Literary Elements through Short Stories

Short Stories to Teach Literary Elements

I am looking for thirty stories that along with a literary element can be covered in one sitting. As I develop lesson plans (bio, pre-read, during read, after read plans), this list may change a little.

There are two stories each by O. Henry, Bradbury, Poe, Twain, Harte, and Saki, and I am waffling on whether I think this is good or bad. The first fifteen are pretty much in the order I want to cover them, but the last fourteen (and one more to be decided) are not in any particular order.

1. What is a short story?- A Girl’s Story (Arnason)
2. Setting- The Skylight Room (O. Henry)
3. Plot- Wish You Were Here (Frank Jones)
4. Conflict- Harrison Bergeron (Vonnegut)
5. Climax- Marigolds (Collier)
6. Moral- The Wish (Dahl)
7. Theme- The Pedestrian (Bradbury)
8. Mood & Tone- The Night the Ghost Got In (Thurber)
9. Suspense- The Lottery (Jackson)
10. Narrator/ POV- The Cask of Admontillado (Poe)
11. Characterization- The Necklace (Guy de Maupassant)
12. Connotation/ Denotation- The Lady or the Tiger? (Stocken)
13. Dialogue- Thank You, M'am (Hughes)
14. Dialect/ Idiom- The Celebrated Jumping Frog (Twain)
15. Local Color- The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Harte)

Irony- The Luck of Roaring Camp (Harte)
Symbol/ Symbolism- The Red Shoes (Andersen)
Allusion- The Will Come Soft Rains (Bradbury)
Story within a Story- Story without an End (Twain)
Stream of Consciousness- An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Bierce)
Flashback- The Bet (Chekhov)
Foreshadowing- The Open Window (Saki/ HH Munro)
Surprise Ending- The Sniper (O'Flaherty)
Anthropomorphism- Rikki Tikki Tavi (Kipling)
Parallelism- The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe)
Figurative Language- The Ransom of Red Chief (O. Henry)
Imagery- A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Marquez)
Satire Tobermory (Saki/ HH Munro)
Oxymoron/ Paradox The Story of an Hour (Chopin)

I looked at these, but right now they haven’t made the final cut.
The Remarkable Rocket (Wilde)
The Little Match Girl (Andersen)
The Last Leaf (O. Henry) Hearts and Hands (O. Henry)
A Treasure in the Forest (Wells)
The Resurrection of a Life (William Saroyan)
Miss Awful (Cavanaugh)
Charles (Jackson)
Gift of the Magi (O. Henry)
The Moustache (Cormier)
Children of Loneliness- Part 1 (Anzia Yezierska)

I looked at these, but decided they were too long/ too much to cover in one sitting.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving)
Young Goodman Brown (Hawthorne)
To Build a Fire (London)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Thurber)
Flowers for Algernon (Keyes)
The Monkey’s Paw (Jacobs)