Featured Stories

Shopping

Shopping: Short story by Joyce Carol OatesThis story is about motherly love taken too far. Joyce Carol Oates uses a trip to the mall to explore the relationship between a lonely, divorced mother and her 17-year-old daughter. At one point, the mother wants to ask her daughter: Why are you unhappy? Why do you hate me? Later, the mother stares at her with hatred. The girl is blossoming into independent womanhood. She has been the sole focus of her mother’s life, and the mother is having trouble “letting go”. Themes include helicopter parenting, loneliness, alcoholism and identity.

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The Spinoza of Market Street

The Spinoza of Market Street: Short story by Isaac Bashevis SingerIsaac Singer’s protagonist is an aging philosopher who has struggled for thirty years to write a commentary on the 17th century philosophical treatise, Spinoza’s Ethics. Frustrated, sickly and too weak from hunger to get out of bed, a reclusive spinster nurses him back to health. Her kindness leads to marriage and a wedding night in which he miraculously regains his youthful virility and passion for life. The story’s denouement: Spinoza, forgive me. I have become a fool. could thus be taken several ways. Themes: obsession, isolation and loneliness, renewal through passion, the difficulty in reconciling Spinoza’s views with traditional religion.

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The Griffin and the Minor Canon

The Griffin and the Minor Canon: Short story by Frank StocktonIt is hard to believe this and our other featured Frank Stockton story (The Lady or the Tiger) were written over 130 years ago. Both have a crisp, modern feel and enough ghoulish humor to satisfy most young readers. This story, which takes the form of a fairytale, involves a friendship between a griffin and hard-working priest. The worried villagers suggest that their visitor dines on the children at an orphanage in the next town, but the griffin thinks the priest is the only one in the area worth eating. Themes: vanity, bravery, dedication, friendship, fear, sacrifice.

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The Death of Ivan Ilyich

The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Short story by Leo TolstoyThe major themes of this famous novella by Leo Tolstoy are the inevitability of death and the shallowness of Russia’s bourgeoisie. As Ivan Ilyich, a successful civil servant, faces an early, agonizing death he asks himself the inevitable question: How could that be, when I did everything [in life] properly? By bourgeoisie standards, his assessment is correct. However, by general social standards Ivan’s superficial, self-centered life lacked compassion, genuine connection, and spiritual meaning. As Ivan’s suffering strips away his delusions, he finds joy and redemption in death. Other themes: appearance and materialism, suffering, denial, isolation, acceptance and redemption.

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Bread of Sacrifice

Bread of Sacrifice: Short story by Samira AzzamSet during the 1947-1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, this story by Samira Azzam describes a tragic romance between a Palestinian fighter defending the city of Acre and a young nurse who elected to remain after her family had fled. Both are idealistic and prepared to die out of love for their homeland. The girl is shot delivering a basket of bread to the starving men on the soldier’s roof-top barricade. The men face a dilemma… eat something prohibited under Islamic law (a dead dog), or bread soaked in the martyred woman’s blood. Themes include love, patriotism, courage, death.

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In the Tunnel

In the Tunnel: Short story by Mavis GallantThis story from Mavis Gallant deals with the experiences of a Canadian college student “banished” to Europe by her strict father to end an affair with a married professor. While there, she falls prey to a troubled older man who appears practiced in picking up vulnerable young woman and discarding them immediately something happens that is not to his liking. Their time together, living in his “tunnel-like” room in the garden of an eccentric, thoroughly dislikeable British couple, is not what she expected. Themes: amoureuse mal placé (misplaced love), independence, exploitation, betrayal, cruelty, politics, aging, identity.

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Blow-Up

Blow-Up: Short story by Julio CortázarAfter a commentary on the role of perspective and the art of storytelling, this Julio Cortázar story goes on to describe how an amateur photographer captures an image that seemingly comes alive, rewriting its narrative. While taking the photograph (of an adolescent boy in an obviously uncomfortable discussion with an adult woman) he comes up with several possible interpretations of what is taking place and what may happen afterwards. Things take a dark turn when he realizes that a man in a nearby car is part of the narrative. Themes include storytelling, narrative perspective, speculation, obsession, artistic imagery vs. reality.

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The End of Something / Three-Day Blow

The End of Something / Three Day Blow: Short stories by Ernest HemingwayThese two Ernest Hemingway stories should ideally be read together as they are linked by storyline (the end of a relationship) and major themes (change, friendship and moving on). The lumber town of Hortons Bay has died and its people have left because all the old-growth trees have been cut down. Like the townspeople, Nick Adams is planning a new beginning. He has decided to break up with girlfriend Marjorie, telling her “it isn’t fun anymore”. We learn the reason in the second story, which introduces additional themes of class and/or racial prejudice, selfishness, mateship and regret.

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