Juxtaposition Examples in Short Stories: 6 Contrasts Placed Side by Side
Quick answer: Juxtaposition examples from Andersen, Mansfield, Premchand, Maupassant, Bierce and Chekhov, showing how placing two scenes or images together makes an argument without a word.
Juxtaposition places two things side by side so that the contrast between them says something neither could say alone: a party and a corpse, a fair and an empty purse, a child's game and a battlefield. The writer does not comment. The gap does the commenting. In a short story the device is often structural, with the whole piece built as two halves that the reader must hold together.
Six contrasts that make the argument
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen keeps a barefoot child in a snowy street on New Year's Eve, and puts lit windows, a roast goose and a Christmas tree on the other side of the glass. Each match she strikes shows her one of them. Andersen never says the city is cruel; the window says it.
The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield spends its first two thirds on marquees, lilies, cream puffs and a hat, then sends Laura down the lane to the cottage where a carter has been killed. The two worlds are a few hundred yards apart. Mansfield walks the reader from one to the other and refuses to explain what Laura saw.
Idgah by Premchand follows village boys to the Eid fair with their coins. The others buy sweets and clay toys; Hamid, with three paise, buys iron tongs for his grandmother. The tongs are placed against the toys in the boys' own argument on the walk home, and the reader is left to weigh them.
Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant opens with two Parisians fishing on the Seine on a quiet afternoon during the siege, talking about war and peace, and ends with a Prussian officer having them shot and their catch cooked. The peaceful fishing and the execution occupy the same riverbank within the hour.
Chickamauga by Ambrose Bierce lets a small deaf boy with a wooden sword play soldier in the woods and then wander among real wounded men crawling from a battlefield. He takes them for a game. The child's delight and the carnage sit in the same paragraphs, and the story's horror lives in the space between.
Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov sets Ivan's brother, blissful over a plate of sour gooseberries on his hard-won estate, against Ivan's own misery at the sight. The same fruit is happiness and disgust depending on who eats it, and Chekhov gives us the swim in the rain beforehand so we feel Ivan's body as well as his argument.
How to use it in your own story
Juxtaposition is a matter of arrangement. The material may already be in your draft; the question is whether the two things are close enough for the reader to feel the gap.
Common mistakes
The usual error is explaining the contrast, a sentence that tells the reader the rich are heedless or the poor are noble, which converts juxtaposition into editorial. A second is contrast without a hinge, two unrelated scenes that merely sit near each other. A third is imbalance, where one half is written with love and the other in summary, so the reader feels a thumb on the scale.
Where readers meet it today
Modern stories built on juxtaposition include Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Jhumpa Lahiri's A Temporary Matter and Tobias Wolff's Bullet in the Brain.
What writers can take from this
- Place the two things close enough to touch.
- No commentary; the gap is the comment.
- Give the contrast a shared object or place to turn on.
- Write both halves with equal attention.
- Put your character physically at the join between them.
Try it yourself
Write a 600-word story in two scenes of equal length. Scene one is a celebration; scene two is what one guest goes home to. One object must travel from the first scene to the second, and the narrator may not comment on the difference.
Questions
What is an example of juxtaposition in a short story?
Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party places a lavish afternoon party beside the cottage of a carter killed that morning, a few hundred yards down the lane. The story walks Laura from one to the other and adds no commentary.
How do you identify juxtaposition?
Look for two scenes, images or characters placed close together whose contrast is sharper than either alone, especially where the narrator declines to explain the difference. The meaning lives in the gap.
Is juxtaposition the same as a foil?
A foil is a character who contrasts with another to reveal them; juxtaposition is the broader technique of placing any two elements side by side. A foil is one use of juxtaposition.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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