The Green Door

The Green Door – General Understanding Quiz

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Approximate Reading Times

Quick Read: under 5 minutes
Short Story: 5 to 30 minutes
Novelette: 30 to 90 minutes
Novella: 1.5 to 2.5 hours

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Residents and Transients
Short Story by Bobbie Ann Mason. Having returned to temporarily live on her parent’s Kentucky farm, a woman is at a crossroads. Her salesman husband has a new post and is away looking at houses in a nearby city, and she has been having an affair with a local man.
In the Garden
Short Story by Jose Dalisay Jr. Set during the Philippine’s Marcos dictatorship, a group of soldiers appears and begins remove the vegetables from a school garden. The younger children are sent home, but the oldest (a fourteen-year-old girl) is ordered to stay to “cook and do the soldier’s washing”.
One Day
Novelette by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. A teenager becomes infatuated with a man she hears singing at a choral performance. In his absence overseas, she enters into a loveless marriage. She is enlivened when the singer returns and pays her special attention, only to be crushed when he reveals his true self.
The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses
Short Story by Bessie Head. A group of political prisoners trying to survive the harsh South African penal system must adapt as a new warder makes their life even more difficult. Fortunately, he weakest among them finds a way to manipulate the warder to improve things for all.
Dry September
Short Story by William Faulkner. Set in a racially prejudiced community in America’s South, a misplaced or malicious complaint from a middle-aged spinster incites hatred against a local negro. Only one man (the town barber) stands up for him. A crazed ex-soldier leads a mob to avenge the woman’s honor.

The Home-Coming
Short Story by Rabindranath Tagore. A rebellious country teen jumps at an offer to live with his uncle’s family in Calcutta. However, he finds city life unbearable. Made to feel unwelcome by his aunt and teased at school for his country ways, he yearns for the life he had before.
The Eye
Short Story by Paul Bowles. An expatriate living in Tangier looks into the death of a fellow expatriate who died from a digestive illness, suspected to be the result of gradual poisoning. His investigation suggests that rather than murder, the death was caused by a ritual healing gone wrong.
There’s a Man in the Habit of Hitting Me on the Head with an Umbrella
Quick Read by Fernando Sorrentino. The long title of this absurdist story neatly summarizes the plot. The only other thing readers need to know is that the protagonist reaches the point where he does not think he can live without the torment of the “umbrella man”.
Railroad Standard Time
Short Story by Frank Chin. A semi-autobiographical story about a Chinese-American man who, as he drives to and from his mother’s funeral, reflects on the clash between traditional Chinese and ‘modern’ American culture, and the need to move away from long-held stereotypes of Chinese-American men and women.
The Three Sillies
English Folktale. A rich young man finds that the woman he loves and her family are not very clever. He decides that he will only marry the girl if he can find three people sillier than they are. Needless to say, it doesn’t take him long to find them.