Dissecting ‘August Heat’ by W. F. Harvey

Sacred to the memory

Not sure where it’s like where you are, but as soon as I posted August Heat for us to read last week, it instantly seemed to become Autumn.

First published in 1910, August Heat is a small tale (1700 words). It’s often labelled a ghost story, but it’s not, although it does touch something supernatural.

If you want the full experience, you can listen to me perform it or read it here and join us for the analysis below. I spoil the tale from here on out!

Join us

Here at Short Story Club, we read the very best short stories from the past, and the ones from the present that deserve more kudos. I’ll provide links to all stories for free, and then we get together to analyse what made them so effective (from a reader and writer point of view).

A stroll through the tale

We join our main character, James, who outwardly states that he is in perfect health, nothing wrong with him whatsoever. This is rather on the nose, but sets us up for what is to come. The writer needs us to know that this man is fit and healthy from the off and doesn’t muck about telling us.

Just after this, we get our first introduction to the heat. It’s oppressively hot. Not just ‘hot’. I like the use of the word oppressively here, it really carries some weight and that is carried through the rest of the story.

So, he’s healthy and it’s hot. Check and check. We get his yearning to go to the public bath and douse himself in the cool water. But instead, he is drawn to whip out his pencil and paper and draw something in somewhat of a fever.

This is where we ‘meet’ our second character – the enormously fat man who he has just drawn in a dock after the man has clearly committed some awful crime.

The feeling that his expression conveyed was not so much one of horror as of utter, absolute collapse.

I love this piece of description. It really paints a picture of the picture he’s just drawn.

As readers, we ask where did this idea come from? What led our James to draw this random thing? He simply shoves it in his pocket and heads on out into the day on a stroll.

This is where I started getting a sense of pre-destiny about the tale. Our James isn’t quite in control of his journey. He’s being led somewhere for some reason. He wanted to go to the bath, he draws this weird thing instead. He wants to visit some friends, yet he walks into a stonemason on impulse. Our man is not in charge.

And we meet our other character, Atkinson, who runs the stonemason James has magically walked into. And it’s the character from the drawing earlier.

What’s about to happen? we ask. James is sure he’s never met this man in his life, this jovial fellow who is all smiles and welcome, not nearly as dour as his sunken face in the dock he drew.

…it certainly is hot, as hot as hell.

I like this moment from Atkinson when they first meet. It’s an overdone sentiment, but not just ‘hot’, hot as hell.

After some chat, we get to the real meat of the story. Atkinson is showing James a gravestone he’s working on for some exhibition, and engraved on it is James’s name and his birthday, along with his date of death being today.

How could this be? What weird circumstance has enabled this? First the drawing, and then the marking of James’s death. And, as readers, we might twig onto the utter collapse on Atkinson’s face like he’d just committed the worst of crimes. What the hell is going to happen? What did he do? Has he done it yet?

It’s a great set up, something I’d almost class as a high-concept idea. There’s nothing very stylish, there’s no heart-stopping sentences of beauty, but you don’t need that when you have a great idea.

What matters most is the story’s events, that’s the thing we connect with, particularly in short fiction. We don’t have time for fluff.

So, Atkinson curses the heat some more (he’s really struggling). They’re baffled, as anyone would be in this situation. What fate has brought them here? Atkinson invites him for dinner and they have a pleasant enough time. They are very chummy, though still confused.

If you go back home to-night, you take your chance of accidents.

James thinks about going home, but Atkinsons persuades him to stay.

There’s a lot of be said for Harvey’s masterful skilling of this tale to this point. There’s nothing in the tale that hints that it will be a full-on horror tale. Typically, horror stories will build up the dread through atmosphere and creeping descriptions, but it’s all kept rather ‘on the nose’. There’s no mood-setting here. Was it a purposeful decision by the writer? Who knows, but it gets us where we’re going quicker, and sets us up for the final scene.

And I love the choices in this tiny end scene. Love, love, love it. It resonates so well, which is why the tale is often recommended.

The room that Atkinson and James sit in is stifling. James is in a stupor. We’re at 11pm and he’s somewhat come to terms that, somehow, his life is going to end. He’s thinking this as Atkinson is sharpening a chisel (nice touch).

What will happen here? He’s been marked for this moment from the very start of the tale, drawn here by some magical force. Will he die? What’s Atkinson going to do with that chisel?

But the heat is stifling.

It is enough to send a man mad.

And that’s how we end. Boom! we’re done.

Above all, this story is about not being able to escape death and how we’re not the ones in charge. If we know death is coming, could we do something to stop it? Or would our actions lead to that pre-destined death?

When our maker calls time, that’s us. There’s a big picture that we don’t get to understand, and isn’t that something we all think about from time to time? Is that why this tale lurks?

Hot and cold all over

It’s impossible not to feel the heat in this story. The characters mention it all the time. It is a constant weighing upon what they say, especially Atkinson who struggles with it the most, it seems.

I particularly love the moments of contrast Harvey throws in from time to time. The cool of the swimming bath, the cold sound of steel meeting stone.

‘If your reader feels the sun on his flesh, the wind fluttering his shirt sleeves, half your fight is won.’ Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing)

Placing a reader in the story is one of the hardest things to do in such a small space. Having these moments of heat and cold draw us in closer to the tale. We feel it. It’s a neat trick for writers if they need something to make a scene come alive (or their character’s struggles with it).

The use of flowers

The scene where Atkinson waters the plants in the heat near the end of the tale is *chef’s kiss*. It’s such a nice foreshadow for what’s to come.

…the heat sometimes gets the better of the delicate ones

We are told throughout the tale that both Atkinson and James are hating the heat. It’s a constant throughout the tale. So, we get the small hint that some flowers can’t handle it, and this sets us up nicely for the final scene where it’s all about to go down. Lovely bit of priming.

The power of a short story and its resonance

I think this story is the perfect example of what a short story is and where its power can lie. And also what unexperienced short story readers find difficult about the form. The common complaint is that it ends too abruptly. People who read novels more often are used to seeing all the events unfold, but that’s not always the case for short stories. (Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things!).

Not everything is wrapped up in a neat little bow. There’s resonance in the fact that the death of James might happen. We don’t know. We don’t get to see. And that’s what leaves us wondering and thinking about the tale after. It’s not all spelled out, it doesn’t need to be.

As Julio Cortázar once put it:
“The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout.”

What did you think of this one? Did you enjoy it? Did James get his tawties at the end?