This story by Robert Penn Warren is set in rural Tennessee during the 1930s. A nine-year-old boy is affected for life when a menacing-looking tramp with a large switchblade in his pocket, carrying a mysterious newspaper-wrapped package, visits his family farm. Although the surly man is not dressed for farm work, the boy’s mother offers him food and some odd jobs. The tramp is clearly unhappy about the work she offers, and shows no gratitude when the boy’s father pays him and orders him off the property. Themes include innocence, identity, man (farming) vs. nature, poverty, dignity and father-son relationships. More…
Category Archives: Novelettes
The Sky is Gray
Set in the American South during the 1940s, this coming of age story by Ernest Gaines features an eight-year-old African-American boy from an impoverished family. Suffering a toothache, his mother takes him so see a dentist. During the trip he experiences the humiliation of segregation, is inspired by a debate in the dentist’s waiting room, stands up for his mother when threatened in a “colored” café, and experiences kindness on the “white” side of town. Following his uncompromising mother’s example, he conducts himself with courage and dignity. Themes: mother-son relationships, pride, racism and segregation, religious acceptance vs. knowledge and questioning. More…
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
The major themes of this stream of conscience narrative by Ernest Hemingway are death, and regret for one’s life choices and things left undone. A bitter, failed writer lies dying in a safari camp on the plains below Mt Kilimanjaro. While cruelly taunting his wife, he evaluates his life through a series of flashbacks. Having lived an adventurous, hedonistic life including loving and leaving many women, each with more money than the last, he has a lot to reflect upon. Minor themes introduced through the flashbacks include post-war (WW1) trauma, loss, loneliness, misogyny and redemption. More…
Sonny’s Blues
The major theme of this rather intense story from James Baldwin is that for many people, life involves a constant cycle of suffering. (I was aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.) The plot explores the adult relationship between an African-American teacher and Sonny, his musically gifted estranged brother, after Sonny’s arrest and imprisonment for drug trafficking. Other themes include race and racism, substance abuse, alienation, reconciliation, family/brotherly love, and the inspirational and healing power of music. More…
Jeeves Takes Charge
This story is from Carry on Jeeves, the third of seventeen “Jeeves books” by P. G. Wodehouse. Its significance is that we learn how Bertie Wooster, a likeable but hapless upper-class layabout living off family money, came across and learned to depend upon his wonder valet Jeeves. In his first forty-eight hours on the job, Jeeves saves Bertie from losing his inheritance, and helps him avoid what would have been an even worse fate – marriage to Florence, his dominating, snobby fiancé. Themes include engagement and marriage, social class and wealth, scandal, master-servant relationships. More…
The Turning
This story from Tim Winton includes themes of alcohol abuse, domestic violence, child neglect, shame, friendship and faith. A mother of two whose hard-drinking husband is increasingly violent towards her becomes close friends with a “Ken-and-Barbie” like new couple in town. When the couple share a story of how religious faith helped turn their lives around, she rejects the notion as not for her. Later, the impulsive purchase of a novelty “snow dome” featuring a hunky-looking Jesus walking on water not only provides amusement, but also becomes the catalyst for an epiphany as she endures a brutal marital rape.
