This humorous story from Nikolai Gogol charts the descent of a government clerk into insanity. He dismisses his supervisor’s concerns about strange behavior as jealousy, becomes infatuated with his Department Head’s daughter, stalks the poor girl after overhearing a conversation between two dogs, reads their (the dogs’) letters, and finally suffers delusions of grandeur, believing himself to be the King of Spain. In the process, the story satirizes Russia’s bureaucratic wastefulness and obsession with titles and social status. The major theme is, of course, madness. Other themes: purposeless work, alienation, envy, wounded pride, class and (in the asylum) cruelty, suffering. More…
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The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Written in 1841, this rather unlikely story by Edgar Allan Poe is considered one of the world’s first modern detective stories. In a seemingly insoluble locked-room mystery, the wrong man is arrested for the violent murder of two women. In an effort to find the truth, Poe’s amateur detective Dupin demonstrates the importance of “mental analysis” in problem solving and, in the process, shows how an “Ourang-Outang” was able to make a monkey out of the police. Themes include ingenuity (inventiveness) vs. mental analysis (critical thinking), violence, the pursuit of truth, justice. More…
The Bear
William Faulkner published several versions of this classic story, the most notable of which are a short story that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and a novel-sized chapter in his book, Go Down, Moses. In the short story, an unnamed boy becomes a skilled woodsman over six years of annual hunting trips. His dream is to bag “Old Ben”, a huge bear that has terrorized farmers on the fringes of their hunting grounds for years. When he finally gets the chance, he doesn’t shoot. Themes: family, land and people ownership, racial identity, love of and respect for the wilderness. More…
The Indian and the Hundred Cows
In this folktale from the American Southwest, a misunderstanding arises due to a priest’s poor choice of words. In soliciting donations, he alludes to the biblical concept expressed in Mark 10:30, whereby he who gives up everything for God will be rewarded a hundredfold. A misled, or more likely wily, parishioner donates a cow and takes a hundred of the priest’s cattle in return. The story’s message is to make sure you understand the culture of people you are dealing with before making promises and, even then, be careful what you say. More…
The Pearl of Love
In this story by H. G. Wells an Indian prince, devastated by the death of his young wife, has her body entombed in a sarcophagus and begins to build a magnificent shrine around it that he names the Pearl of Love. Over the years he makes the memorial grander and grander, until one day he tires of it. He not only disassembles the shrine, but also has the sarcophagus removed because it blocks his view of the lord of mountains. Themes include love, loss, grief, art and artistry, the nature of beauty, time and healing. More…