narrated in

such a way that the characters are no more than agents whose role outside the incident

or the set of incidents is of no importance at all. Master short story writers build their

characters while narrating the incident(s) in the story. No special effort is taken to

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portray the character(s). In course of the events of inside and outside of the characters

are made to stand before the readers in three-dimensional clarity. Yet it is plotting

rather than characterization that marks the brilliance of a short story. In case of

additional closure(s) the plotting has to be done with extra pair so that they would

appear quite naturally, not an extension of the first closure.

Characteristics of the Additional Closure(s)

The additional closure(s) must have an independent beginning, almost nothing of the

middle and a logical end. This independence is of essence for in the very first closure

the readers’ expectation has already been fulfilled. In the additional closure(s) a new

expectation is again aroused and fulfilled in quick succession.

This means that the additional closure(s) have to be brief, at least much shorter

than the first part of the story that led to the first closure. The structure of a story

having additional closure(s) may be diagrammatically represented as follows:

□ + □ + □

The additional closures are both independent and, though related to the first part

of the story, retain an independent status. This may sound paradoxical but the

additional closures are not meant to be mere episodes annexed to the first story. They

appear after the first closure and suggest a new beginning after the first or the second

closure.

What the additional closure does is to expand the vista of the first story. The

sense of completion, of wholeness, is achieved through the latter closure(s). The final

closure has the effect of rounding off the story by arousing renewed expectations and

satisfying them. A story with double or multiple closures gives the reader a sense of

being privy to whatever else happen even after the first closure. The author, so to say,

33

switches on the light after switching it off once or even twice. The reader would not

normally expect such a reopening of the curtain after it has dropped to his/her

satisfaction. Thus we have a new cycle or cycles of expectations and fulfillments. The

pattern is something like this:

E(xpectation) � S(atisfaction) + E � S + E � S...

The plus sign may appear to be somewhat ambiguous, for it may seem to be

totally independent of the first E � S. A comma might be considered more

appropriate since it would suggest a continuation of E � S. But the plus sign has

been chosen in order to show that the second and third events are not altogether

independent of the first event or set of events. The plus sign thus indicates both the

continuation and the new beginning after the first closure.

The additional closures thus intensify the effect of the main story, not by

parallelism or contrast (as a sub-plot does in a play or a novel) but by providing

additional information to what have been said at the end of the story. The strength of

the additional closures lies in continuing a tale which apparently had already a closure

or closures. The beginning of the second part of the story, so to say, may at first

appear totally unrelated to the first part. It is with some dexterity that part of the story

has to be added and should be made to appear at the fitting condition of the whole

story. The word ‘story’ may seem confusing, because the two or three parts following

the main story are not mere additions but follow directly or indirectly from the first story

itself. At the same time the two additional parts following the main story also constitute

parts of the whole story. Their presence, however, rendered the first closure as a non-

closure or a seeming one inasmuch as the additional closures apparently nullify the first

closure qua closure.

Three closures in a story, each independent of the other inevitably pose a

question: should the third closure be taken as the true closure while the earlier closures

merely pave the way to the third and final one?

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A close study of “The Happy Prince” or even the tales from the Hitopadesa and

the Arabian Nights would reveal that the second and third closures have the power to

reinforce the point that the first closure has already made. That the swallow and the

statue of the Happy Prince were precious, not in the mundane sense of the term but in

a higher, ‘spiritual’ sense, has already been suggested at the end of the first story. The

second story satirized the Mayor and the other councillors who are incapable of

understanding it. The third closure, as has been said before, sublimates the theme of

the story by bringing God and an angel to provide the right setting. Similarly, the

Hitopadesa tale in his first part has already revealed how stupid the Brahmin is. The

second and third parts take the story to new heights. Nevertheless, the change is not

necessarily qualitative although such qualitative changes do occur in some stories such

as the “Happy Prince”. As to the Arabian Nights tale there is an element of surprise at

the end of the third story. The reader already knows how stupid the man was. But such

a stupidity as revealed by the man’s remarks at the sight of the donkey was too much

to be expected. The clever author simply establishes the stupidity of the man by adding

the third closure.

Much has been made of the concept of the skeletal story or unit story by

narratologists like Gerald Prince. Long before them, however, E. M. Forster pointed out

that a single event cannot make a story; it needs at least two. Even then two unrelated

events cannot make a story: there must be a causal connection between the two. Thus,

‘The king died and the queen died’ may be said to have made a story but there is no

plot. ‘The king died and consequently the queen died in grief’ is a skeletal story, for a

causal connection between the two events has been established; they are not to be

taken as two independent events any more. When such a succession of two events

causally connected is conceived, it can be fleshed up by giving a local habitation and

name of the person in the story: now a short story can be constructed out of it.

This approach does not lay any emphasis on the middle of the story: only the

beginning and the end matter. On the other hand, Anton Chekhov was of the opinion

that it was the middle that really goes to make a short story. After writing the whole

35

story from the beginning to the end the author clips both ends and what is left is the

model short story.

These two approaches do not exhaust the possibility of all the varieties of a short

story. There are so many kinds of short stories that it is difficult to state which is its

most important characteristic: the middle or the end (the beginning may be excluded,

for it alone cannot make skeletal story even unless and until there is the middle or the

end). There are short stories in which the beginning is no less important: the end may

revert to it, as in stories using the technique of flashback. The opposite technique,

flashforward (a story containing prophecy) makes the beginning quite important in as

much as the end will show how the prophecy proved true or otherwise. Thus beginning

the story in medias res (from the middle) instead of ab ovo (literally ‘from the egg’, that

is, even before the creature comes out of it) has its advantage. It makes the reader

curious to learn both the beginning and the end. In other words, even a short short-

story has its beginning, middle and end, do not necessary in this order. Yet the end is

expected to satisfy the expectation of the reader, to have a closure. Yet life being a

continuous flow, any closure cannot but be temporary. The second, the additional

closure(s) therefore cannot be ruled out: they simply continue the tale as life continues.

In this context it should be reiterated that this study concentrates only on such

stories in which the end is of vital importance and it is by going beyond the end

(supplying additional closure(s)) that the concept of closure is intended to be studied.

Open-ended stories have been left out of consideration for the simple reason that there

is no closure.

The idea may appear preposterous: after a closure how can there be additional

closure(s)? Does it not contradict the concept of closure itself?

The answer is both Yes and No. What is intended to be emphasized that the

concept of closure as oppose to ending (the end) is fundamentally subjective. One

cannot prognosticate what expectations readers may have. Some would be contend

with any logical or any logically acceptable end. Not deviating from experience and real

36

life. Some others might expect something else: a whip-crack or unexpected ending that

belies the readers’ expectations and thereby have a jolting effect.

This is why the concept of the multiple closures is so important. It reveals that

no closure can be taken as ultimate. As there is a beginning before the beginning, the

egg before the hen, so can there be a closure after a closure. This is as much true of

art as of life.

No closure can be taken as final as life is like an ever-flowing stream, there can

be no closure that can be declared as final. For this reason any short story or a novel

can have a sequel that opens a new story with a new beginning, a new middle and a

new end. What is noteworthy in the concept of a short story is that, in spite of its brief

span, it contains a slice of life that is complete in itself but at the same time leaves

room for another slice of life to follow it.

Yet this is not what is meant by the additional closure(s). The new closure after

the first or the second one does not open a new story but adds something to the

previous closure(s), making the story appear as more complete. The dialectical

relationship between the beginning and the end is thus given a greater width the

additional closure(s) never replace the previous closure but rouses new expectations in

the mind of the readers and supplements the previous closure(s).

The sense of an ending is thus to be understood in relation to the whole story,

not just in relation to the immediately preceding closure(s). The second and

supplementary closure does not signify the incompleteness of the first closure. On the

other hand, it is a way of showing that the reader should not have taken the closure to

be final. Any fulfillment of expectation involves a sense of closure but it also lays bare

that the reader’s expectation should not have been so limited; there is always some

room for further expectations along different lines, and the narrator exhibits what other

expectations could have been aroused by the beginning and the middle of the story.

The concept of ‘the end’, whether it suggests closure or not, is enigmatic.

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Whether a novel or a short story, the end does not and cannot mean the end of life and

works of all the characters that appeared in the course of event described in the

narrative. Some writers, attempting to tell the reader what happened to the other minor

characters cannot really tell everything about what happened after the point where the

events in the life of the main characters are brought to an end. More particularly in case

of the short story, the omniscient narrator cannot go beyond a point without hampering

the unity of the narrative.

The end then signifies the end, not in relation to the lives of the characters but in

relation to the beginning of the story. Whatever expectations were aroused by the

beginning of the story is either satisfied or left open at the end. If the formal is the case

the story set to have a closure; it latter, the story is said to be open-ended. Even in the

case of unexpected or whip-crack ending, it is a closure in as much as the expectation

of the reader is howsoever oddly satisfied.

Such being the case, the beginning, however arbitrary it may seem, has to give

an impression that although the story begins in medias res, the read is not denied a

glimpse into what happened in the lives of the characters before the point that the

story begins. The reader is expected to believe, or even assured, that what happened

before the beginning of the written story is not relevant to the plot that would be

presented to him or her. Such an assurance is implicit in the domain of listening to or

reading a story. It is, so to say, the first clause of the unwritten agreement between the

author and the reader. The author must assured the reader that the beginning of the

story may very well be taken as a valid point of departure: the reader need not know

anything of the background excepting that the author will provide in course of the

story.

