Vocabulary for the Short Story and the novel
Plot: The sequence of incidents or events of which a story is composed. :
Antagonist: Any force in the story in conflict with the protagonist. It may be a person, the physical or social environment, a destructive element in the protagonist's own nature.
Conflict: A CLASH OF ACTIONS, DESiRES, IDEAS, OR GOALS IN THE PLOT of a story or drama.
Irony: a situation in which some kind of incongruity or discrepancy occurs:
Verbal irony: What is said is the opposite of what is meant.
Dramatic irony: Discrepancy between what a character says or thinks and what the reader knows to be true (or between what a character perceives and what the author means the reader to perceive).
Irony of situation: Incongruity between appearance and reality, or expectation and fulfillment, or the actual situation and what would seem appropriate.
Point of view: The angle of vision from which a story is told. Four basic kinds are:
Omniscient: The author tells the story using 3rd person, knowing all and free to tell us everything, including what the characters are thinking and feeling and why they do what they do.
Limited omniscient: the author tells the story using 3rd person, but limits the story to the complete knowledge of one character. The story tells only what that person thinks, feels, hears, or sees.
First person: The story is told by one of its characters, using 1st person.
Objective or dramatic: the author tells the story in the third person, but reports only what the characters say or do--not what they think or feel.
Protagonist: The central character in a story
Stream of consciousness: presents private thoughts of character without commentary or interpretation by author.

Discussion questions for "The Yellow Wallpaper"
1. Why is it fitting that the narrator's husband chooses the nursery as her room? (Is it indeed a nursery?)
2. What would the narrator like to be doing? Why can't she? Does her illness alone prevent her from doing as she wishes?
3. What do the sunshine and the moonlight contribute to the story?
4. What would be gained or lost if the wallpaper were the kind found in a typical bathroom or child's room today (eg. Little animals)?
5. What are the similarities between the narrator and the woman she sees behind the wallpaper?
6. What significance can you attach to the narrator's discovery that the woman escapes and creeps around outside? What do you think the narrator asserts that "most women do not creep by daylight? Is it significant that the narrator sees many women creeping about the countryside by the end of the story?
7. What is gained by having the woman tell her own story?