One-minute review: Young girl who knows what she is good at—running—who can’t stand phoniness, who must look out for her retarded brother, who proclaims that she is what she is—not what society wants her to be; who, at last, respects her rival runner and begins to plan a new career—coach for her brother to make him, not her, the track star in the family tradition. An honest, courageous young girl’s view of society and herself.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: South American judge’s wife makes love to Vidal the bandit in order to gain time for the law to catch him. She is a consummate seductress. He, destined to lose his life over a woman, does so of his own will because her sexual prowess is overwhelming.
Comment: Reminds of Judith and Holofernes. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Black flier, training in WWII, but not yet allowed to fly in combat, crashes in a Southern field. Had been kind of showing off, panics, goes into a spin and crashes. On the ground, he can do nothing but wait for some kind of help. Old black man, Jefferson, triggers thoughts of the past he is trying to escape.
Finally, white owner of the property arrives, has him put into a strait jacket, kicks him in the chest when he demands that the white man not touch him and has him hauled off to his airfield, carried by the stonewall presence of racial prejudice.
Quote: “…army or no, you gittin’ off my land! That airplane can stay ‘cause it was paid for by taxpayers’ money. But you gittin’ off. An’ dead or alive, it don’t make no difference to me.”
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Boy with a crush on the sister of his friend. When she finally speaks to him, he is resolved to do as she wishes—go to the bazaar at Araby and buy her something. But fate works against him. His uncle forgets and comes home late. By the time he reaches the bazaar it is almost shut down. He lingers around one stall that is still open—with vases—but he hasn’t the money to buy one. Feels as if he is a play thing in the hands of fate and he is frustrated and angry.
Comment; Slice of life. Mood? We’ve all experienced these moods. We want to control our fate and destiny, to make reality conform to what we want. We sense we are in the control of others, no matter what we do. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Complimented on her thriving chrysanthemums by an itinerant tinker, Elisa begins to feel the strength of her talent with gardening and is euphoric as the tinker leaves with a bunch of her mums.
She bathes and dresses, her spirits high. Her consciousness of her abilities as an individual infuses her appearance with strength, which even Henry, her husband, notices.
As she is leaving with her husband, she sees the mums thrown on the side of the road by the insensitive, doltish tinker and she is reduced to a whimpering old woman—tempted to go to the fights where she could see men pounded into bloody submission.
Comment: Like Katherine Mansfield’s “Miss Brill,” an illusion is shattered by insensitive people. I remember one Christmas, when I gave the paperboy a monetary thanks for a job well done in a card that I had personally created for him. When I went outside, I found the envelope and card discarded on the lawn. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Beautiful story, beautifully told. Hyacinthe is a young carpenter working on a cabinet made of sandalwood, a wood from the East. His master brutalizes him. The cabinet must be ready for Christmas. The shack in which he is working is bitterly cold.
Tired, he works through Christmas Eve to finish the cabinet. If he fails to complete the work on time, he will feel his master’s stick.
He is visited by another boy, who tells of his youth in the warmth of the
The other boy leaves. He was Christ , who came when he had heard a child (Hyacinthe) cry.
It was just a dream says the curate. Was it?
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: In the days of the Puritans, Young Goodman Brown sets out to participate in an evil deed, leaving his new wife at home. On the way, he is accompanied by the Devil who, in order to keep Young Goodman Brown from wavering in his evil purpose, shows him that all the people he thought were good and virtuous, are actually in the employ of the Devil. All is pious show.
However, much is suggested by the uncertain light and one doesn’t know if the visions and voices are real or conjured. In a heroic burst of courage, Young Goodman Brown warns his wife not to join the evil crowd. And all is swept away, leaving Young Goodman Brown alone in the forest. Instead of being rewarded for his courage, Young Goodman Brown lives a gloomy life, seeing evil in everyone.
Comment: The making of a Puritan? RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
“Rape Fantasies.” Margaret Atwood.
One-minute review: Funny. Almost stream of consciousness. Female narrator goes on and on. She actually enjoys her rape fantasies, which are all talk to the imagined rapist and have nothing to do with sexual contact. The men she encounters in her imagination are all vulnerable. They always start by grabbing her arm. And then she talks them out of it. One spends the night with her watching the Late Show. Another moves in with her as they both are dying [in her imagination] of leukemia and they die together. Funny.
Comment: Well, it’s a serious topic, but a funny treatment. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Alan Austen seeks a love potion to cause the girl of his dreams, who is presently completely indifferent to his advances, to want him passionately, completely. The love potion is extraordinarily inexpensive—one dollar. The “salesman” suggests that after the love potion has taken hold, she will become possessive, and, after many years, Alan will be willing to pay big bucks--$5,000 for a teaspoonful—of the salesman’s “glove cleaner.” Alan delightedly takes his love potion and the salesman bids him “au revoir,” meaning, “I will see you again.”
