In the stories, The Meaning of Elephants and The Last Class, the themes are supported by the setting, character relationships and narrator of the story.

The first 200 words of this essay...

The opening of a short story is extremely vital as it is the first the words the reader reads that gives the reader their first impression of the story. The beginning of a short story also introduces and helps the reader to understand the key themes which the story explores. In the stories, The Meaning of Elephants and The Last Class, the themes are supported by the setting, character relationships and narrator of the story.

The opening of a short story is important as it creates the setting which introduces the main themes. In the short story, The Meaning of Elephants, the beginning of the short story gives a brief description of Jack's setting in Jack's perspective, "the tiny world I'd suddenly been thrust into, Weedington (population 8547)". The author emphasizes the diminutive size of the town by making a numeral reference which foreshadows a key theme explored in the text, the isolation. Isolation is also a key theme in the short story The Last Class, the author describes Alsace as a small remote town in the countryside, "I thought of staying away from school and wandering through the fields." The setting is also further described thoroughly as Franz