Parker’s Back
Like many Flannery O’Connor stories, the main theme of Parker’s Back is man’s struggle against religion. The main character here is a simple minded, poorly educated farm worker. He is selfish, doesn’t believe in God, and says he hates his wife. His one love is tattoos, which he believes express his manhood. Through his last tattoo, he finds grace. Unfortunately, his fundamentalist wife spoils the experience. In doing so, she may well have ruined both of their lives. Other themes: identity, connection (with the tattooed man), dissatisfaction, alcoholism, religious awakening, grace, religious bigotry. More…
The Jolly Corner
In this unusual horror story from Henry James, a wealthy man stalks his empty, supposedly haunted family mansion looking for the ghost of the person he might have become. Having returned to America after thirty-three years living a selfish, frivolous life in Europe, the protagonist discovers a hidden talent for business and architecture. He wonders how life would have turned out if he had pursued these interests when younger, and decides that the only way to find out is to find and confront his ghostly alter ego. Themes: change, materialism, life choices and consequences, emptiness, commitment, the supernatural. More…
Slaughter House
Although highly regarded as a classic, chilling ghost story, die-hard Richard Matheson fans may find Slaughter House somewhat disappointing. Matheson deliberately changes his normal crisp, easy to read writing style to experiment with the formality of mid-Victorian writing. The result: some extremely obscure vocabulary and very long, pompously formal sentences that are sometimes disjointed and confusing. The story itself is captivating. Two brothers, whose described relationship suggests a little more than brotherly love, fall for the lustful ghost of a young woman that enchants, has its way with, and then tries to kill them. Only one of the three survives! More…
The Pugilist at Rest
This 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. More…
Children of the Corn
Combine 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. More…
Naming the Names
Set during the Irish Troubles, the major themes of his story by Anne Devlin are love, loyalty and betrayal. Other themes include identity, the cyclical nature of violence, urban change/devastation, taking responsibility for one’s actions, and the humanization of terrorism. The plot is non-linear, with regular flashbacks to earlier times. An insecure woman who has been indoctrinated in the Republican cause since childhood joins the IRA. She plays a minor role until a decision is made to target a prominent British official, and finds herself perfectly placed to lure his son (who is also her lover!) into a deadly trap.
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The Secret Sharer
The term secret sharer in this Joseph Conrad adventure could apply to both the protagonist (a young ship’s captain preparing for his first sea command) and his fugitive cabin guest. The similarities between them in terms of age, appearance and background suggest that Conrad is using the guest as a foil to highlight the captain’s strengths and weaknesses. Unlike the guest, the captain is unsure of himself and does not project the self-confidence and authority needed to gain the respect of his older, more experienced officers. Themes include leadership, isolation, identity, duality, self-awareness, self-mastery, and the power of the sea. More…
Brokeback Mountain
Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain is an unsettling story about how a sexual encounter between two male ranch-hands, Jack and Ennis, develops into a twenty-year love affair. The relationship develops over short, intimate camping trips, sometimes years apart. Jack wants more but Ennis’s marriage, social pressures of the day (1960’s), and anti-gay upbringing prevent him from “coming out”. It is not until Jack dies, possibly in a gay hate crime, that Ennis understands the intensity of their feelings for one another. Themes: desire, love, repressed sexuality, masculinity, homophobia, shame, acceptance (if you can’t fix it, you’ve got to stand it). More…
Paul’s Case
Willa Cather’s ‘Paul’ is not your average high schooler. Whatever it is that makes him different (interpretations vary from sexuality to autism or some kind of nervous condition) is causing problems in both his school and home lives. The things that keep Paul going are his daydreams of one day living the life of the rich and famous, and his love of music and the theatre. When the latter two are taken away, he decides on drastic action (or is it all another daydream?). Themes: being ‘different’, alienation, fantasy vs. reality, rebellion, deception/fraud, living the dream, despair. More…
Patriotism
This gut-wrenching tale from Yukio Mishima deals with traditional Japanese perceptions of duty, honor, love and ritual suicide. Regarded as one of the most powerful stories of the twentieth century, it is beautifully (almost lovingly) written and does not spare the easily offended or queasy reader. The lovemaking scenes are tastefully erotic, and the description of Lieutenant Shinji’s seppuku (harakiri) is gruesome in its detail. A major theme is loyalty: to one’s country (Emperor), friends, family honor, and spouse. Another is beauty: of youth, of love, of life and (perhaps difficult for many Westerners to understand) of an honorable death. More…