The next clause in the agreement would require from the reader an acceptance

of the fact that he or she would accept the end as the logical conclusion of the story

from the point it began. Without these two clauses no author can communicate with the

reader. It demands from the reader total acceptance as to the fragmentary nature of

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the story. It will not tell him or her any more of the background or even that happened

before the beginning of the story. He or she must candidly admit that it is not necessary

to go beyond the scope of the story.

Over-inquisitive readers will always ask what happened before the beginning as

also after the end. The author however is under any obligation to satisfy this curiosity.

This is why a concept of domain is so important to a short story. The plot must

have the look of a self-complete area: the reader need not know what happened

neither before the beginning nor after the end. The reader must assume that he or she

would be given to know whatever is strictly relevant to a particular slice of life that is

being presented before him/her, every other detail is redundant.

Need-to-know basis

The short story, it may be said with justice, moves on a need-to-know basis. The reader

will be provided with only such background information as is absolutely necessary to

follow the story line. Any detail which does not contribute to the understanding of the

detail, characterization and theme is considered unnecessary, unless it helps build

atmosphere of the story. Broadly speaking, a short story is a seamless garment of both

character and theme. Everything else is purely incidental and outside the structure of

the story.

The distinction between the story and the plot has been best elucidated by E. M.

Forster:

Let us define a plot. We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-

sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. ‘The king died

and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot.

The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadowed it. Or again: ‘The

queen died, no one knew why until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of

the king.’ This is a plot with a mystery in it, a form, capable of high development. It suspends

the time-sequence, it moves as far away from the story as its limitations will allow. (78)

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Forster then makes the distinction between the story and the plot in another

way, from the point of view of the reader:

If it is in a story we say: ‘and then?’ If it is in a plot we ask ‘why?’ That is the

fundamental difference between these two aspects of the novel. A plot cannot be told to a

gaping audience of cave-men or to a tyrannical sultan or to their modern descendants or the

movie public. They can only be kept away by ‘and then – and then –‘. They can only supply

curiosity but a plot demands intelligence and memory also. (78)

All short stories discussed in this study have two qualifications: (1) it is a written

piece meant to be read, not just heard, and (2) instead of having a single closure it has

more than one closure, be it two, three or more. Plotting therefore is of seminal

importance inasmuch as the additional closure(s) have to be woven into a story is

normally expected to have one closure only. The kind of story we are dealing with

involves a more complex kind of relationship between the author and the reader. The

reader may not guess the ending of the story; he may be prepared for a logical end

after which nothing more remains to be added. A story that is open-ended may thus

appear to be somewhat tantalizing: the reader feels cheated and may legitimately

complain that the author is guilty of breach of contract. The unwritten contract between

the author and the reader is something like this: the author will tell a complete story

that may begin at any point of time in the life of the protagonist but end at a definite

point where the course of events narrative in the story would lead logically to the given

end, after which the reader need not know what happened thereafter.

In this connection we may profitably think of the long prose Postface or

Afterword that follows George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. In order to appease the

interminable curiosity of the reader/viewer, who refuses to accept the End (Finis) of the

play and persists in asking ‘and then?’ Shaw had to continue the story from the point

the curtain had dropped. The imaginary biography of Hilda and Fred had to be created

so as to brief a glimpse what most probably would have happened in the lives of such

persons as Hilda and Fred.

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To a discerning reader, this kind of postscript is not only unnecessary but

another kind of breach of contract on the author’s part. Shaw had already provided a

closure to the story he had dramatized. There was no need of a postscript other than to

satisfy the illogical curiosity of a section of his audience who could not comprehend or

accept the closure of the play. They were of the kind of audience would not be satisfied

even after the closure, whose expectation was to know the whole biography of the

protagonist and maybe all other characters in the play. To such members of the

audience even marriage in a comedy and death in a tragedy could not be a closure.

Nothing short of a full knowledge about the characters could stop them asking ‘and

then?’

Reading a short story, therefore, suggests acceptance of the relatively narrow

scope of the story (compared to the novel or a five-act play) he or she will not be told

anything that is not strictly necessary to the story itself. It is not just the interest in the

story but the plot that could interest him or her. The additional closure(s) come(s) as a

surprise, something unexpected. Here it may even be taken as another kind of breach

of contract: the author had agreed to tell one story within the compass of the short

story, but he is providing one or two more stories, one in the wake of the other.

No discerning reader, however, would object to additional closure(s) in a short

story insofar as they provide him with a bonus. That is to say, after his or her

expectation has been fulfilled, he or she has not been cheated by an open-ended story.

A second closure comes to appear as an unexpected bonus.

A short story with additional closure(s) may be pre-planned or the product of

afterthought of the author. Either way the first closure has to be achieved first without

leaving any room for the reader to expect anything more. Then and only then the

additional closure(s) would be treated as unexpected bonus.

It has already been shown that additional closure(s) have several functions to

perform. Apart from providing further information about the course of events and/or

the fates of the characters (or at least the protagonist of the story) additional closure(s)

may also elevate the story to a new height (as the third closure does in Oscar Wilde’s

“The Happy Prince”). Sublimation does not occur in all stories with additional closure(s).

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It may even be taken as an exception. Such an outcome can also be found in stories

like Manik Bandyopadhyaya’s “Primeval” (the title of original Bangla story is

“Pragaitihasik”, meaning ‘prehistoric’). The author’s comment at the end of the story at

the end of the story offers an ending that is not only unexpected but leaves all the

events in the life of the beggars far behind.

We not digress here to discuss the role of such author’s comments in a short

story. What we want to establish is that elevation of the theme can be achieved in a

short story without additional closure(s).

Providing further information that the reader did not expect is different

proposition. The reader is expected to be prepared to accept any ending – even a story

in which the ending is left open – without any objection. If the middle of the story is

gripping enough, the open-ending may prove to be unobjectionable, In view of the fact

that reader himself or herself too could guess how and where the story would end. If

the ending of the story suddenly seems to be lost, like a stream of water in a desert,

the reader may as well accept such a loss without demurring. Since the reader could

hardly envisage how the story would end, he or she need not feel himself or herself

cheated.

The best example of this kind of story ending unexpectedly in the middle of

nowhere is Parasuram’s “Bhusandir Mathe”. If the author himself confesses his lack of

omniscience the reader has no option but to forgive him, precisely because of the

reason that the reader too does not know how to solve the marital crises of three pairs

of husbands and wives described elaborately in the middle of the story. In this instance,

as in most of open-ended stories, the end is indistinguishable from the middle, for the

middle does not lead to any end but has to stop at a point from which nothing logical

could follow.

The relationship between the author and the reader is normally that of an

omniscient narrator and, almost as a foil, a nescient narratee. Which is why the faith

placed on the omniscience on the narrator is almost universal. This is not to deny that

some narrators in the story are not omniscient but only have limited knowledge of the

characters and events constituting the story. But we are speaking of the norm: the

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reader wishes to know what he or she does not know and the author is supposed to tell

him or her what he or she would like to know. Even a narrator who proves to be fallible

or having limited knowledge has to be admitted as more knowledgeable than the

narratee in respect to the story that is about to be told.

Only when such a narrator leaves the reader in the larch at the end of the story

that the end of the story that the narratee feels himself or herself to be badly cheated

(another breach of contract). If, however, the story reaches a point from which no

logical conclusion can follow, the reader would not feel so. Parasuram started off his

“Bhusandir Mathe” as an omniscient narrator but at the end he becomes almost as

nescient as the reader. As opposed to all this, short stories having additional closure(s)

establish the omniscience of the author. Not only does he or she know whatever

happened within the given time-frame and space-frame of the story but also he or she

can go beyond the two frames and extent them so as to inform the reader what

happened after the first closure. The relationship between the author and the reader in

case of such stories is based on trust rather than conning. If the open-ended story

makes the reader feel conned (cheated), the story with additional closure(s) tends to

make the reader value the author as more trustworthy than the author of an open-

ended story. The credibility and the trustworthiness of the author of the first type of

stories is thereby well-established and almost automatically such an author is placed

above the author of the stories of second type.

Is Closure a Subjective Concept?

When we speak of the reader’s expectation and its fulfillment do we really mean that all

the readers have the same expectations or the same kind of expectations? In other

word, is closure a objective concept common to all readers, past, present and future or

expectations varied from reader to reader and so purely subjective?

Experience shows that the latter is the case. All readers do not have expectations

or the same kind of expectations in relation to the story. Children, for example are

seldom satisfied with any ending, whether closed or open. They persist in asking, ‘and

43

then?’ Hence, it has become a general formula for commercial film-makes and

dramatists of public board to end happy-end stories with marriage (adding or

suggesting ‘and they lived happily together’) and unhappy-end stories with death or

better still, a number of deaths, so that the closure is beyond question. One reader

maybe satisfies with a conclusion that logically follows from the given span of the plot.

Another reader may not be so logically inclined as to accept such an ending. He or she

would like to go beyond the ending provided by the author: like Oliver Twist such

readers would continuously ask for more.

An actual experience narrated by Paul Cobley provides an excellent example. We

can do no better that to quote the whole passage:

As a youth in the early days of the home video, I watched a recording of the 1970s paranoid

thriller Capricorn One (1978). The film’s narrative is concerned with a future manned space

flight to Mars which is aborted at the last minute because of technical difficulties caused by

private contractors failing to maintain standard of safety. The fact that the journey does not

take place is concealed from the public and the astronauts are blackmailed into enacting the

Mars landing in a film studio in order that public faith in the space programme might continue.

