CHARACTERS IN ANN BEATTIE’S SHORT STORIES: MINIMALISM AS A MEANS OF CHARACTERISATION

Minimalism of narration typically has effects on characterisation as well: characters in a short story cannot be created in the same way as in other literature forms because the shortness of the genre causes the reduction of motifs and leaves only a limited space for building characters. In addition, the connection between a character and a plot is much closer in a short story than in longer forms. This paper attempts to show the way in which Ann Beattie builds her characters using the exact minimalistic narrative techniques that she employs for developing a plot. Her characters are at the same time narrators who confuse readers because they tell two stories simultaneously: the open story of objective and meticulously represented present is juxtaposed with the blurred story of subjective past, the latter being the story the narrator is actually trying hard not to tell (McKinstry, 1987, 111). Visualization of narration, i.e. the predominance of images over events in the story, which means that the truth of the story is rather implicated than ever expressed directly, is commonly used in the majority of Beattie’s stories written in the 1970s and 1980s.