One-minute review: Thoughts and experiences of a woman who is dying—“Life ain’t worth death”—she assumes death is a terrible experience, leaving her body. “See no more. Work no more. Worry no more. Then what had been the good of it?” In contrast to Granny Weatherall who finds nothing awaiting her, this author suggests that the woman returns to herself when she was young: “In front on the darkness came the garden, the old garden in April, the crab-apple blossom, all as it was before she began, but brighter….”
Comment: In the play, Our Town, Thornton Wilder suggests that life after death is learning to let life and its memories go. Away with the emotion attached to life. In this story, the author suggests we are back to where we began. That opens up a lot of speculation. Unfortunately, we’ll never know till death happens to each of us.RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
One-minute review: Set in the South. Snopes is a hired hand. His employers inevitably say or do something to offend him. He gets his revenge against those he works for by burning their barns. In the opening scene, he is before the justice of the peace who is unable to prove Snopes burned his most recent barn, but tells him to get out of the area and don’t come back. Snopes moves to another plantation. He goes to the front door of the owner’s house, steps inside and soils an expensive French rug. The owner demands that he clean it. He only makes it worse, intentionally. His son, the narrator, wrestles with his loyalty to his father, sees that he is going to burn another barn, tells the owner and leaves, never looking back at his family.
Comment: Hemingway once said that in writing his stories, he tried to tell, among other things, “how the weather was.” Faulkner depicts vividly the atmosphere of the post-Civil War South, including the weather and the language. Faulkner’s sentences are often long-winded, but they add up to characters usually confronting each other in mental games of chess. Faulkner’s stories and novels are psychological. And, not infrequently, melodramatic. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
One-minute review: America’s greatest crisis—Jack Smurch flies around the world—becomes the national hero, but he is an uncultivated slob who has no time for social amenities. He is a hero who does not conform to the conventions of heroism. The problem is solved when the men of power, confronted by his antisocial behavior, have him thrown out of the window nine stories up. The hero’s death is mourned in a great national display of bereavement.
Comment: A funny story. Can’t recall in my time (75 years) that any hero behaved himself in such a manner that required pitching him out the window of a high-rise. RayS.
Note:Over the years, I have read hundreds of short stories. In this blog, I am going to summarize as many of them as I can. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
On-minute review: Granny had been jilted once—by George. But she had married John and they had had a good marriage and a full life. Now she is dying at age eighty, surrounded by her children and her memories She relives incidents in her life. She expects to be reunited in death with those she had loved and who have gone before her. She expects God to come and escort her into the next world. She keeps waiting for a sign that He is coming. He does not come. Jilted again.
Quote: “…there was no bottom to death. She couldn’t come to the end of it.”
Quote: “God, give a sign! For the second time there was no sign. Again no bridegroom…. She could not remember any other sorrow because this grief wiped them all away. Oh, no, there’s nothing more cruel than this—I’ll never forget it.”
Comment: She had her expectations of life after death. She expected God to come to take her into the next world. He did not come. And she “blew out the light.”RayS.
Note:Over the years, I have read hundreds of short stories. In this blog, I am going to summarize as many of them as I can. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
One-minute review: Paul was a misfit at school. He despised his teachers and they were aware of his contempt. He was also a misfit in his neighborhood. He hated Cordelia Street and sitting on the stoop. His only joy was his ushering at Carnegie Hall where he could be among the beautiful, well-dressedpeople with the money to buy and wear beautiful clothes and flowers and who could dine at magnificent hotels.
He decided to escape school and the neighborhood by stealing money from his employer’s bank deposits. He spent a glorious few days living in a hotel with all the amenities, including champagne. He almost made himself forget his past in the wonders of lavish living as if he had always lived this way. However, he knew his embezzling would be discovered, took a cab out to the countryside where the trains roared by and ended his beautiful dream-life in front of the racing iron wheels of a locomotive.
Quote: “It was a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run.”
Note:Over the years, I have read hundreds of short stories. In this blog, I am going to summarize as many of them as I can. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
One-minute review: Indian in an American college, being schooled in the ways and ideas of the white man. “Am I Indian or White?” He decides to return home to the reservation for Christmas by hopping trains. Cross country. The contrast between his Indian heritage and the whites’. His love for nature. His people who do not have to talk but welcome him back, not with words or questions, but joining him in the mood of the Indian lodge dance. He is still one with his people.
Comment: Too much rich detail on the differences between the whites and the narrator’s Indian heritage to put in one short summary. His love of and respect for nature. “I am happy. It is beautiful. I am home.”
I look at a sample student essay on the story in the text. It is wooden, organized, dead. Better to begin by brainstorming what I have learned about the spirit of the story. That spirit is the reason for the story. Not its structure, characters or theme in dead prose that contrasts sharply with the words of the story. RayS.