As the astronauts realize that the public will be told that they have been fictionally killed on re-

entry into the earth’s atmosphere, they decide to escape the clutches of their captors and flee

into the nearby desert. Two of the astronauts are caught and presumably executed, but a

maverick journalist (Elliott Gould) rescues one of them (James Brolin) and brings him back to

the astronaut’s hometown ironically just in time to attend his own funeral and to greet the

media that are assembled there. This is the final scene of the film. However, the point of this

summary is that whilst I was watching the film, my mother was also in the room, her attention

divided between the narrative and the task of ironing clothes. At the film’s conclusion she

expressed disappointment and stated that she would have been keen to view the inevitable

ensuing court case, the media coverage and the ultimate faith of the conspirators. (215-16)

The concept of closure from this point of view is then purely subjective. But if we

shift the concept from the narratee to the narrative itself, the proper definition of

closure is possible.

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PART 3

Double Closure vis-à-vis Dual Closure

By double closure I mean a closure that follows an already existing closure at the end

of the story. The story itself has no sub-plots or a parallel story running along with the

main story. Dual closure, on the other hand, is a different proposition altogether.

Double closure is to be distinguished from dual closure. Dual closure though rare in

short stories is quite common in long short stories and even in some short short-stories.

Dual closure occurs in a story in which there is a sub-plot or a parallel story running

along with the main story. In both cases, the end demands end of both the main plot

and the sub-plot. Even though the short story has a limited number of events and

characters a sub-plot is not necessarily inadmissible. In course of development the main

plot, a sub-plot quite naturally evolved, sometimes without prior intention of the author.

Once it has emerged, the author is constrained to provide an ending to the sub-plot as

well. As a result there are two closures – one of the main plot the other of the sub-plot.

In Parasuram’s “Birinchi Baba” the main plot concerns the unmasking of a false

guru. The story narrates a number of events relating to both the guru and those who

unmask him. After the guru and his disciple have been caught red-handed the story has

a fitting closure in the guru being driven away from the house. The main story ends

here but the sub-plot which was already on continues.

However, Satyabrata one of the members of the group which gathered with the

expressed purpose of debunking the guru, falls in love with Bunchki, the daughter of

the Duke. Parasuram is very economic. At first Satyabrata seeks out Bunchki for some

tea. Then they are found sitting in the room where lord Siva was to appear in person. A

brief exchange takes place: Satyabrata whispered into Bunchki’s ear, “Bunchu, are you

afraid?” Bunchki answered, “no” (trans. Saroj Acharya, Hindustan Standard, Puja

Annual, pp. 57-64). When the story is over Satyabrata and others are invited to supper.

Parasuram here adds a sort of appendix to the story:

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After supper, Satya wailed, “O, what a fix I am in.”

Nibaran asked, “What is it again?”

Satya – Nibaran-da!

Nibaran – Why not tell me what it is.

Satya – Nibaranda !

Nibaran – Speak it out.

Satya – I’ll marry Bunchki.

Nibaran – That I may well understand. But suppose, she is not given in marriage to you.

Satya – Sure, they shall give, Bunchi’s father shall.

Nibaran – Granting the father agrees, what does the daughter say?

Satya – A very mystifying answer she gives.

Nibaran – What does she say?

Satya – Be off, she said.

Nibaran – Pooh! What fool you are! Be off means of course yes.

Of course Cobley’s mother (see above) would still demand that the story should

have ended with the marriage ceremony of Satyabrata and Bunchki. Less demanding

readers would be satisfied with the ending provided by Parasuram both for the main

plot and the sub-plot. The story thus has two perfect closures. This is what we called

dual closure.

The same kind of dual closure is found in the stories of John Mortimer. Whether

in his long stories in which a barrister called Rumpole is the key figure or in the stories

dealing with auction house, Klinsky’s, where objects of art (mostly paintings) are

brought under the hammer, there are always two parallel stories running side by side.

Each story is independent of the other; none is a subplot to the main plot. Unlike the

story-within-a story, we have two parallel stories in both Rumpole series and the

Klinsky’s series. In the Rumpole series the courtroom story is brought to the focus, but

another story concerning the members of the chamber Rumpole belongs to is tagged to

it. Rumpole has to solve the crisis of his own chamber as well as win the legal battle. In

the Klinsky’s series too there are three employees of Klinsky’s London office. They have

a story of their own, side by side with the purchase and sale of the art works.

46

Sometimes the chairman of the London office also makes appearance in the side

stories. The locale of the stories moves from London to New York, and even to Moscow.

The Rumpole stories, on the other hand, are mostly confined to the UK.

The main story and the side story are cleverly and elegantly interwoven by

Mortimer. But the relation between the two stories in not like the matrix narrative and

the embedded narrative. The Klinsky’s stories are more in the nature of being

intertwined, with one story predominating.

This type of stories may be called double narrative, which is unlike the narrative-

within-a narrative; the point of resemblance ends with the fact that one story (mostly

longer than average stories having one focus only) contains two stories within it, each

having a focus of its own. The traditional definition of the short stories would not fit

Mortimer’s dual stories. They are more in the nature of a short story which two related

shorter stories in them. Yet we must note that it is the main story that really matters;

the side story is of less importance. The latter merely provides another point of human

interest, not directly connected with the main story. In fact, the side story is there only

because it happens to take place at the same time when the events of the main story

have been set to motion. The focuses however are more often than not of different

kinds and both the main story and the side story are narrated alternately, the

intertwining of the two do not affect each other. In such stories, the author is under an

obligation to provide two endings, and not just ending but closures. The reader then

reads two stories at once and learns the outcome of both.

This is again dual closure, not double closure. In dual closure there are two

closures of two different stories like two threads, each having its distinct beginning and

end. There is no follow up of either of the closure. In case of double closure, on the

other hand, both closures share the same beginning. (This is true of multiple closure

too. The second closure and the third closure share the same beginning as of the first

closure).

We may now narrow down the area of our discussion to only such stories which

have no sub-plot or a parallel plot (as in Mortimer’s stories). The double closure is to be

sought and found in short stories which are unitary in character with no sub-plot or

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parallel plot to distract the reader from following the one and only plot of the story in

question.

The idea of closure is difficult to define, particularly in relation to a short story.

After all, philosophically speaking, the idea of closure itself may be subjected to

criticism. Even death cannot be called ‘closure’, for to the idealist philosophers the soul

or the spirit is immortal; even after the death of a human, the soul does not die but

continues to ‘live’, in whatever form it is conceived by the idealists. In the Indian

tradition for example the soul has a lingasarira, not larger than the little finger. In post-

mortem rites (sraddha) not only food but clothes and even an umbrella are offered for

the proper maintenance of the disembodied or incorporeal soul.

Even to the materialist, who do not believe in the existence of such an

imperishable self, one person’s death does not signify the extinction of the human

species. In any case, even after the death of a person his or her relatives, friends and

acquaintances continue to live. Life thus is an unending tale. Death removes one at a

particular point of time but not all the characters that played their part during the life-

time of the person who is dead.

What then about such extinct species as the dodo? Should we call it a closure of

the species as a whole? Most probably yes. Yet such a closure immediately suggests an

end of the story without the possibility of a sequel. Closure in a short story or for that

matter in a novel, does not necessarily preclude the possibility of a sequel. Hence, no

closure is to be taken in the sense of extinction. It is always a temporary one relative to

the story only, not to the events that follow after the story comes to an end.

This is why the idea of closure is to be understood in a very restricted sense.

Insofar as a short story is concerned ‘for the time being’ is always to be kept in mind.

Every closure is to be understood in relation to a given series of events which come to a

close only in relation to its beginning, as the beginning itself is selected somewhat

arbitrarily on a need-to-know basis, the closure too is equally arbitrary. Arbitrariness is

the prime requirement both in case of the beginning and the end of the short story. The

only thing that a short story writer has to keep in mind is that he/she must not omit

anything about the characters and the events which are necessary for comprehending

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the course of action the protagonist and other characters adopt. A novelist can afford to

provide information regarding the events that happened prior to the beginning, having

no strict relation to the events that are to be narrated in the text. On the contrary, the

short story writer must be more economic in these matters because of constraint of

space.

Horace’s advice of beginning a story in medias res, in the middle of things in his

Ars Poetica is nowhere as effective as in the case of the short story, a genre of which

Horace had no idea. What is to be added is that, in a short story the writer may and

often does put an end to his narration in Medias Res. As the story did not begin ab ovo

(from the egg, that is from the very birth) the writer is not obliged to stretch the story

ad mortem, to death. A short story has an advantage over all other kinds of tale in that

it need not provide the background of the events for the characters. The writer can

begin from any point of time of a person’s life and stop at any point of time he/she

decides to close. The only requirement is to build up a convincing middle so that the

beginning and the end appear to be connected. It perhaps for this reason that temporal

connection between the events in a short story is stressed in all definitions and

descriptions of this young (if not the youngest) genre.

This also explains why some definitions of a narrative demand at least three

events. Apart from temporal connection, logical connection involving the causal relation

between the events is required. These two elements, temporal and causal connection,

is a sort of wholeness to the narrative. Even in a short story, in spite of its relatively

narrow space is expected to have the effect of wholeness, and arbitrary beginning

leading to a logical end without affecting the arbitrary nature of both the beginning and

the end. However paradoxical the idea may appear at the first sight, this is how many

short stories are designed. The ending is arbitrary, for there is always a possibility of a

sequel growing out of it, but at the same time there must be a logical thread

connecting the end with the beginning. Two stories of Parasuram, “Lambakarna” (name

of a goat) and “Gurubidaya” (Exit the guru) has the same goat as the central character,

but one is not a sequel to the other, since they have two different beginnings and

naturally two different ends.

