[Stylist] [stylist] The Shortest Short Story

[Miss Thea]

    Hi, Vejas.
Did anyone conclude that the character in question was the baby him/herself, 
looking down from Heaven, thinking about the opportunity missed from said 
abortion or stillbirth?
The significance of the shoes would, of course, symbolize all the things the 
now-dead child would never enjoy.
Thea

-----Original Message----- 
From: Vejas Vasiliauskas via stylist
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2017 7:07 PM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Cc: Vejas Vasiliauskas
Subject: [stylist] The Shortest Short Story

Hi All,
As many of you may know, the shortest short story ever was composed by 
Ernest Hemingway. It was only 6 words. These words were "for sale, baby 
shoes, never worn." In my English class today, we spent about 20 minutes 
discussing it.
Before, I had kind of  drawn the conclusion that a woman had brought baby 
shoes, then had either a miscarriage or stillbirth and decided she needed to 
sell the shoes. This was the first possibility but then we discussed many 
other possible scenarios:
The family might have had good money, but had to sell their shoes because 
they couldn't bear them being there, because it would remind them of the 
loss.
The family could have had lots of money, and might have had too many shoes.
They could have simply just brought a size that was too big/small.
Someone even suggested that maybe during the 1950's, which was around the 
time this was written, and abortions were still taboo, it could have been a 
pair of shoes gifted to a family who were going to abort their baby.
Our class also discussed why this is considered a short story, since the 
usual character development, setting, and plot aren't there. We came to the 
conclusion that Hemingway might have wanted us to draw conclusions for 
ourselves. We also decided that the main character  had to be someone who 
could write, since they wrote the advertisement, and that it would be most 
likely taking place in a country like the US or UK, and not in a country 
such as China where they wouldn't be so open about having a baby.
I just found this  to be an extremely interesting discussion in my class. 
Has anyone else had different conclusions or discussed it differently?
Vejas
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