A Jury of Her Peers
The three dominant themes of this story by Susan Glaspell are feminism (gender roles), deception and justice. Men investigating a farmer’s murder bring two of their wives to the scene of the crime (his farmhouse) to collect clothing, etc. for the suspect (the farmer’s wife) while in jail. Ironically, although the men mock the women’s ability to contribute to the investigation, the wives find evidence that would convict the suspect. They then face a moral dilemma. A jury of men would not understand the suspect’s suffering. Would justice be served by proving her guilt? More…
The Red-Headed League
A common theme in most detective stories is superior observation skills and deductive reasoning. A defining feature of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Red-Headed League is the way the facts presented by the gullible Wilson appear so bizarre to Watson as to defy interpretation. This prompts Holmes’s to quip: Omne ignotum pro magnifico [we exaggerate the importance of the unknown]. Once he dismisses the Red-Headed League as a distraction, identifying the crime in progress becomes a straightforward matter for the great detective. Other themes include deception (appearance vs. reality), gullibility, greed (of both the criminals and Wilson), crime and justice. More…
The Country Husband
Rather than wide-open spaces far from a city, John Cheever’s “country husband” lives on a large block in an upper-class New England suburb. A near-death experience results in a growing awareness of the shortcomings of his way of life. He becomes more demanding and impulsive, leading to a dangerous infatuation with an underage teen, out-of-character behavior that causes his family to become social outcasts, and an argument that almost destroys his marriage. A psychiatrist has an innovative solution. Themes: appearances vs. reality, conformity, isolation, loneliness, lack of fulfillment, materialism, marriage (gender roles/domesticity, lack of communication/intimacy,), sexual fantasy. More…
Fever
A cursory first reading of this story often leaves students confused. John Wideman’s innovative style involves multiple voices, some of which are not even identified, and randomly traveling both backwards and forwards in time. The grim narrative is prefaced as a tribute to the people (mostly free African-Americans) who heroically nursed the sick and buried the dead during the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793. The fever serves as a metaphor for the effects of the story’s main themes (prejudice and racism), which can potentially destroy both victims and perpetrators. Other themes: slavery, fear, suffering, death, despair. More…
The Prussian Officer
The central themes of D. H. Lawrence’s The Prussian Officer are homoerotic attraction and abuse of power. An aristocratic officer becomes envious of and sexually attracted towards his orderly. Drawn by the twenty-two-year-old’s youthful innocence and vigor, the officer denies and tries to repress his feelings. Sensing what is happening, the orderly is cooler than usual towards him. The agitated officer responds cruelly, and the tension between them mounts until reaching a point where the orderly can take no more. Minor themes: (the officer) jealousy, denial, obsession, sadism; (the orderly) duty, loss of innocence, humiliation, isolation, loss of self-control. More…
Flowers for Algernon
This touching short story from Daniel Keyes is about a mentally handicapped man who undergoes experimental surgery to enhance his intelligence. The operation’s initial success highlights an interesting aspect of intelligence: the very gifted can be as out of touch with reality and friendless as the intellectually challenged. The story raises an important issue: How far should medical science go in tampering with nature or, as some would say, the will of God? Perhaps the answer lies in Charlie’s ultimate fate, ironically going backwards in intelligence rather than forwards. Other themes include innocence, friendship, compassion, bullying and sacrifice. More…
The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones
This story by Julie Orringer explores aspects of life and growing up in an American Orthodox Jewish community. Due to her mother’s illness, a teenage Jewish girl raised in a secular environment spends her school holidays living in the Orthodox community of an aunt. Despite community concern that she may be a bad influence on her cousins, she adjusts well to the Orthodox way of life. It is her rebellious, similar-aged cousin, beginning to explore her sexuality, who breaks the community’s strict behavioral rules. Themes include family, protectiveness and distrust, secular vs. Orthodox lifestyles, spiritual awakening, and emerging sexuality. More…
The Hospice