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The whole issue may be summed up as follows: closure in a short story is to be

understood exclusively in relation to its beginning, not in any absolute sense. When a

story has a closure it does not mean that events in the lives of the characters come to a

close. On the other hand, every closure, at least theoretically, may be the point of

beginning of another, an altogether new story. The relative nature of closure may thus

be explained not in relation in relation to a putative reader’s expectation. We have

already seen how the expectation of two readers may and do vary (in the instance

quoted from Cobley’s real life experience how he and his mother reacted differently to

the ending of a telefilm. Cobley was quite happy to find a closure at the point the film

ended, but his mother wanted to know more and thought the ending too unexpectedly

to be accepted as closure.

What I propose to do is to shift the idea of closure from the narratee to the

narrative itself. The ideal of closure is to be defined in relation to the beginning of the

story, not the expectation the beginning and the middle has aroused in the mind of the

narratees. The reason is obvious: two narratees may have two different expectations.

We may enlarge the field and say: many narratees would have many different

expectations. It is unfair to choose one narratee’s expectation as the only valid one, and

the expectations of others as not. If we keep in mind the often-heard question, ‘what

then?” it will be obvious that such questions would logically lead to infinite progress

(akin to infinite regress), never reaching an end acceptable to all narratees. Thus by

avoiding the pitfalls of subjective judgment we can arrive at a more consistent

understanding of a short story by accepting the arbitrary nature of the beginning and

the end. A proper objective understanding of the structure of the short story is to be

undertaken, first by concentrating on the story itself, the narrative which admittedly

deals with ‘a slice of life’, and, secondly, by judging how far and to what extent the

beginning and the end are logically connected.

We have already narrowed down the area of our study by excluding stories

which are open-ended. Some authors are apologetic in relation to the ending of such a

story, as Parasuram is at the end of his “Bhushandir Mathey” (In the Field of

Bhushandi). He admits that he is not aware of how the tangled problem of three sects

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of couples was or even could be sorted out. He leaves the whole matter to some of his

contemporary writers engaged in a literary debate concerning obscenity. Thus, far from

being an omniscient author, Parasuram admits his nescience. Some others are not so

straightforward as to admit why the story had to be left open-ended. They expect the

readers to finish the story in whichever way they liked. In any case, open-ended stories,

have no closure, and hence are left out of our purview. Only a story already having a

closure can have a second or more closure(s).

Secondly, additional closure(s) cannot be expected in all closed stories too.

Additional closures are a rare occurrence and call for a detailed study because of their

relative infrequence.

Shift from the Narratee to the Narrative

The proposed shift from the narratee to narrative has some further significant. For one

thing we shall find that all stories do not have the potential for a second closure, not to

speak of a third or a fourth. The nature of the story itself may preclude any possibility

of going beyond the first and the only closure. A narratee may still ask ‘what then?’ but

the story has already come full round, anything after it will be logically redundant. Most

of the stories (if not all) that have a closure fall into this category. Very few stories

leave some room for another closure which is not the beginning of a new story. There

are story cycles right from the orally transmitted very short tales (Mullah Nasiruddin,

Birbal, Gopal the wise fool, and many others both in India and the West) down to

written short stories in which the same set of characters appear again and again,

although the plot of each story is different (four characters in Narayan Gangopadhyay’s

Tenida series; Mr Chatterjee, Bangsalochanbabu, Binod Ukil, Uday, and Nagen in

Parasuram’s Bangsalochan cycle, Ganesh, K. D. Gupta and others in Bibhutibhushan

Mukhopadhyay’s Sibpur Bandhaghat cycle, etc.). Every other story is not a continuation

of the first. Nevertheless, in the new story certain characters are constant while others

are variable. Such stories are pre-planned as or developed into a cycle of stories with

this feature (Premendra Mitra’s Ghanada stories belong to this category). In this case

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each story has a life of its own; none of them is a continuation of the previous one,

although there may be references to an earlier story. However, the knowledge of the

latter is not a precondition of appreciating the story at hand.

A story with additional closure(s) should possess one characteristic. The second

and subsequent closure(s) should arrive from the middle of the story itself. The

additional closure(s) in no way should appear as a beginning of a new story but as a

natural ending after the first closure. The first closure then has only the appearance of

a closure, there is still room for some additional events that would really or effectively

round off the story. Bibhutibhushan Mukhopadhyay’s “Shara-ratna” (The Six Jewels) is a

case in point. The omniscient narrator had kept one card close to his chest which he

reveals only after the first closure. The desertion of two of the six jewels both very

antagonistic to each other, we are told, only in course of the second closure, was only

to be expected, for their purpose have been served. Like the Zamindar, the dupe of the

story, readers too have no inkling of the nefarious plan the jewels had hatched between

themselves. When the second closure reveals the secret, readers too have to admit that

the apparent animosity between the two jewels was too pronounced to be true. It could

very well be phony, a make-belief to misappropriate all the money meant for bribing

the lawyers of the other side and buying up the witnesses against the prosecution.

Since the desertion of the two jewels then is only to be expected, the logical link

between their earlier behavior and subsequent action is well-established. Even though

duped, readers cannot deny (and even appreciate) the intention behind the supposed

enmity between the two jewels. The matter is given a new twist by making one appear

as the devotee of the goddess Sakti (Kali) and the other, a devout Vaishnava. The

irreconcilable opposition between the two cults is traditional. But the irony lies here that

both of them were working in league, and behind their intolerant attitude against each

other, both were trying to milk as much money as possible.

This kind of additional closure may be viewed as constituting the final closure to

the whole story: two closures that complement each other. It is not that the second

closure supplements the first. But without a second closure the full extent of the way in

which the Zamindar has been duped would not come out. The time lag between the

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two closures was essential to this story. The two jewels had to be given time to set up

another business and subsequently apprehended by the police. Such time lag is

common in stories having additional closure(s). In fact it is this time lag that begets the

second closure in the stories where it serves its function as supplementary. The pattern

is something like this: there was a gap in the first closure which nobody noticed or even

could notice, but only after a certain time lag, this gap is filled up, because of some

new information that has come out after the first closure.

This time lag is essential to “The Happy Prince”, the quarrel between the

councilors take place a short while after the death of the swallow and the breaking of

the heart of the disfigured statue, stripped off all metals and jewels. The third closure,

narrated last, could also be the second closure. It stands independent of the second

closure: the latter does not lead to the third. As the story stands, the second closure

could as well be dispensed with, after the tragedy in the first closure, such sublimation

in the third could fit well with the scheme of the story itself.

There is no information whether the whole story was pre-planned with all the

three closures already present Wilde’s mind. The additional closures could very well be

the product of afterthought. We are not concerned here with the origin of the story or

the intention of the author: we are dealing only with the end-product. Even if Wilde had

no plans to write a story with three closures, “The Happy Prince” would still remain as a

specimen of a story having multiple closures.] But then the contrast between the Mayor

and the councilors on the one hand and the action of the two angels on the other would

not be there in the story. After reading “The Happy Prince”, the reader is made aware

of the pettiness of some men and the exalted idea of self-sacrifice that comes out in the

third closure.

The temporal relation between the first closure and the second closure, we have

seen, is normally one of posterity, not of priority. The third possibility cannot be ruled

out: both the closures may have relation of contemporaneity. However, such instances

must be rare.

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Hinting at Additional Closure(s)

When a second closure is pre-planned, the author may very well provide a subtle hint of

such a possibility in the story itself. Till the second closure is reached, the significance

of the hints may not be transparent or easily detectable. It is only after reading the

second closure that the reader comes to understand why such a hint was given before.

“The Six Jewels” provides an excellent example. The Abadhut (follower of a

Tantra cult, and hence a devotee of the goddess Kali) and the Vaishnava (follower of

some incarnation of the god Vishnu, be he Krishna or Rama or whoever else) are

known to be traditional enemies. The first is strictly non-vegetarian, the second being a

believer in ahimsa, non-violence, is rigidly vegetarian. The two characters in the story,

as expected, too are sworn enemies of each other. They often bicker publicly. When the

Abadhuta is sent to bribe the court, he takes the vaishnava along with him, so that

nobody can doubt that the bribe would be duly paid: the vaishnava will watch his rival

closely. When they come back, both declaring that the mission is over, the bona fide of

the Abadhut is well-established.

So far, so good. When we come to the second closure, we come to learn that

both of them had all along operated in union and had made such duping deals before.

Now that they have been found out and arrested, their professional quarrels are

understood to be mere make-believe: intentionally done in order to convince others

that they belong to two opposite camps. When the other ‘jewels’ in the story start

murmuring that all of them suspected that two from the very outset, feeling that they

were in league, the patience of the Zamindar is sorely over-taxed. When those two

cheats had left the Zamindar’s house separately, neither the patron nor any of his

hangers-on had really suspected so. Yet they were the only two of the six jewels who

deserted the credulous landlord at his time of discomfiture, although stating different

reasons (the Abadhuta proposed to visit Kamakhya, a well-know site of the Tantrik cult,

for performing asceticism, and the other refusing to show his face to the landlord

because of shame). Once a news in the daily paper reveals the motive behind their

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desertion – to seek new pastures for further duping – that all the pieces of the jigsaw

puzzle are set in their proper place.

This is a perfect round-up, revealing not only why the two cheats silently took to

their heels but also providing answer to the question that should have arisen in the

mind of the reader: what made these two take to their heels when the other four did

not? The second closure answers the question that might not have arisen in the mind of

all readers. The omniscient author keeps all the cards close to his/her chest and even

after showing all but one at the first closure, shows the last card in the second. The

second closure thus is pre-planned, maybe conceived even before writing down the

story. [There may be some cases when the second closure was not pre-planned but it

suggested itself in course of writing the story or at the time of writing the first closure.

