Featured Stories

The Dinner Party

The Dinner Party: Short story by Mona GardnerThe theme of Mona Gardner’s The Dinner Party is gender stereotyping. The story is a satire of attitudes towards women in upper class colonial England. It begins with a debate over dinner between an army officer and young girl. The officer argues that men are better than women at staying calm during a crisis. The host’s wife proves him wrong by demonstrating nerves of steel when the guests are threatened by a deadly visitor. Although one of the other guests foreshadows the looming danger, the full extent of the woman’s courage is not evident until the final paragraph.

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Contents of the Dead Man’s Pockets

Contents of the Dead Man's Pockets: Short story by Jack FinneyThis exceedingly suspenseful story by Jack Finney is a tale of drive, ambition and the pursuit of quick success taken too far. It also raises an interesting question: At what point does a material object become worth risking your life for? A man climbs out of a window onto the ledge outside his eleventh floor apartment to retrieve a piece of paper. Ironically, what is on the paper is “incomprehensible” to anyone but him, and could readily be replaced with two months of repeated research. Themes: misplaced priorities, risks vs. consequences, determination, fear, desperation, enlightenment.

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Sorrow-Acre

Sorrow-Acre: Short story by Isak Dinesen (aka Karen Blixen)This story by Isak Dinesen (aka Karen Blixen) has an “overall” plot, a “subordinate” plot, and an “incomplete” plot. The overall plot considers how moves towards democracy elsewhere in Europe might affect late eighteenth-century Danish society. The subordinate plot (the tragic story of a mother given a near-impossible task to save her son) illustrates why change is necessary, and the difficulty the ruling class will have in adjusting to it. The incomplete plot (see below) foreshadows a possible affair between the protagonist and his seventeen-year-old love-starved aunt. Themes: culture and tradition, birthright, duty, feudalism vs. democracy, injustice, motherhood, suffering.

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How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again

How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again: Short story by Joyce Carol OatesThe experimental style of this Joyce Carol Oates story takes a little getting used to. In the form of a disorganized set of notes for an English writing assignment, a sixteen-year-old girl reviews the events that landed her in government care. Starved of affection by her wealthy parents, her acts of rebellion escalate from shoplifting to running away from home and falling under the spell of a prostitute and her Svengali-like, drug-addicted pimp. Sadly, the House of Correction isn’t the sanctuary she thought it would be. Themes parental neglect, rebellion, human trafficking, drug use, class and racial conflict.

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Absit

Absit: Short story by Angélica GorodischerThis unsettling story by Angélica Gorodischer begins with one of a parent’s worst fears… a child molester sees a young girl playing alone in her garden and begins to talk to her. The six or seven-year old in the story knows the rules (don’t talk to strangers!), but the smooth-talking man appears to have little difficulty in winning her confidence. Fortunately, just as it seems he will have his way with her, she manages to turn the tables and exact a cruel and fitting punishment. Themes include pedophilia, temptation, crime and punishment, justice, redemption.

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The Half-Skinned Steer

The Half-Skinned Steer: Short story by Annie ProulxAnnie Proulx’s protagonist begins a four-day road-trip to attend a funeral as a confident, vital octogenarian in full control of his faculties. Foolish mistakes along the way see him finish the journey a desperate, disoriented figure facing a ghostly “half-skinned steer” in a snowstorm. As he drives, he recalls his disillusioned youth on the family ranch. The memories focus on his sexual awakening and the family’s interactions with his alcoholic father’s flirtatious, story-telling, “horsey” girlfriend. The story’s major theme is ageing and its effects on memories and one’s ability to think clearly. Other themes: homecoming, sexuality, man vs. nature, death.

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Momotarō

Momotarō: Japanese folktale from Yei Theodora OzakiIn this famous Japanese folktale, a childless couple’s prayers are answered when a giant peach splits open to reveal a baby boy. The boy grows up to be the strongest and wisest lad in the land and, at fifteen, decides to give his poor parents an easier life by traveling to an island off the Northeast coast of Japan, destroying a band of cannibalistic demons that are terrorizing the land, and bringing back their treasure. Along the way he gathers troupe of anthropomorphic animal friends who, in predictable folktale form, help him easily win the day.

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The Blue Bead

The Blue Bead: Short story by Norah BurkeThis story by Norah Burke explores the simple, yet dangerous life of junglis (jungle and wild forest dwellers) in colonial India. A twelve-year-old girl, whose “life from birth to death is marked for work”, dreams about being able to complete a necklace she has started to make. When she saves a villager by fighting off a four-meter crocodile, she is more excited by a blue bead she later finds in the water than the danger she faced. Themes include poverty, life and survival in the forest, gender roles, perseverance, courage, reward/karma, finding happiness in small things.

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