Author Robert Aickman preferred to be called a writer of “strange fiction” rather than ghost or horror stories. The Hospice, considered one of his best, is a good example of why. The story is full of unexplained twists and turns. It builds to what readers expect will be a typical horror climax, then seemingly falls flat with the protagonist safely on his way home. But is he? It’s easy to see why Aickman has been called the English Kafka. Was it a dream? Delirium caused by an animal bite? Supernatural forces? Or did he die along the way? More…
The Raft
In this story from Stephen King, the last swim of the season by four college students also proves to be the last swim of their lives. On an alcohol-fuelled whim, the foursome drive to a deserted lake to swim out to a raft moored fifty yards off shore, say good-bye to summer, and then swim back. As they reach the raft, they learn to their horror that a mysterious black mass floating on the surface is stalking them for its next meal(s). Themes include teenage exuberance, machismo, chauvinism, sexuality, fear, the unknown/supernatural. More…
Transactions in a Foreign Currency
In this story by Deborah Eisenberg, a twenty-eight-year-old woman decides to end her relationship with a lover she has been seeing on and off for almost ten years. The man, who hasn’t contacted her for six months, calls and asks her to drop everything and spend a few weeks over Christmas with him in Montreal. Like many times before, she readily agrees. Some experiences while he is away for a few days help her realize that it is time to let him go. Themes include love, passivity, commitment, selfishness, letting go. More…
Meeting Mrinal
In this story by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, an Indian-American woman struggles to come to terms with the failure of her arranged marriage and her Americanized teenage son’s increasing withdrawal. After an unexpected visit from her closest childhood friend and rival, now a highly successful single businesswoman, she realizes that, despite the different directions their lives have taken, both have ended up lonely and disillusioned. Fortunately, after considering suicide, she recognizes that no life is perfect and decides to face up to her problems. Themes include cultural conflict, gender roles, arranged marriages, identity, generation gap, single motherhood, rivalry, pride, loneliness, disillusionment. More…
Debbie and Julie
This poignant story from Doris Lessing deals with the experiences of Julie, a runaway teen in her last year of high school. ‘Accidentally’ impregnated, she runs away from home out of fear of her father’s reaction. She flees to London where Debbie, a compassionate call girl, takes her in and acts as a protector and mother figure. Unfortunately, Debbie is away when the baby comes. Julie carries out a grotesque self-birthing plan and must face the difficult choice regarding the baby’s future alone. Themes include parent-child relationships, innocence vs worldliness, choices and consequences, compassion, desperation, abandonment and regret. More…
Pomegranate Seed
In this suspenseful mystery by Edith Wharton, a young woman marries a recently widowed man who admits to having been intensely in love with his deceased wife of twelve years. Everything seems perfect until a series of strange letters arrive, addressed to the husband in obviously feminine handwriting. The letters deeply disturb the husband, who refuses to disclose the sender or the contents. When the husband disappears and the secret of the letters is revealed, it appears that his dead wife may have won a ghostly contest. Themes: love, family, jealousy, honesty and mutual trust in marriage, alienation, he supernatural. More…
Hot Ice
Major themes of this story by Stuart Dybek are urban decay and social change. The state of a 1970s Chicago neighbourhood is reflected in the desolate, drug and alcohol-fueled lives of the story’s main characters. A prison, which features prominently in the story, signifies their bleak chances of escaping these circumstances. The story is tied together by an urban myth about a “saintly” girl encased in a block of ice. Her rescue and “release” symbolizes hope for change and a better future. Other themes include religion, loss, grief, coming of age, identity, nostalgia, despair, drug and alcohol abuse, myth. More…
Victory Over Japan
Today we are featuring the trilogy of “Rhoda” stories from Ellen Gilchrist’s short story collection Victory Over Japan. In the titular first story, set in the final days of World War 2, Rhoda is a willful third-grader living in fear of when her disciplinarian father returns home from the war. In the second story, Music, she is a rebellious fourteen-year-old, obsessed with beauty and romance and constantly at war with her father. In the final story, The Lower Garden District Free Gravity Mule Blight or Rhoda, a Fable, she is a lost thirty-four-year-old at a crossroads. More…
What Men Live By
In this story by Leo Tolstoy, God punishes a disobedient angel by casting him out of Heaven to live as a man. The only way he can get his job back is to learn the answers these questions: What dwells in man? What is not given to man? and What (do) men live by? He learns the answers from the family of a poor but compassionate shoemaker, an imperious rich man, and a kind, charitable woman who has adopted the two orphaned children of a dead neighbor. Themes: humanity, compassion, kindness, arrogance, duty, death. More…
