DESCRIPTIONS OF OBJECTS, PROPS

 

 

Ordinary objects, when used as props in stories or novels, tend to change their nature due to this shift from reality to fiction: they take on a special quality of evoking attention from a reader, arousing expectations, filling out pictures, taking on symbolic weight. This is similar to what happens when an artist picks up a battered beer can from a curb and mounts in inside a frame and hangs it on a wall: the aesthetic context for the object has suddenly altered the way we perceive it, and placing it within this new context creates an aura about the object that seems, in its transformation, oddly magical.

 

Many stories use one or more objects as the focus of their energy, and some of them are quite famous: O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi, for instance, or De Maupassant's The Necklace. In many such stories, the object is mentioned or named in the title by way of pointing to its central significance. In my collection of stories, some titles refer explicitly to objects found in the stories: Tether, Plane, Hugo Molder and the Symbol of Displaced Persons Everywhere, and Tickler are instances of this.

 

In each case, the object named in the title of the story is not incidental to the plot, characters, and theme; it is central -- without it, the story could not move and would have no meaning.