Analyse af Michael Plemmons' novelle 'Noel'

The short-story Noel is written in 1985 by Michael Plemmons.

The short stories begin in media res, where we are presented with Mrs. Overton who works as hiring children to adults who haven’t children. Mrs. Overton hiring children to Christmas Eve.

Mrs. Hathaway is another female worker, who takes care of the kids, while her boss, Mrs. Overton, sitting in the reception.

Mrs. Overton is an angry lady (s.57 section 2 l. 4) “You understand that this is only a 48 hour agreement”. She’s aggressive in her options.

We are presented with three girls to an orphaned couple. Christa who’s a lovely child aged eight, Melinda has a wonderful singing voice for carols and Stephanie has an exceptionally sweet temperament.

There are only two of the nineteen children who are available to hiring when the store closes. The two children who are left is two boys, who have a small mustache.

The short story has a 3rd person narrator but it isn’t an omniscient narrator since the narrator doesn’t know everything that’s going on in everyone’s mind. The narrator doesn’t give us a lot of detailed information about the characters and their feelings.

The short story doesn’t have any main character. In the short story we’re meeting three kind of characters the buyers (the 2 ladies), the items (the kids) and the buyers (adults without kid(s)).