Leaving the Yellow House
In this depressing but captivating story by Saul Bellow, a seventy-two-year-old woman reviews her life of lost opportunities after an accident threatens her ability to live independently in her off-the-grid Yellow House. A heavy drinker, she is portrayed as irresponsible, selfish, brash and demanding. With no close relatives and the six other eccentric white people in her isolated desert community tolerating rather than befriending her, she has no one to turn to and, more importantly, nobody “good enough” to bequeath her only treasure (the house) to. Themes include poverty, aging and death, identity, self-deception, alienation and isolation, disconnection, alcohol abuse. More…
The Learned Adventure of the Dragon’s Head
Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayers’s eccentric amateur sleuth, is saddled with his ten-year-old nephew while his parents are away overseas. As the two browse an antiquarian bookshop, the boy is attracted to the maps and pictures in a badly damaged copy of Cosmographia Universalis, an early description of the world. He buys the book, and shortly afterwards a strange man visits and offers Wimsey two hundred times what the boy paid. This leads to a “Boys Own” type adventure involving attempted robbery, Scotland Yard and a riddle leading to buried pirate treasure. Themes include curiosity, greed, mystery, deception, and philanthropy. More…
A Circle in the Fire
In this story by Flannery O’Connor, a self-righteous widow who runs a large farm with an iron hand is visited by three teenage boys. One of them is the son of an ex-employee, ostensibly seeking a horse ride. She refuses the request, but allows them to camp overnight. The next morning, angered by her condescending attitude, the boys do not leave and spend the next two days committing petty acts of vandalism around the farm. A threat to call the sheriff results in her greatest fear: fire. Themes include authoritarianism, pride, fear, false piety, ignorance, resentment, defiance, powerlessness. More…
The Canterville Ghost
Oscar Wilde is known for his comedic, usually satirical stories that focus on the shallowness and hypocrisy of the Victorian upper class. He goes several steps further in this playful ghost story, also mocking the brash practicality of wealthy Americans and some of the common devices used in horror and romantic literature. A fascinating aspect of the plot is the way Wilde builds sympathy for his spectral protagonist before revealing the petty reason the cruel man murdered his unfortunate wife. Themes: (general) British vs American culture, tradition, compassion; (the ghost) duty, artistry, suffering, atonement, redemption, peace. More…
Youth
This story from Joseph Conrad is more than a survival tale about an unseaworthy ship beset by bad luck. Central themes are youthful exuberance bordering on recklessness, regret for its passing, and the romance of the sea. The explosion that sinks the vessel marks a turning point for a young ship’s officer. Up until then, his enthusiasm had been fueled by a youthful desire to experience the wonders of the East. He discovers a new side of himself (leadership ability) when he temporarily takes command of the crew’s evacuation to the lifeboats. Other themes: courage, duty, misfortune, survival, self-discovery, pride. More…
The Argentine Ant
This story from Italo Calvino starts off aslike a horror story. A young couple with a baby move to a peaceful seaside village looking for work, only to discover that the whole place is crawling with ants. After they find the baby covered in ants and their food destroyed, Calvino takes a playful turn. He goes on to describe the sometimes farcical ways villagers try to exterminate and/or pretend they are not affected by the invaders, and the couple’s embarrassing confrontation with the reportedly self-serving government “Ant Man”. Themes: co-existing with nature, powerlessness, futility, tolerance/accepting the inevitable, mob hysteria. More…
Old Love
In this story by Jeffrey Archer, a couple go from rivalry-inspired hatred at first sight to literally being unable to live without each other. From the time they meet as Oxford undergraduates in the 1930s, a fierce sense of competition between the gifted pair spurs them on to topping their class, attaining coveted professorships, and earning royal honours. After tragedy brings them together, the caustic relationship morphs into a life-long love affair during which legend has it they were never apart for more than a few hours. Themes include competiveness, lasting love, literature and the arts, dedication, achievement. More…
A Small, Good Thing
In this heart-wrenching story by Raymond Carver, parents mount a vigil by their unconscious son’s hospital bed after he was struck by a car on his eighth birthday. On the few occasions one of them goes home to freshen up and feed the family dog, they receive prank phone calls, often mentioning the boy’s name. The boy dies after three days, but the calls continue. The mother soon realizes the caller is a baker from whom she had ordered a birthday cake, and insists on immediately confronting the man. Themes include family, tragedy, helplessness and isolation, compassion, connection, loneliness, forgiveness. More…
