the shadow

In reading “The Shadow”, by Hans Christian Anderson, and “ The Nose” by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, they both surprise the reader by having an unrealistic initiating incident. Both stories give the reader full of excitement, and unexpected ending. “On the Aim and Technique of the Short Story”, by Edgar Allan Poe, indicates techniques and the main criteria to be a formal short stories, and hence I will compare what is said in Poe’s article and …

…between the author and the reader. For example, in “The Shadow”, because everyone has his own shadow, ones will want to know what will happen if someone loses his shadow. Through Poe’s standard on short stories, we can fairly distinguish the main difference between “The Shadow” and “The Nose”. This two story meet the standard mention in Poe’s article. And Poe’s standard is basically the main rules of writing a short story.