It might then have necessitated some reworking on the draft in order to be a hint to

the second closure. Whatever be the actual process – the additional closure is planned

beforehand or its possibility was seen by the author while the story being written – the

outcome is the same: the second closure appears to be pre-planned.]

On the contrary, the additional closure(s) might have suggested itself only after

the first closure is already written down. The process of story-writing, like film-making

of Charlie Chaplin, is not always uniform. As Chaplin writes in his autobiography, he

sometimes came to the set in the morning without having the ghost of an idea of any

story at all, or even a single situation. He would then begin shooting from anywhere

and stop anywhere, letting the storyline develop along with shooting.

Such a thing can only happen in case of short slapstick comedies, laughter-

jerker, so to say analogous to tear-jerkers. The short story, unlike a novel or a full-

length play or a feature film, may follow Chaplin’s method, for because of its short

duration of events and of story-telling, a quick ending is possible and maybe allowed to

suggest in course of telling or shooting the story. [Improvisation is an essential part in

the embedded narrative in Pramatha Chaudhury’s “Pharmayesi Galpa” (Story Made to

Order) Ghoshal is often interrupted by the Zamindar, his patron and he has to change

the course of story to satisfy the whims of the Zamindar. Such improvisations, however,

do not detract from the merit of the story, for in spite of all diversion and digression,

55

Ghoshal ultimately brings the story to his desired end.] It is therefore possible to think

of several patterns of writing a short story. They are as follows:

a) Only the beginning of the story is conceived by the author without the idea of

the end.

b) The end of the story is already present in the author’s mind not the

beginning.

c) The middle of the story is already conceived without any hint of either the

beginning or the end.

These are the three possibilities; no fourth possibilities can exist. In all the three

cases a short story writer has to flesh out all the parts of the story in his or her own

way. Some authors may seize upon the beginning and leave the story reach its middle

before he could visualized the end. Some others may work out the full story in their

minds first, and then seat down to write it. Yet other authors may write the end first

and work backwards to the middle and the beginning.

There must be other ways of writing stories as well. But we are not concerned

with the inner process of writing a short story. As we have decided to shift the

understanding of closure from the narratee to the narrative itself, we may also leave

the narrator with the narratee.

This is not to say there can be narratee without any narrator. In fact the narrator

and the narrative are the first few essential elements of narratology. The narratee is not

essential in the same sense as the other two are. The reason is this: a short story may

be written but remain unread because it is never shown any reader or is never sent for

publication, or even though sent, for some reason or other is never published. In any

case the narrative is there only to be discovered sooner or later, even though there can

be no narratee in actuality. That every narrative presupposes a narratee is a mere

theoretical statement. A narrative may very well exist for years together without an

actual narratee, but there can be no narrative without an actual narrator, be he or she

the author or the teller of the story. The narrative written in the third-person mode of

narration presupposes only the author and the story: the reader or narratee is not one

of the first preconditions.

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Only when a story is actually read or heard by at least one person, the question

of narratee would not arise. Of the four constituent parts – narrator, narration,

narrative, and narratee – only the first three are to be viewed as truly essential. Only

when the story is fully written and ready to be published, the reader makes his or her

appearance. In case of a story-within-a-story the narratee has its essential role, but not

in all kinds of stories.

Once we shift closure from the narratee to the narrative itself, we practically shift the

concept of closure from the psychological plane (subjective) to the plot (objective).

Closure assumes the focal position in relation to the plot of the story. Whether the

narrator first chalks out the whole plan or starts off with only the beginning or the

middle or the end, in his or her mind, once the story is written down there is either an

end or the story remains open-ended. In both cases the question of multiple closures

would be relevant. In case of a story with an end every additional closure throws up a

vital question: why continue the story after the end? Contrariwise, in case of an open-

ended story: why could it not end properly? In other words, an end which is no end

would raise doubts and suggest possibilities in the readers’ mind. The point is that: why

even after the round up, some stories require additional closure(s)?

We have already mentioned one consideration: the time lag between the

closures may necessitate reopening the end. Additional closure(s) thus continue

answering the question, “what then?” but also provide the “why?” in relation to the

end. When the end appears to be perfectly satisfactory, gathering all the loose threads

into one, it may still provide only a partial satisfaction to the readers. Thus besides

maintaining logical connection and temporal sequence, there is a desire on the part of

the narrator, not so much to satisfy the curiosity of the narratee, but to be generous

and provide additional information that would proof to be an unexpected bonus to the

narratee.

Parasuram sometimes resorts to this kind of generosity in a short story written in

the third-person mode of narration. He takes the reins by telling serially the beginning,

the middle, and the end of the story. Afterwards of his own accord, throws another

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piece of information at the end of the end. It is in the nature of the tailpiece. Instead of

an illustration drawn, it is a verbal representation. [In this connection we may

remember how Jatindra Kumar Sen’s tailpieces to some stories hint at what happened

after the story. The image of Ganesh in an upturned position at the end of “Shree Shree

Siddheswari Limited”, reminiscent of the Bangla proverb, “Ganesh ultono”, that is

liquidation of a business. The god Ganesh is supposed to be one who bestows success,

assuring fulfilment of all wishes (sarvasiddhidata). An idol of this lord is kept and

worshipped in almost all Hindu business houses. If the image is found in an upturn

position, it suggests ill-luck, loss in business and what not. A part of a jail gate with

handcuffs at the end of “Mahavidya” also represents a proper closure to the story.] As

for verbal representation of additional information, see Parasuram’s “Rajmahishi” and

“Saralaksha Hom”.

The shift from narratee to narrative is not being proposed for novelty’s sake. The

intention is to avoid the purely subjective consideration that is suggested in the concept

of closure in terms of expectation and fulfillment. It has been shown before that the

narratee’s expectation is utterly unpredictable: one narratee may feel satisfied at the

point the story ends, while another may ask for more for his or her expectation fulfilled.

Such a subjective category as expectation is better to be eschewed and a more

objective approach to closure is required. Hence this shift from the narratee to the

narrative itself.

All fiction have a logic of its own – a logic that belongs to the domain of fiction

not of facts. While defining a narrative the causal connection between two events (E. M.

Forster) or three (Reid) has been considered crucial to a narrative. Rightly so, for

unconnected events, even though chronologically linked cannot make a story. The

causal link is as much important as the chronological.

But this is not enough. The events themselves are expected to be something

special, more than commonplace. The term ‘dramatic’ is employed in relation to a short

story to suggests something exceptional or unexpected but not altogether improbable.

The question of probability is as much important as necessity, the cause-effect relation,

that must inhere in the choice of events and their presentation. This does not mean

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that everyday events cannot be the material of a story. What is suggested is that there

has to be something uncommon and yet not totally improbable in relation to logic of the

story. Causal relations in real life have a kind of inevitability, unavoidability,

inexorability. When something unexpected happens it may appear improbable at first

sight, but after sober reflection and second thought the term ‘unexpected’ will appear

to be equally probable as it too may occur in real life. The appearance of the stretcher-

bearers at the end of the story by Ambrose is a case in point (see above). Mercy killing

was probable, in fact unavoidable under the given circumstances, but the appearance

of the stretcher-bearers accompanied by the brother too is not altogether unexpected.

In fact it was probable and that is why gives a jolt as much to the character in the story

as to the readers. The reader who had not expected the second closure is as much

deluded as the protagonist of the story insofar as he was thinking in terms of the logical

conclusion to be drawn from the curse of events narrated. A situation, however, not

such as could have only one possibility. There were other possibilities, as well.

Let us enumerate the logical possibilities of the given situation:

a) The stretcher-bearers would arrive at the nick of time and save the wounded

man.

b) The stretcher-bearers would arrive late but the wounded man would still be

alive.

c) The stretcher-bearers do arrive but the wounded man has already been killed

as an act of mercy.

Ambrose kept the second possibility cleverly hidden so as to suggest that unless

the stretcher-bearers would arrive in time, there was no alternative but to opt for mercy

killing. Readers too were persuaded to believe that this was the only alternative

available unless the stretcher-bearers arrive in time. Yet after reading the story, readers

have to admit that the late arrival of the stretcher-bearer is also a third possibility which

they had not thought of.

This is where the question of additional closure(s) assumes its importance.

Fiction has its own logic. The logic involves the exploration of the alternative possibility

or one of the many possibilities that always had been there but never appear as the

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first possibility. The logic of events leads to a situation where more than one possibility

are present. In the first closure only the first possibility had been made use of, which is

obviously logical. Nevertheless, there is always the other possibility which too might

provide the first closure. Instead of presenting it as the first closure the narrator brings

it back as the second closure, and thereby closes all other options. An objection may be

raised: was there not another possibility, namely, stretcher-bearers would not arrive at

all? No, as in real life, so in the story, the arrival of the stretcher-bearers is only to be

expected. The moot question is: would they arrive in time? Their non-arrival does not

eradicate the other possibility, arriving late. Their arrival in time would make a happy

ending (as happy as possible in the given context); their late arrival makes the ending

rather grim. Yet this grimness is what the author has always been aiming at. A happy

ending would make the story commonplace, contributing to the element of wish-

fulfillment that literature sometimes seeks to promote. What makes the story dramatic

is the negation of this very element and that is what makes the story so startling and

engrossing at the same time.

Let us clearly understand what the ‘logic of fiction’ implies. To put it as a

paradox: the logic of fiction is not altogether different from that of real life, and yet it

resides in a domain of its own distinct from the logic of real life. The paradox can be

understood better if we view the issue of expectation not in relation to the narratee but

as an essential part of the narrative itself. Speaking of Ruth Rendell’s short stories John

Mortimer, himself a master storyteller and a skilled craftsman of dovetailing two stories

in one, running parallel to each other, not as one embedded in the other, says: “Rendell

is a great storyteller who knows how to make sure that the reader has to turn the

pages out of desperate need to find out what is going to happen next.” (Review in

Sunday Times.)