Note:Over the years, I have read hundreds of short stories. In this blog, I am going to summarize as many of them as I can. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
One-minute review: Old Phoenix, an African-American grandmother in the rural South who does not know how old she is, makes the long trip, slowly, tottering, step by step, holding her cane made out of an umbrella, along the path, through a barbed wire fence, to the doctor’s office in the town of Natchez where she is given a charity bottle of soothing medicine for her grandson who had swallowed lye three years before. It’s Christmas and, on this trip, she manages to gather two nickels which she is going to use to buy a paper windmill for her little grandson. And then the long, agonizing, step by step trip back to her home miles away. The author doesn’t tell about the trip back. She has vividly portrayed the tremendous effort the little woman has made just to reach town.
Comment: Vivid portrait of a courageous woman. The story is as agonizing to read as is Phoenix’s trip to town from home. . RayS.
Note:Over the years, I have read hundreds of short stories. In this blog, I am going to summarize as many of them as I can. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
One-minute review: A Swede comes to the town of Romper in Nebraska and stays in the Blue Hotel. He seems determined to be killed. He acts as if he is in the “wild west” and is afraid that everyone around him wants to kill him. But when he accuses Johnny of cheating at cards, he fights like a demon and whips Johnny. He leaves the Blue Hotel to find other accommodations. This time he feels exultant at his beating Johnny and tries to force a gambler to drink with him. As they fight, the gambler pulls a knife and fulfills the Swede’s death wish by killing him.
Comment: The Swede wanted to be killed and did everything, perhaps unconsciously, to maneuver people into accomplishing it. RayS.
Note:Over the years, I have read hundreds of short stories. In this blog, I am going to summarize as many of them as I can. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
One-minute review: Two African-American daughters. Dee and Maggie. Dee, the pampered one the pretty one, the favored one, and Maggie, the younger, still bearing the scars from the time the house burned down. Dee returns to visit her old home with a male friend. Dee has changed her name to Wangero, an African name. She does not want a name, “Dee,” like her oppressors (whites).
Dee (Wangero) wants to take back with her as much of her heritage as she can—especially two quilts made by her grandmother.
Her mother and Maggie still live their lives as they have always done—unsophisticated, perhaps barely literate, but full of pride in their heritage—and are overwhelmed by Dee’s (Wangero’s) sophistication. Their mother had promised the quilts to Maggie on her marriage. Dee says that Maggie will only use the quilts as part of her everyday existence, allowing them eventually to fall apart. Dee (Wangero) wants to display them in her home as artifacts. The mother retains the quilts for Maggie, who had agreed to give them up to her superior sister.
Dee (Wangero) goes off in a huff. She does not realize that unconsciously she has adopted the culture of the whites. Her mother and Maggie proudly live, not display as relics from the past, their heritage.
Comment: My summary leaves out many of the subtle signs of the contrasting cultures revealed in the story. The writer examines indirectly many of the differences between Dee (Wangero) and the lives of the mother and younger sister, who are contented with their lot. The story deserves a full reading. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
Introduction: Over the years, I have read hundreds of short stories. In this blog, I am going to summarize as many of them as I can. The summaries do not do the stories justice. If you are interested in the summary of the story, read it.RayS.
“A Jury of Her Peers.” Susan Glaspell.
10-second review: Mrs. Wright lived in a joyless marriage with her husband. He has taken all the joy out of living for her. But when he wrings the neck of the only joyful thing she possesses, her song bird, she takes a rope and puts it around her husband’s neck while he sleeps and strangles him as he had strangled the song bird. The officials of the law search the house looking for evidence of who killed Mr. Wright. Their wives find the bird with its neck wrung and immediately realize that Mrs. Wright had killed her husband. They remove the dead bird, the only evidence that could have convicted Mrs. Wright. They were a jury of her peers.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
Introduction: Over the years, I have read hundreds of short stories. In this blog, I am going to summarize as many of them as I can. The summaries do not do the stories justice. If you like the summary of the story, read it.RayS.
“A & P.” John Updike.
10-second review: Three girls come into the A & P wearing bathing suits. Sammy, the checker at the cash register, sees nothing wrong with their attire. His boss, however, does and tells the girls to come in with their shoulders covered next time. Sammy, angry at his boss’s embarrassing the girls, quits. But the girls are not around to see his grand gesture.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
Introduction: Over the years, I have read hundreds of short stories. In this blog, I am going to summarize as many of them as I can. The summaries do not do the stories justice. If you like the summary of the story, read it.RayS.
Short Story: “The Necklace.” Guy de Maupassant.”
10-second review: Impoverished woman borrows a necklace to go to a party, loses it, buys a true diamond necklace to return to the woman who lent it to her, takes ten years to pay for the replacement and learns in the end that the necklace she had borrowed had only been costume jewelry which had cost very little.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
