If a person was to examine fifty famous American short stories, ranging from Edgar Allan Poe to Maya Angelou, one important trait would immediately be noticed, namely, that all of them represent diversity, meaning that each story, due to the background and personalities of the storytellers, cover a vast range of material and styles. Yet all of these stories share many common characteristics, a few being that each creates a separate world outside of reality, challenges our often unexamined assumptions about life and living and utilizes literary/oral traditions that can be traced back to ancient times.

             For the most part, the art of storytelling dates back to the dim past, yet the traditional Western techniques began in ancient Greece with such storytellers as Homer, Hesiod, Virgil and the great tragedians like Sophocles and Aeschylus. In ancient times, most people did not know how to write or read which made it necessary to relate stories via the oral tradition, a method where the storyteller would recite the tale and thus be handed down to future generations. But when writing became commonplace, the storyteller wrote down the tales which made it possible for wide dissemination throughout the known world.

             Obviously, most stories contain elements that are highly recognized in all cultures, things such as plot, theme, motifs, metaphor and allegory. The stories of King Midas, generally attributed to the ancient civilization of the Minoans of Crete, have come down to the present day very diluted and highly altered, due to the fact that the tales of King Midas have been told and re-told millions of times by millions of people from practically every culture. Another example is the story of Doctor Faustus, a man who sold his soul to the devil for ultimate knowledge and power which due to its underlying motif has been copied an untold number of times.