Comment: This story appeared on Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. Very effective. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Growing up Mexican in the culture of
Comment: Some relationship, perhaps, to the illegal immigrants of 2009. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: This is one of those surprise-ending stories. A woman learns of her husband’s death in a railroad accident—and she is completely overjoyed. She is free at last to live her life as she wishes. She imagines her life ahead not burdened by her husband’s wishes and commands.
Only he is not dead, was not at the scene of the accident, but just as he is opening the door to the house, she, without knowing he is there, drops dead of heart disease. She was the victim of the “joy that kills.”
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Rite of passage story. Three boys. Two girls. From boys vs. girls, they are united in preparing a wrecked boat in the flooded river for launching. They play together as kids in the deserted railway station. Then they play “Truth or Dare” and strip and face each other in the water and then separate again. An event in growing up.
Comment: The last experience of innocence?
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Twenty-five years before, Mrs. Drover had promised her soldier fiancé that she would see him again. This is their twenty-fifth anniversary of their engagement. He disappeared in WWI. But now, as she returns to her WWII war-damaged home in
She hurries to the center of the deserted town to find a taxi to take her back to the house to pick up her things. The phone, of course, wasn’t working. There was only one taxi. The driver seemed to know she was coming. Without her telling the driver where she wanted to go, he started up the taxi and began to drive. She banged on the window between the driver and her. He turned. They were face to face. The driver drove off while she pounded on the glass, helpless.
Comment: The reader assumes that his sinister personality was such that he has observed her closely for these 25 years and now has decided to keep his promise to “be with her.”
This story gives the reader genuine chills. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
10-second review: Soldier returns from World War I. He is apathetic, alienated from his former living conditions and from people and girls and his life is aimless.
Comment: Hemingway’s story creates the mood of complete apathy. RayS.
10-second review: General, honored as a military genius, is a fool whose every mistake, by a stroke of luck, turns out to be a success.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Seeger, a Jewish-American soldier, and his buddies—WWII is over—waiting to be repatriated to the States. Letter from his father—fear of hatred of Jews in
Comment: Study in the psychology of being Jewish. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: After the holocaust. All that remains of culture is the doctor’s collection of four books—Shakespeare, The Bible, Moby Dick and The Divine Comedy—and a portable phonograph and a few records. Now the few survivors realize the precious value of culture. However, after the others leave, the doctor hears in the empty world a cough not far away, so, in fear, he hides his books and phonograph and records.
Comment: This story was written in 1942, before the completion of the atomic bomb. Vivid depiction of the emptiness of the earth after it has been bombed into a wasteland. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: The vivid imagery of this story cannot be duplicated in a short summary. However, the opening paragraph will give the reader a good sample of it.
“The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal and so hideous. Blood was its avatar [manifestation] and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.” p. 139.
Prince Prospero and a thousand of his friends retreated from the pestilence into seclusion at an abbey. One night, the prince gave a party for his thousand friends and at the stroke of midnight, a masked stranger appeared, throwing a damper on the revelry. When Prince Prospero accosted the stranger, the prince fell dead. When others grasped the stranger’s garments, they grasped the wrappings from the grave. One by one they all fell victims to the Red Death.
Comment: I’ll say this: Poe knows how to tell a story. I’m reminded of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. Of course, Poe said that every word must contribute to the mood of the story and this story is a perfect example of that skill. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
On-minute review: This is not your usual $35 million-dollar lottery. The “winner” in this story, who receives the black spot, is stoned to death as part of an age-old sacrificial ritual. Why? “Lottery in June, Corn be heavy soon.” The author presents a detailed account of the preparation, the gathering of the rocks and the concluding moments so that the crowd can be home for lunch at noon.
Comment: I’ll never understand why this story is used with middle school children. However, it is in one sense a grim depiction of the ultimate witch hunt or bullying that occurs almost every day, the human need for a victim. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Miss Brill’s Sunday visit to the park made her feel as if she was the center of a drama that featured her and every other person in the park. It’s an illusion. She feels that if she were not there the drama would not go on. When a young man refers to her as “that stupid old thing,” and his girl friend refers to her fur as funny and ugly, her illusion is shattered.
Comment: On the tragedy of old age. The death of one more illusion. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
One-minute review: Perfect afternoon. Excellent company. Beautiful girl. And he destroys his chances with her by lying about his background. That lie is why he is a “fool.” Told in the slang of the period (1920s). What seem to be non-sequiturs are really not. They fill out the portrait of the narrator and the details of the plot. Some interesting information about horse racing.
Comment: One of the reasons for reading contemporary novels is the information provided about professions and institutions. You can probably learn as much about medicine, for example, in novels featuring the medical profession as you can from nonfiction. Short stories don’t provide as much related information because the stories are so compact and focus on a single significant incident. This story, however, does provide some interesting information about horse racing and language in the 1920s. RayS.
Literature: An Introduction to
