Anthology of Ideas

Chopin’s story expertly takes the average book and succinctly boils it down to two pages of rapid emotions and events. While the average writer would have felt a need to develop events prior to the story to allow the reader a full and developed sense of the personalities of the characters, Chopin instead says this is what you need to know, and you know what to do with it. The reader is given a short snapshot of a person: (wife, weak heart, young, pretty, unhappy, in most likely a semi-arranged marriage) and a range of emotions: (shock, surprise, grief, realization, elation, and triumph). The reader then has to assign each of these emotions and snapshots to Mrs. Mallard to gleam a small insight into her being. Overall this style leaves the reader with a powerful sense of the emotions and felling that went through Mrs. Mallard’s mind from her perspective rather than allowing the reader to develop their own perspective on events, and in turn pass judgment on Mrs. Mallard.

Achebe’s story similarly gives the reader a deep look into the mind of the main character but in a succinct manner. Jonathan is portrayed as a hardworking and modest man who knows what is really important in life. He is also a man who is extremely lucky (or blessed if you prefer) to retain so much after so much strife in the war. Aside from the characters strength of spirit Achebe’s story also portrays the average person not as average but worthy of praise because rather than being crushed by unfortunate events Jonathan treats them as events of the past rather than events that define the future. Although I have not read any of his other works Achebe seems to believe in a way similar to Horatio Alger that hard work brings happiness rather than discontentment.

Together the two stories serve as a reminder that succinctly does not mean powerless and that verbose writing is not preferable to succinct writing. Most of us are guilty of trying to expand a paper to reach a minimum word count when it should have ended 100+ words ago. But these two stories show that it is not length that matters but content. More specifically that just because a paper or a story is 100 pages long does not mean by definition that it says anything more than a paper four pages long.