Stories

Content

• Types of stories
• Examples of stories

The story it is a short story, with few characters and with a single plot that can be based on real or fictional events. For example: The continuity of the parks (Julio Cortazar), The Tell-Tale Heart (Edgar Allan Poe) and Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi).

These narratives have a relatively simple plot, in which the characters participate in a single central action. The spaces are also limited: the events usually occur in no more than one or two places.

Like any narrative text, the story is structured in three parts:

1. Introduction. It is the beginning of the story, in which the characters and their objectives are presented, in addition to the "normality" of the story, which will be altered at the knot.
2. Knot. The conflict that alters normality is presented and the most important events occur.
3. Outcome. The climax and resolution of the conflict occurs.

• See also: Literary text

Types of stories

• Wonderful tales. The characters that participate in the plot have fantastic qualities. For example: fairies, witches, princesses, goblins, gnomes, elves. Magic and fantastic events predominate. They are usually intended for children. For example: Little Red Riding Hood, Pinocchio, The Little Mermaid.
• Fantastic tales. In these stories common and everyday actions are narrated that are suddenly interrupted by an inexplicable element that breaks with the laws of nature. For the characters, there is no difference between the possible and the impossible. That is to say, the fantastic is perceived as natural. For example: The Aleph, The Feather Cushion.
• Realistic tales. They use elements of natural life, so their stories are credible, possible in the real world. It does not include magical or fantastic events, as well as characters that can get out of reality (such as witches, fairies or ghosts). Its temporal and spatial location is usually taken from real life, which gives the story more realism. For example: Rabbit, The Slaughterhouse.
• Horror stories. Its intention is to generate fear or concern in the readers, and this is achieved by creating a certain atmosphere or by telling a horror story. Some of the themes that are found in this type of stories are horrific crimes, ghosts or cursed houses. For example: The black cat, The signalman.
• Detective tales. The story revolves around a crime and the search for its culprit. The narrative focuses on telling the details of the procedures from which the police or detective manages to find the culprit and understand the motive for the crime. There are two types of detective stories:

• • Classics. A detective is in charge of elucidating the mystery that, at first, seems impossible to solve. To do this, he uses rational thought and observation of details. For example: The stolen letter.
  • Blacks. The characters are more complex than in classic policemen and the distinction between heroes and villains is not so clear. For example: Shadow in the night.

Examples of stories

WONDERFUL

1. little Red Riding Hood. The French author Charles Perrault was the first to put this orally transmitted tale in writing. It tells the story of a girl who, at her mother's request, brings a basket to her grandmother, who lives in the forest and is ill. On the way, the girl is deceived by a big bad wolf. Thanks to a lumberjack who was passing by, the story ends with a happy ending.
2. Pinocchio. Its author is Carlo Collodi. The story was published in the Italian newspaper Giornale per i bambini between the years 1882 and 1883. The protagonist is a wooden puppet who becomes a real boy, as his carpenter Geppetto wished. The wish is granted by the Blue Fairy, but with a caveat: for the puppet to be a real boy, he must show that he is obedient, kind, generous and sincere. Pepito Grillo, who becomes the voice of his conscience, will play a key role in achieving this.
3. The little Mermaid. Written by the Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen, this story was published in 1937. It tells the story of a young princess named Ariel who, as a birthday present, prepares to make her dream come true: to know the world of human beings.

FANTASTIC TALES

1. The Aleph. It was written by Jorge Luis Borges and was published for the first time in the magazine South in 1945 and later, it became part of a book of the same name. The protagonist of the story - who bears the same name as its author, to make the boundaries between reality and fiction even more blurred - will have to face the painful loss of Beatriz Viterbo. Every anniversary of her death, just as promised, visit the house where she had lived until her death. There he establishes a bond with Beatriz's cousin, Daneri, who shows him an extensive poem of his own and tries to get him to preface it.
2. The feather pillow. This story was written by the Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga, and was included in Tales of love, madness and death, published in 1917. Alicia begins to suffer from a strange disease that, as the days go by, leaves her bedridden. The doctor tries in various ways to cure her, without success. One day, while the maid was making her mistress's bed, she found bloodstains on the pillow. Immediately, she tells Jordán, Alicia's husband, and both discover that among the feathers of the pillow there was a hidden animal that had caused Alicia's death: it sucked the blood from her head.

CLASSIC POLICE TALES

1. The stolen letter. Written by Edgar Allan Poe, this work is set in Paris in the 1800s. A minister steals a letter from an influential person to have it at his mercy. The police search his house millimeter by millimeter with no luck and go in search of Dupin who, after visiting the thief, discovers where the letter is, and replaces it with a false one, so that the minister believes that he continues to have power.

BLACK POLICE TALES

1. Shadow in the night. The author of this story set in the United States of the 1920s is Dashiell Hammett. Through a series of characters, the story transmits what those years were marked by Prohibition, gangsters and racial segregation.

REALISTIC STORIES

1. Rabbit. Its author is Abelardo Castillo. This short story takes the form of a monologue and its protagonist is a boy who tells his toy, a rabbit, the loneliness he suffers in an adult world, in which he is treated as an object.
2. The slaughterhouse. It was published 20 years after the death of its author, Esteban Echeverría, in 1871. In a Buenos Aires governed by Rosas, “El Restaurador”, the work conveys the violent opposition that existed between Unitarians and Federalists and how the latter let themselves be carried away by barbarism.

HORROR STORIES

1. Black cat. It was written by American Edgar Allan Poe and was first published in the newspaper Saturday Evening Post, in August 1843. It tells the story of a married couple who lead a normal life with their cat. One fine day, the man falls into alcoholism and, in a fit of anger, kills the pet. Everything precipitates when a new cat appears on the scene and culminates in a terrible outcome.
2. The signalman. It was written by Charles Dickens and published in the literary magazine All the year round, in 1866. It tells the story of a ghost that appears sporadically on the train tracks and always does so with terrible news. Every time he appears, the ranger knows a death is coming.

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