“What is going to happen next” is the secret to the success of the short story. If

the obvious happens, the story would not shock or disturb the reader. Although such

obvious endings are the hallmark of what is called “feel-good” stories, such endings,

however, do not demand any additional closure(s). Such stories too have their own kind

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of readers who consider wish-fulfillment to be the only function of literature. Additional

closure(s) on the contrary, startle the readers or at least surprise them by going beyond

the obvious or wish-fulfilling ending.

Parasuram’s “Svayambara” provides an excellent example. Mr. Chatterjee worked

as a match-maker between Ms Jilter and Mr. Bounder. The marriage rites have

performed in a summary fashion in a railway compartment. So far, so good. The second

closure reveals that when Mr Chatterjee went to the Grand Hotel, Kolkata, to attend the

reception, he found to his dismay that the bride had fled and the bridegroom had gone

in search of her. The circumstance under which the impromptu marriage was arranged

with a newcomer, leaving the two other suitors out, was funny enough. But the

additional closure reveals why the bride was called Jilter, that is a girl who forsakes her

lovers.

The logic of fiction then explores other possibilities that the obvious one. Yet

such possibilities are not in the nature of purely accidental of contrived only to lead the

readers to an unexpected ending.

The purpose of additional closure(s) is thus not only to reinforce made in the first

closure or to elevate the story to new heights. It also is meant to provide an

unexpected ending rather than reinforcing the theme. Reinforcing, however, may not

be devoid of novelty, and novelty is the life and soul of any closure.

Novelty may arise from the event narrated in the additional closure(s). When the

reader does not expect anything more after the first closure, the author has to get

him/her interested in what happens after the first closure. Thus the closure is not the

finale although the reader might have taken it to be so.

The Authorial Comment and Closure

Here I propose to digress a little and face another question: does the authorial

comment at the end of the story (the first closure) constitute the second closure? The

question is rather tricky, if answer is ‘yet’, it would go against what has been said

before. Any additional closure must contain an event. Not a comment. If on the other

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hand, the answer is ‘no’ the immediate question would be why not?

Any authorial comment, irrespective of the place in the story it is made, at the

beginning or the middle or the end, is extraneous to the story itself. It is in the nature

of an observation made by an outsider, not by any character of the story. The presence

of the author in the story is something of a superaddition. Not an intrinsic part of the

story itself. Any short story must contain events: authorial comment is not essential. Yet

there are short stories which bank heavily, almost exclusively on the authorial

comment. Chekhov’s “The Enemy” relies exclusively on the authorial comment for its

success as does Manik Bandyopadhyay’s “Primeval”. The events themselves were

nothing exceptional; there was no twist in the tail. Only the authorial comment turns

the given series of event into a piece of art.

It should be noted that the both the stories would remain open-ended in the

absence of the authorial comment. However extra-ordinary some of the events in the

story may have been they could not be rounded up with a final event that would be the

end of the story. Many more events would naturally follow and the unity of the short

story would not be achieved. The authorial comments at the end of both the stories

seem to provide this unity which the events themselves lacked. In fact the authorial

comments alone turn a set of events into the short story. Without this authorial

comment the story appear to be a statement of events without anything to bind them

together.

In spite of this function served by the authorial comment, it is nevertheless a

superaddition. Such comments do not arise out of events themselves.

The additional closure(s), on the other hand, must narrate an event that follows

the event narrated in the first closure. There is a temporal connection between the

additional closure(s) and the first closure, whereas the authorial comment does not

have it.

This is not to deny that events themselves do not make a short story. Apart from

the causal relation between the events, the pointing finger of the author either in the

form of a authorial comment or in plotting the events in such a way as to give an

impression of wholeness is what transforms events into stories. The authorial comment

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is a device to underscore the theme, if the author feels that the theme needs to be

brought out in bold relief that may not emerge out of the events of same story itself.

The additional closure(s) are meant to continue the story and, at the same time re-

assert the theme by depicting further events after the natural ending of the story.

Any narrative, be it novel or novella or long story, or a short story must narrate

event. They are the building blocks of any narrative. Yet it must be emphasized that a

mere narration of events itself does not make a narrative. The events need

arrangement made by an author so as to turn them into a narrative, complete in itself.

The very act of telling or narrating, with or without any authorial comment is what turns

events into stories. Authorial comment is not a necessary ingredient or a constituent

element of a narrative. There are thousands of short stories which contain no authorial

comment at all, whether written in the first-person or third-person mode. But there can

be no story worthy to be called so without any plotting, the arrangement of incidents

consciously made by the story-teller or the author. It is this quality of plotting that is

sine qua non for a piece of art. There are story-tellers and story-tellers. Some of them

merely narrate the event in the chronological order of happenings and fail to attract or

rouse interest in the mind of the audience. The same set of incidents narrated by a

born artist in story telling (or one who has labouriously learnt through trial and error

how to tell or write a story) can succeed in establishing rapport with the audience.

Events then are all-important but not in the absence of story-teller or author.

Any pile of bricks does not make a wall, not to speak of a building. The bricks await the

builder to arrange them in such a way as to erect a wall or a building.

The additional closure(s) are, to continue the metaphor, finishing touches to this

construction. When the construction is complete the builder adds another wing so as to

complete the structure. Artistry involved in this addition is what ultimately matters.

Do all stories demand (or at least require) additional closure(s)?

The question itself is hypothetical but it can be answered almost with certainty as ‘Yes’.

The additional closure(s) can be provided to any story, for the simple reason that a

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short story deals with a slice of life, and therefore there is always room for another

slice, that is, any event that follows the first or the second closure. For a novel or a full-

length drama the closure has to be of a nature of conclusion. Any conclusion demands

finality. No novelist can afford to leave loose ends at the conclusion of the work. If he

or she wishes to tell more about the protagonist, a sequel is called forth. That is how

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyaya’s Pather Panchali (Saga of the Road) begot Aparajita

(The Unvanquished). Not satisfied with this sequel Bandyopadhyaya planned to write

another called Kajal which he unfortunately could not finish. The proposed second

sequel, however was not concerned with Apu, the protagonist of the first two novels

but with his son, Kajal. [To those who are acquainted with the Apu trilogy of Satyajit

Ray, it should be pointed out that all the three films (Pather Panchali, Aparajita, and

Apur Sangsar) are based on two novels only (Pather Panchali and Aparajita); Ray did

not make any film on Kajal.]

Additional closure(s) may be compared to the sequel(s), but the comparison will

have to stop there. Alexander Dumas’s trilogy, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years

after, and Man in the Iron Musk, are continuation of the same story involving forty

years. No additional closure in a short story can cover such a long span of time. Hence,

the additional closure in a short story has to be much shorter. It is a beginning after the

end without any middle. Even if we split up the third closure in “The Happy Prince”, God

sending an angel to find two most precious things on earth (beginning) �the angel

bringing the melted heart of the happy prince and the dead swallow (middle) � what

God told the angel (end), the middle has to be as short as possible. Additional

closure(s), unlike sequel(s) are not meant to be complete short stories but annexure(s)

following the main story. Thus the sequel and an additional closure do not share the

same properties. A sequel is a complete story (as Parasuram’s “Gurubiday” (Exit the

guru) is to “Lambakarna”), not a mere annexure. An additional closure on the other

hand, can never be read as an independent story having all the properties of a short

story in it.

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What does the additional closure provide?

The answer can be encapsulated as follows: (a) it provides further information about

what happened immediately after the first closure, and/or (b) it expresses the author’s

view about in import of the story told. “The Happy Prince” provides both; other stories

provide either the one or the other. This is why it can be said that every short story

which is not open-ended has the potentiality of having more than one closure.

This may give rise to a further question: why then are additional closure(s) so

rare to come across? If every short story having a closure can potentially have another

closure, why do short story writers not resort to providing additional closure(s)?

Again, the answer would refer back to the logic of fiction mentioned above. The

author has to ask himself/herself: should I end the story at the point where logic of

fiction demands, or should I go beyond and provide additional closure(s)? If the logic of

fiction has the nature of finality, no additional closure is required. On the contrary, if the

author feels that even after the logical conclusion of the story, something more, either

by way of further information or spelling out the import of the story, or both, additional

closure(s) would help round up the story in more satisfactory manner, the author would

do so. The expectation of the narratee is uncertain. Some readers may find the first

closure to be logically satisfactory, some others may still be curious to know more about

what happened to the characters after the end of the story. The author is under no

obligation to satisfy each and every reader’s expectation. In fact the author would

rather review whether the logic of fiction demands anything more that where the story

has ended. This is a consideration solely based on the logic of fiction rather than the

narratee’s expectation. We must reiterate that the shift I have proposed from the

narratee to the narrative itself is more objective in nature and is essential to the

understanding of all additional closures.

Additional Closures: Complementary and Supplementary

An exceptional feature of certain tales, whether pre-modern or modern or postmodern,

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if I may venture to suggest, is their ‘multiple closure’. I am not speaking of several

alternative endings which are quite common in short stories and novels of the late

twentieth century. By ‘multiple closure’ I mean rather more than one, even two

closures occurring after the regular closure of expectations in the tales told/written.

Before going into a more detailed exposition of this feature, let me cite two tales with a

similar plot device from the Arabian Nights and the Sanskrit Hitopadesa (Good Advice).

