What is the general effect achieved? Has the writer caused characters, and settings to come alive? What was the conflict and how was is solved, if at all? Were there any striking repetitions of actions, words, thoughts or symbols? Has the protagonist learned anything? Has he or she acquired a greater knowledge or insight or reached a new awareness? Does the title of the story indicate anything about the theme? Are the theme and story fused and inseparable? How does the word choice and syntax contribute to the atmosphere? Does the story abound in tropes or does the narrator use them sparingly? What images lend the story a lyrical, melancholy, humorous effect? Are they genuine, poetic, fresh, trite, hackneyed, stale? Is the general tone matter-of-fact, sentimental, moralizing, bitter, ironical, sarcastic? What attitude to life does the story express? What seems to be the relationship between the author, the narrator and the reader?
w. s.