Abstract:
This thesis aims to study the short stories recording the October 14, 1973 and the October 6, 1976 events in terms of the literary elements and techniques and the roles in Thai literary circle, history and politics. In the thesis, the theme, plot, character, and setting of 61 short stories written between 1973 and 2002 will be analysed in details. It is found that the short stories recording the October 14, 1973 and the October 6, 1976 events have 4 main themes, namely reflecting the change of people and their ideology, portraying the violence of the October 6, 1976 event, encouraging the people to fight for their right and freedom, and praising the heroes and heroines of the two events. The main characters of these stories are fictive characters created by the authors with the addition of some real details from the events. Characters created from the real persons in history are also appeared in order to give verisimilitude to the stories. Concerning the plot, two types of plot are found: the normal-sequence plot and the anachronous-sequence plot using flashback technique. The main conflict in these stories is the conflict between the government and the college and university students which is similar to the conflict of the real events. The stories have mainly the fix settings but most of them are presented as the undefined time and place. Details of the real events given in the stories, however, help the readers to relate the fictive settings to the historical ones. The mixture of important characteristics of short story and record can be seen clearly in every element of the short stories recording the October 14, 1973 and the October 6, 1976 events. The theory of narratology has been applied in the study of narrating technique. It is found that the intradiegetic/homodiegetic narrator is mostly used while the main focalization is the internal one, from the student characters in particular. The two narrating techniques used in the short stories recording the October 14, 1973 and the October 6, 1976 events is similar to those used in autobiographies, memoirs, and diaries. In terms of the role in literary circle, the new sub-genre of short stories recording political events is established in the main genre of 'Literature for Life' according to the creation of the short stories recording the October 14, 1973 and the October 6, 1976 events. Moreover, this sub-genre has revealed an humanistic value of the 'Literature for Life' by portraying the people's struggle for rightness and fairness and protest of the use of violence. As for its role in history and politics, the short stories recording the October 14, 1973 and the October 6, 1976 events have its main function in constructing the self of the students in two aspects: as an innocent one who was injured or killed and as a sacrificed national hero. These two selves, in turn, make the short stories contain the roles of criticizing the state and asking for justice as well as praising and stressing the importance of the October 14, 1973 and the October 6, 1976 events