March of Microanalysis Day 19
Microfiction Entry Day 19:
The butterfly alighted on a petal, sipped carefully, then shivered and died. Rappacchini watched, shrugged, and kept on weeding.
It’s not just a story, it’s an homage (use a fancy schmancy accent to get the full effect of that pretension). If you have not yet read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappacchini’s Daughter, I suggest you do so. Not only will this story then make perfect sense, you will also have the opportunity to read a story that is better than this one. Hawthorne did not do microfiction. He did macrofiction: flowery, grand, histronic, crazypants prose…or, as his 19th century audience would have characterized it, prose.
Rappacchini’s Daughter is a fable, or sorts. A metaphor. An allegory. No one really agrees on what it is an allegory for, exactly, which is why people keep pursuing degrees in English.
This little story could also be read as a fable, a metaphor, an allegory...but not for the same idea. What is it allegorizing? You tell me. (I have a couple of contenders.)
Through March, I'm posting a breakdown/analysis of the microfiction I posted on the corresponding day in February. This is probably only interesting to you if you care deeply about the mechanics of writing, or enjoy sausage making in general.