The Arabian Nights tale runs as follows:

A certain simpleton was once walking along, haling his ass after him by the halter, when a pair of

sharpers saw him and one said to his fellow, “I will take that ass from yonder wight.” Asked the

other, “How wilt thou do that?” “Follow me and I will show thee how,” answered the first. So the

cony-catcher went up to the ass and, loosing it from the halter, gave the beast to his fellow; then he

haltered his own head and followed Tom Fool till he knew the other had got clean off with the ass,

when he stood still. The oaf held at the halter, but the rascal stirred not; so he turned and seeing

the halter on a man’s neck, said to him, “What art thou?” Quoth the sharper, “I am thine ass and

my story is a wondrous one and ’tis this. Know that I have a pious old mother and came in to her

one day, drunk; and she said to me, ‘O my son, repent to the Almighty of these thy transgressions.’

But I took my staff and beat her, whereupon she cursed me and Allah changed me into an ass and

caused me fall into thy hands, where I have remained till this moment. However, today, my mother

called me to mind and her heart yearned towards me; so she prayed for me and the Lord restored

to my former shape amongst the sons of Adam.”

Cried the silly one, “There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the

Great! Allah upon thee, o my brother, acquit me of what I have done with thee in the way of riding

and so forth.” Then he let the cony-catcher go and returned home, drunken with chagrin and

concern as with wine. His wife asked him, “What aileth thee and where is the donkey?” and he

answered, “Thou knowest not what was this ass; but I will tell thee.” So he told her the story, and

she exclaimed, “Alack and alas for the punishment we shall receive from Almighty Allah! How could

we have used a man as a beast of burden, all this while?” And she gave alms by way of atonement

and pardon of Heaven. Then the man abode awhile at home, idle and feckless, till she said to him,

“How long wilt thou sit at home doing naught? Go to the market and buy us an ass and ply thy

work with it.” Accordingly, he went to the market and stopped by the ass-stand, where behold, he

saw his own ass for sale. So he went up to it and clapping his mouth to its ear, said to it, “Woe to

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thee, thou ne’er-do-well! Doubtless thou hast been getting drunk again and beating thy mother!

But, by Allah, I will never buy thee more!” And he left it and went away. (157-59)

If the story had ended – as expected – with the Simpleton letting the sharper go,

the end would be a logical one. Such an end is found in the Hitopadesa story of the

Brahmin and three con men:

Once there was a Brahmin who bought a goat in another village, and carrying it home on his

shoulder, was seen by three Rogues, who said to one another: “If by some contrivance that goat

can be taken from him, it will be great pleasure to us.” With this view they serially sat down in the

road under three trees, at some distance from each other, by which the Brahmin was to pass. One

of the Scoundrels called out, as he was going by: “O Brahmin! Why dost thou carry that dog on thy

shoulder?” “It is not a dog,” answered the Brahmin; “it is a goat for a sacrifice.” Then at a certain

distance away, the second Knave put the same question to him; which when the Brahmin heard, he

threw the goat down on the ground, and looking at it again and again, placed it a second time on

his shoulder, and walking on with a mind waving like a swing [dolayamana-mati]. The Brahmin

heard the same question from the third Villain, was persuaded that the goat was really a dog, and

taking it from his back, threw it down, and having washed himself, returned to his home. The three

Rogues took the goat to their own house, and feasted on it. Thence he who thinks a knave as

honest as himself, is deceived by him, like this Brahmin who was ruined. (Æsop’s etc. 110)

Such an end, although apparently quite conclusive, may not satisfy every

listener/reader. He/she might be curious to know what happened to the Brahmin

subsequently. The Hitopadesa story provides nothing to satisfy that curiosity. As the

tale is told as a story-within-a-story (and there are other stories within the same frame

story or, what is now called, the matrix narrative), we are taken back to the frame

story, which, in its turn, spawns more stories. The Chinese-box or staircase pattern of

the Hitopadesa tales has its own interests, not dissimilar to the stories of the Arabian

Nights. However, there is one difference: the embedded stories in the Hitopadesa are

shorter and more tersely told than their Arabic counterparts. In fact, most of the

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embedded stories in the Hitopadesa appear by way of example preceded by and

illustrating a moral. For instance, the story of the Brahmin and the three con men

begins with a verse that runs as follows: “One, who takes an evil man as a speaker of

truth like himself, is cheated as the Brahmin was deprived of his goat by trickery.” What

the foolish Brahmin did after being approached by the third con man is not narrated in

so many words in the tale: the reader is left to conclude the story from the moral that

follows.

The Arabian Nights tale, on the other hand, provides a fitting conclusion. Not

only is the simpleton but also his wife is also equally duped. This provides a second

closure to the tale evoking a second laughter.

Nevertheless, the inventor of the story adds yet another closure. We have

already seen what a fool the simpleton has been. But we never expected the ass to

reappear and the reaction of the simpleton is equally unexpected. Instead of

comprehending at last that he has been cheated, the simpleton proves himself to be

incorrigible in his gullibility. And it is quite natural for him to react in the way he does.

Since he once believed the sharper’s story he persists in believing it. That he could

recognize his own ass is quite enough. The strong words he addresses to the ass’s ears

only show how consistent he has been in believing the Sharper’s story.

This is what I call ‘multiple closure’. The first closure occurs with the simpleton

returning home; the second with his wife’s matching gullibility. The third closure adds a

new feather in the cap of the fabricator of the tale. Over and above satisfying our

expectations, the unknown writer of the tale excels himself by annexing a further detail

which underscores the utter foolishness of the simpleton once again.

Such multiple closures are most effective in humorous (including satirical) tales.

The second and the third closures in the Arabian Nights story come as bonus and

rounds up the story with a further dose of humour. The protagonist of the tale is

portrayed as a congenital idiot; the way he is cheated is not a matter of fluke: but of a

trick pulled off by the sharper. Thus, like a sub-plot in a play, the second and the third

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closures in such stories act as a parallel to the earlier closure.

Not all additional closures should be expected to work in the same way. Instead

of parallels there may be contrasts and the second closure may add a new significance

to the tale. In the Arabian Nights tale, we find typical characters rather than individuals,

which is why no name is given to the chief characters, the fool and the sharper. Place

and time are of no importance, for such events tend to repeat themselves everywhere

and at all times. Yet the second and third closures contribute to the element of fun of

the situation much more than if the tale had ended with the first closure only (as in the

tale of the Brahmin and the three sharpers).

The two tales discussed above are short and seem to have an oral origin.

Multiple closures are also found in written short stories. I now propose to take up for

instance C. A. Kincaid’s “The Kidnapping of Major Mulvaney”.

Kincaid is not a very well-known author. However, he was a prolific writer and in

his career in the Indian Civil Service came to know Western India quite well (he was at

one time Political Agent of Kathiawar). The story is also humorous, and technically

speaking, a masterpiece of the art of story-telling: an omniscient narrator writing in the

third-person mode weaving a tale about the cunning of an Irish Major in the 160th

Marathas. In addition to multiple closure, a part of the story is told in flashback.

The summary of the story is given below:

George M. Robinson, member of the council of His Excellency the Governor of

Bombay, reads an official letter from Major Mulvaney, Assistant Political Agent of

Jetalsar, sent through the Political Agent of Kathiawar dated 26/27th January 1885.

Patrick Mulvaney, an employee in the Bombay Political department, has been kidnapped

by the notorious dacoit, Naja Wala. The captor has demanded a ransom of Rs. 30,000.

Mulvaney has already lost his right ear (which has been sent as an enclosure with his

letter). The dacoit has threatened to cut off his left ear and then his throat if the

ransom is not paid within a fortnight. The Bombay Government after some hesitation

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decides to cough it up and Mulvaney is released.

Then in a flashback we are told that the whole episode of kidnapping is a

cooked-up affair. Mulvaney lost Rs.10,000 in the Bombay race course. Lacking means to

pay it he had to borrow the sum from a Marwadi money-lender. But Mulvaney was

unable to repay it. Suddenly a story he had once heard in the regimental mess flashed

across his brain. He remembered that two European gamblers in Tangier had induced a

Berber brigand to carry them off and hold them in ransom. The British government put

pressure on the Sultan of Morocco to pay £30,000 for the release of the two Europeans.

Mulvaney thought that he too could follow their example. He approached Naja Wala

(whom he knew before) to abduct him. He assured the dacoit that the ransom would be

divided between them and the chief of Jornagar police would be given Rs.5000.

The plan went well. The right ear of a dead servant was sent to the Political

Agent of Kathiawar and Mulvaney came back with one side of his head heavily

bandaged.

The story might end here but the expectation of the reader would then remain

unfulfilled. Did Mulvaney pay up his debt to the Marwadis? The author informs us that

Mulvaney wanted to get out of their clutch without clearing his debt. He wanted to go

back to his home in Ireland. So he applied for leave which was granted without any

difficulty. But the Marwadis would certainly not let him off. They obtained a warrant for

his arrest so as to force him to give them security before he left India for the

repayment of his loan. Mulvaney had no intention of returning to India. He publicized

through the Bombay Gazette that he was leaving by the P. and O. from Bombay and

would go home by embarking a ship in Calcutta. Secretly he bought his ticket by the

Hall Line from Karachi under a false name. The Marwadis posted agents both in

Bombay and Calcutta but Mulvaney was not to be found in either of the two ports. At

the last moment the Marwadis came to know of the other arrangement. But it was too

late: there was no Major Mulvaney in the passenger list. Mulvaney had taken a double

precaution: he travelled in disguise as well as under a false name. So the Marwadis’

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attempt to bind him was foiled.

This is the most natural ending of the story as well as an excellent closure.

