Short stories are a beautiful thing, mainly due to the fact that anybody can read them. You don’t have that anxiety of opening a new novel with uncertainty that you’ll finish the entire piece, and the satisfaction you feel when you reach the end is better than ever. Not having time to finish a novel once you’ve started it is extremely discouraging, and can make you want to give up reading all together. However, with short stories you will always feel that feeling of accomplishment once you’ve gotten lost in the characters and experienced something new. You may love it so much that it acts as an incentive to pick up another story to read.
Some argue that short stories serve solely to entertain, but I have to disagree. I believe that short stories, along with all literature give readers insight on the human condition, and touches on what it means to be human. While entertaining, even if there is no “moral” lesson, you always take something away. Whether it be a new found understanding of something you couldn’t understand before, or perhaps a method of escaping the superficial world around you.
Sonny’s Blues is a great example of stories that can help you gain an understanding of the people in the world around you. Sonny, a heroin addict, would typically be seen in a negative light. In a world where drug addicts don’t
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We learn to understand that people are not bad, but they can do bad things under particular circumstances. Yes, Sonny abuses drugs, but why? Yes, Sonny goes to jail, but why? As you learn more about Sonny, it becomes clear that he is troubled and was primarily raised by his brother, who refuses to listen and understand Sonny. He feels this immense amount of pressure to stray away from who he is and his only method of coping is to stop caring about what the world thinks of