Edgar Allen Poe's criteria for a short story

In the story The Found Boat, Eve & Carol two young girls from a small town enjoy riding logs down the river imagining they are in a large ship. The boys (Clayton, Bud, and Frank) always make fun of the girls calling them names until one day the boys find an old abandoned boat tangle in some old trash along the river. The boys and girls carried the boat back to town to begin fixing it. When they got back to town they worked all day and night to fix the boat. They all helped each other with some

thing. They thought finding the boat was the best thing that ever happened to them. “In The Found Boat Alice Munro almost makes you feel as if you were there with the children running up and down the street stealing sap from the man across the street as the boys pound away at the boat making repairs.”(Chow p.15). When the boat is finished the children take they boat down to the river and take turns riding up and down the river. This was probably the only and longest time they would ever get along. After a while they get hungry and start playing a truth or dare game that leaves the girls with no shirts on. This was very hilarious to the young boys. They put on their shoes laughed and made fun of the girls and headed home just like old times. I guess the relationship wasn’t going to last very long between the boys and girls. The title itself describes what this story is all about. The title lets you know the story is about a boat being found. It does not tell you the plot through the title but gives you what the plot for the story about. This story meets Mr. Poe’s criteria for a story because it had a great plot, the story was not to long for the reader and it also made you feel as if you there with the children playing and riding down the river on the boat.

A Worn Path begins and ends with the difficult journey of Phoenix Jackson. Although uneducated Jackson went through life the best way she knew how to and dreamed of a better future for her ailing grandson. There’s no information provided that gives a clear view of the grandson being alive. The reader can only assume that when the grandmother talks about her grandson, the reference relates to the events that replay in her mind. The story began with Phoenix Jackson traveling through an icy path of pine trees on a cold wintry day. She describes the path as “Up through pines….Now down through oaks”(paragraph 6). Phoenix came to the wagon trail, which she claims to be the easiest part of her journey. This setting symbolizes old age. Welty really uses great color imagery and objects to symbolize the death and some happiness of the journey. The story emphasizes the death of her grandson in so many ways. The symbolic types of birds, the many colors and the winter setting all show signs of death. Throughout the story the symbols appear and disappear to keep the reader intrigued by the hints of death. The old woman acknowledges that it “matched the dream that was hung up in her in head……”(paragraph 70). After this being stated, the story makes clear that all of the events that are taking place in Phoenix’s mind. “Eudora Welty’s story painted a great picture in the readers mind of an elderly woman and the struggles she adored through her life”(C. Boyd p.27). The plot of the story kind of confused me in the beginning. I could not tell if she was imaging the whole scenario or was she really trav

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