However, the story does not come to an end here yet. The author goes on to narrate

how Mulvaney, then living in Ireland, one day read the news that Naja Wala and his

gang had been eliminated by the Jornagar police. Mulvaney was genuinely sorry and

sent a letter of condolence to Naja Wala’s son.

No, the story does not end here too. Mulvaney is now a prosperous land-owner.

After his brother’s sudden death he has inherited Mulvaney Castle and married the

daughter of a successful Dublin engineer, with £5,000 of her own. They are living

happily together. Suddenly one day the Major gets a letter from Naja Wala. The crafty

bandit informs his old Irish friend that he was not shot (as reported) by the Jornagar

police; it was a show put up to save him from the Agency Police. He was then residing

in Bombay as a money-lender with the share of the ransom he had received. He had

been lending money to young Englishmen at a reasonable rate of interest. The

Marwadis were angry with him because he was taking away their clients. But he did

not care.

The last two paragraphs of his letter need quoting in full:

My son is enjoying my estate in Jornagar, which he inherited at my death.

I trust that Your Honour keeps good health and often feels Your Honour’s ears,

being glad that they are there.

This is a second closure, no less entertaining than the first. The story, however,

is not over yet. The last part of the story narrates how the Marwadis bribe a band of

Maratha dacoits to raid Naja Wala’s house but they find their match in Naja Wala and

his nephews. The dacoits are beaten back. One of them is captured and spills the

beans. “It was a terrible shock for the Marwadis. It cost them at least ten thousand

rupees, skillfully distributed among the lower ranks of the police, to stop a prosecution

and they thereafter left Naja Wala alone.” Naja Wala dies a premature but natural

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death. As to Mulvaney, the author is not sure: “he must be well over ninety now, but

that is nothing in the Irish Free State, where, if the register of Old Age Pensions is to be

believed, no recipient of one ever dies before he has rounded off his hundred.”

Here at last the story comes to an end. This is the third and last closure which

rounds off the tale to everybody’s final satisfaction. In spite of the dig at the Irish in

general and the Irish Free State in particular, it is humour rather than satire that is

predominant in the story. There may be an element of exaggeration, but to an Indian

nothing will appear to be improbable. The ways of the Indian Civil Service are ridiculed

and mildly criticized and the Marwadi bankers are portrayed in the most unfavourable

light. There is poetic justice too. Naja Wala and his nephews teach them a lesson that

they would not easily forget.

But we are not concerned with all this now. What we should notice is how the

second and the third closures provide new material for further laughter, more than a

reader could naturally expect from a short story.

One last point: In my opinion, splitting up a tale into lexias (as Roland Barthes

does) or, even worse, writing new skeletal “stories” (as Gerald Prince does) would lead

us nowhere for understanding what story is. A holistic approach to an already written

tale or short story in terms of its beginning, middle and end (as Aristotle recommends)

proves more useful than any other mode of evaluating an artefact and the response it

evokes.

Multiple Closures in “The Happy Prince”

I have attempted to show above that some tales have two or more closures instead of

one, as is expected of a short tale and a short story. I selected three tales having

multiple closures. All of them are humorous; the second and third closures make the

humour more boisterous.

However, multiple closures are not limited to humorous tales. Oscar Wilde’s “The

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Happy Prince”, a story intended primarily for children, has three closures which is worth

examining in detail. Since the story is very well-known, I need not give a summary of it.

I rather go straight to the successive closures.

The first closure comes with the death of the Swallow.

At that moment a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact

is that a leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.

This is statement of fact, the expected end of the story. Wilde however does not

end the story here. He adds a new paragraph narrating the reactions of the Mayor and

the Town Councillors, hard-hearted practical types. They decide to pull down the statue

of the Happy Prince, which is now “little better than a beggar”. The statue is pulled

down with the Art Professor – a pure aesthetic – agreeing to the decision, for “as he

(sc. the Happy Prince) is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful.” It is decided that

the statue quo. All the Town Councillors, however, bicker among themselves, each

demanding his own statue. Wilde says: “When I last heard of them they were

quarrelling still.”

This is the second ending which can serve also as a fit closure, bringing the story

back to the world of reality where petty people squabble over their selfish interests,

which sharply contrasts with the quiet self-sacrifice of the Happy Prince and the

Swallow.

Not content with the second closure, Wilde introduces a third. The overseer of

the workmen at the foundry finds that the broken lead heart will not melt in the

furnace, so it is thrown on a dust-heap where the dead swallow is also lying. The story

is transferred to heaven:

“Bring me the two most precious things in the city,” said God to one of His Angels; and the

Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

“You have rightly chosen,” said God, “for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall

sing forevermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.”

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This is the third and ultimate closure, a neat round-off that leaves nothing more to be

desired and at the same time elevates a children’s story to a moving moral fable. The

story could easily have done without the second and third closures. Nevertheless Wilde

goes on adding new dimensions to the story.

Although written in the form of a fairytale, “The Happy Prince” brings out the

state of the poor and the needy in vivid details: the seamstress and her ailing son, the

shivering young dramatist in his garret, the little match-girl, and the starving children

looking out listlessly at the black streets. The Happy Prince has patiently heard the

stories of strange lands from the Swallow and says, “Dear little Swallow, you tell me of

marvelous things, but more marvelous than any thing is the suffering of men and of

women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.” Such a profound reflection embodied

in the form of an aphorism calls for an equally profound closure. Neither the death of

the Swallow nor the stupid bickering of the Councillors would serve the purpose. Wilde

defers the third closure till he has prepared the ground for it in the first two.

Multiple closures are not generally expected in a short story. But, as we have seen,

double or even triple closures, though rare, are encountered even in short tales. The

purpose is pretty evident: highlighting – and sometimes even heightening – the theme

of the story whether it is humorous or serious.

The purposes served by additional closure(s)

(i) Emphasis by reiteration (the Hitopadesa tale, The Arabian Nights tale and

Parasuram’s “The Last Journey of Mahesh” are the best examples),

(ii) Adding satirical elements to a non-satirical story (the second closure in “The

Happy Prince”),

(iii) Sublimating the theme of the story (the third closure in “The Happy Prince”),

(iv) Providing the short story with a whip-crack ending after the first closure

(Bibhutibhushan Mukhopadhyay’s “The Six Jewels”).

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Conclusions

On the basis of the above study we may ventured to conclude as follows: (a) some

short stories (but by no means all) have the potential to beget additional closure(s)

after the first closure of the story. It all depends on whether or not there is a punch line

at the end of the story. (‘God is missing’ is such a punch line that precludes any

additional closure – unless of course the narrator intends the whole effect of the punch

line to be destroyed). (b) Additional closure(s) may be two or three, but not more. The

matrix of the short story would not allow an infinite number of multiple closures. (c)

Whether the story may have an additional closure(s) largely depends on the nature of

the first closure. If the author feels that the additional closure(s) would help to round

up the story more satisfactorily without affecting the first closure, such additional

closure(s) may be conceived and supplied. (d) The second closure, in its turn, may give

rise to the possibility of a third closure – for the same purpose as above. (e) An

alternative reason for the additional closure (s) may be the authorial intention to add a

further event in order to satirize and/or to sublimate the original story (“The Happy

Prince” offers the best example). (f) The additional closure reinforces the theme of the

story by underscoring some aspect which, though present in the story itself, called for

highlighting (Parashuram’s “Sayambara” is an example that reinforces the fickleness of

the bride’s affection. We have been told how she had rejected both her suitors in favour

of Billy Bounder; so her desertion of belief is not unexpected but reinforces the infidelity

in her character). (g) Most probably the additional closure(s) is not premeditated: it

comes as an afterthought at time of writing the first closure or in course of revision.

Only authors themselves can tell us which additional closure was preplanned and which

was not. Nevertheless it is conceivable that very few authors start writing a story with a

second and the third closure in his or her mind. (h) The revision may be occasioned by

the query of a reader in the pre-publication stage or it may arise without any query

from outside. Parashuram uses both the techniques in his stories. In “Yadu Doctor’s

Patient”, one of the narratees is made to ask a question which generates the second

closure. In “Saralaksha Hom” Parashuram creates an imaginary reader who would like

75

to know what happened to Barun Biswas after the marriage of the detective to

Mandabi. He provides the answer as an omniscient narrator. (i) The additional closure is

not to be taken on a par with a sequel. A sequel is a new full-length story continuing

from where an earlier story ended. An additional closure is more in the nature of an

appendix, or appendices, at the end of a monograph. (j) This is why additional closure

is much shorter than a full-length sequel. It may be described as an end after the end,

the beginning and the middle having already been written, or we may call the additional

closure an addendum to the earlier closure. The additional closure then has the same

beginning and the same middle as of the first closure. A sequel, on the other hand,

would demand a new beginning and a new middle. (k) The additional closure, if

removed from the story, would not affect either the story itself or even the first closure.

The function of the additional closure is only to provide either some further information

about the characters or events of the story or to provide authorial comments to assist

the reader comprehend the theme of the story. In other word the additional closure is

not organically connected with the story itself but is supplementary by nature not

complimentary. (l) Stories having additional closure(s) are to be contrasted with open-

ended stories, but not with the story having one closure only. One variant of the open-

ended story is the story having multiple ending. Nowadays there are stories where the

author himself offers several alternative endings, inviting the reader to choose one from

them. (Jeffrey Archer’s "One Man's Meat..." is a case in point). But the reader has to

choose only one of the endings proposed. In stories having additional closure(s) there

is no question of choosing one, since at least a second closure is already given as a part

of the story. (m) Any additional closure whether second or third, must record an

incident/event, not the authorial comment. Events too must refer to any of the

characters of the story and/or an event already mentioned before.

76

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