The Open Window

The Open Window: Short Story by H. H. Munro (aka Saki)This story by Saki satirizes the social obligations imposed upon the middle and upper classes by late-Victorian/Edwardian etiquette. A pompous hypochondriac is holidaying in a peaceful country village as treatment for a nervous condition. He doesn’t like visiting strangers, but does so as a courtesy to his sister who has written letters of introduction to people she knows there. During one such visit, an imaginative fifteen-year-old girl plays an innocent practical joke on the neurotic man, causing him to run from her house in horror. Themes include social conventions, perception (appearance vs. reality), gullibility, escapism, deception.

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Blue

Blue: Short story by Francesca Lia BlockIn this story by Francesca Lia Block, a girl abandoned by her mother finds temporary comfort in stories about how much her mother loved her told by an imaginary creature living in her closet. When she shares this with a school friend, she is ridiculed and ostracized by classmates. A class assignment to “write about someone we love” provides an opportunity for the girl to put her thoughts and feelings about her mother on paper. This helps her face the loss, and gives her the courage to go on alone. Themes include family, loss, isolation and loneliness, healing through writing.

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A New England Nun

A New England Nun: Short story by Mary E. Wilkins FreemanThe major themes of this Mary E. Wilkins Freeman story are honor, loyalty and self-sacrifice. A young engaged couple pledge to remain faithful to one another when the man asks for time before they marry to go away and make his fortune. Fourteen years later, he returns a rich man. Both have honoured the pledge, and they make wedding plans. Although circumstances have changed and each has a reason not to marry, neither will admit it out of respect for the other’s loyalty. An overheard conversation changes things. Other themes include choices and consequences, independence, solitude, gender roles, courage, identity.

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The Bridegroom

The Bridegroom: Short story by Nadine GordimerThis story by Nadine Gordimer begins with a poetic description of the camaraderie between an Afrikaans overseer and his native African work crew as they enjoy a musical evening around a campfire. The living arrangements in their isolated road-building camp are segregated. However, loneliness has brought the overseer relatively close to the men, who look upon him indulgently. Things are about to change. The overseer is bringing his new wife to live in the camp. He shows his true self by having all the cooking and cleaning done for her, and forbidding the men from going anywhere near their caravan.

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The Pugilist at Rest

The Pugilist at Rest: Novelette by Thom JonesThis story by Thom Jones is unusual in that the protagonist, a reflective American Marine, freely admits committing unspeakable war crimes (and getting medals for them) after the rest of his reconnaissance patrol was slaughtered in Vietnam. Post-war PTSD leads to excessive drinking and a vicious boxing match in which he suffers serious brain damage. He must now choose between a life of seizures in a drug-induced haze, or risky surgery that could turn him into a vegetable. Themes include friendship, masculinity, the brutality of war, morality, violence and suffering, choices and consequences, philosophy and art.

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The Willows

The Willows: Novella by Algernon BlackwoodThis story from Algernon Blackwood about a canoe trip gone wrong is considered one of the greatest supernatural thrillers of all time. A feature is Blackwood’s ability to build and sustain terror through atmosphere alone. The canoeists camp on a small island among the idyllic, willow-lined channels of the swollen Danube delta. Their campsite sits on the boundary between the known world and another. A malevolent presence has become aware of their existence, and stalks the creeping willows looking for a human sacrifice. Themes include: the beauty and menace of nature, camaraderie, rationality vs. fear, courage, sacrifice, the supernatural.

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Children of the Corn

Children of the Corn: Short story by Stephen KingCombine a boy with his throat cut who runs out onto a country road, a seemingly deserted town where the only community building still in use is a desecrated church, a hoard of murderous children, and a mysterious presence living in the surrounding cornfields, and you have a typical Stephen King horror/thriller. You get the feeling that King deliberately set out to make sure that readers wouldn’t be too upset when the main characters (a bickering couple driving through the American Midwest) meet their inevitable gruesome end. Themes: cultism, exploited religion, human sacrifice, the supernatural.

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The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant

The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant: Short story by W.D. WetherellMany reviewers suggest that the theme of this story by W.D. Wetherell is love. The only real “loves” in the plot are the narrator’s love for fishing and Sheila’s love for herself. For me, the theme is the lengths people go to in pursuing infatuation. Although Sheila is a self-absorbed tease, at the beginning of the story the narrator takes his infatuation too far. The story was published in 1983. Today, the way he creeps through the woods to watch Sheila’s house at night, and studies her every movement as she sunbathes by day, could see him arrested for stalking.

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