Ryan L Blog 5

Flash fiction is a form of writing which is essentially fiction that is short and concise. This is difficult because it should be kept under 1000 words, and therefore must contain only the essentials of a story. The work focuses on a single meaning in order to convey it both quickly and effectively.
It is clear that in "Fatal Light", Richard Currey uses flash fiction. He places an epigraph which clearly states this to be a complete work of fiction, and that anything that "any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental". Also, Currey has chapters that consist of less than half a page. By using flash fiction he is able to cut out adjectives which take away from the effectiveness of the story. Because he doesn't use flowery words, Currey's writing comes out blunt, however this hits one more directly. The understanding of his stories are felt more than if he had gone on for pages to say one thing. This bluntness seems to more embody the war, rather than the more often used flowery, unnecessary speech.
Although he kept his work concise, Currey still conveyed powerful truths in his "war stories and fish stories" (151). Currey strengthened his themes by shortening them. For example, in order to express that the unnamed narrator was living in his past at Vietnam, he had him recall a memory of his grandmother saying, "Come back from there...You'll catch your death" (144). By using flash flaction, he his able to tell several anecdotes of the war and thus capturing several moods and ideas, while keeping it from becoming an epic. The use of flash fiction in Currey's novel strengthened his novel and allowed him to better capture the truth of the war.