Odour of Chrysanthemums
D. H. Lawrence’s Odour of Chrysanthemums begins with an introduction to a woman living in a coal-mining village who feels trapped in an unhappy world of her husband’s making. Although her father is working-class (an engine-driver), her speech and behavior suggest that she aspires to a better life. The accidental death of her husband (a miner) triggers an epiphany in which she realizes that they never really knew each other, and that their problems were equally of her own making. The main theme is superficial (physical) attraction vs. love. Other themes: industrialization, social class, sex roles, isolation, mother-child connections, death. More…
The Ghost upon the Rail
This supposedly true story by John Lang is set in the early 1800s. John Fisher had come to Australia as a convict. He worked hard, won his freedom and became rich. One day a neighbor tells everyone that Fisher has returned to England. A year later, he says that Fisher has written asking him to sell all he owns and send the money to him. According to this version, at about the same time three men (one a policeman) are returning home late one night. Sitting on a rail beside the road is Fisher’s ghost. This spoils the neighbor’s plan. More…
Interpreter of Maladies
Interpreter of Maladies is the titular tale in Jhumpa Lahiri’s award-winning debut short story collection. The stories deal with different aspects of the cultural and relationship issues facing people of Indian heritage in the modern world. This story contrasts two empty marriages. The Indian protagonist (a doctor’s translator who moonlights as a tour guide) fantasizes that the wife in an Indian-American family he takes sightseeing has a romantic interest in him. Rather than love, she wants his help to find a “cure” for a foolish mistake she once made. Themes: parenting, loveless marriage, tragic loss, loneliness, low self-esteem, guilt. More…
The Mill
The major theme of his story by H. E. Bates is exploitation: economic exploitation by parents who place their daughter in servitude, and sexual exploitation by her employer who rapes her on an almost daily basis. The most puzzling aspect of the story is the girl’s compliant, almost robot-like, demeanor, perhaps brought about by her father’s dictatorial bullying. It only when the girl arrives home after her employer’s son, the only man who has shown her any kindness, realises and tells her she is pregnant, that her eyes come to life with tears. Other themes include isolation, naivety, jealousy, fear. More…
A Boy and His Dog
Written at the peak of the Cold War, this Harlan Ellison story takes place in a dystopic, post-apocalyptic world. ‘Civilized’ people have retreated to secure underground cities, leaving the desolate surface to ‘solo’ wanderers and lawless gangs who survive by foraging, violence and murder. The plot involves a young solo, his genetically manipulated telepathic dog, and an attractive young woman from the underground who almost comes between them. Despite the title, there is nothing “boyish” about the protagonist given what he and the girl get up to! Themes: anarchy, division, violence, loyalty, manipulation, betrayal, love. More…
The Open Boat
A remarkable aspect of this story from Stephen Crane is that it is based on an actual event in the author’s life. This adds credibility to what to me is a defining feature of the story: the way that throughout the ordeal four men from such diverse backgrounds were able to maintain their self-discipline and work so well together. The Open Boat is considered a classic in the literary style called “naturalism”. Such stories deal with the unforgiving power of nature and man’s struggle for survival. Themes: man vs. nature/the sea, perspective (appearance vs. reality), courage, teamwork, survival. More…
Nightfall
As once described by Isaac Asimov himself, Nightfall (is) the tale of a world with eternal sun that is suddenly plunged into total darkness and utter madness. Hailed as one of the greatest Science Fiction stories ever written it tells how, in preparation for the potential end of their civilization, a group of forward-thinking scientists have created a safe place to store their world’s accumulated knowledge and hide a select group of “survivors”. Themes: science vs superstition (cultism), having the courage of one’s convictions, sensory deprivation, insanity, mob hysteria, scientific hubris. More…
Journey into a Dark Heart
In this story by Peter Høeg, a naïve young mathematician becomes disillusioned at the impossibility of reducing all things (including humanity) to a set of equations. He gives up his academic career, joins a Danish trading company, and finds himself in Africa mixing with royalty at the opening of a new railroad. During the inaugural train journey, he discusses European notions of colonial Africa with three fellow passengers. He later learns that one is a rebel leader, another a gunrunner, and a bridge ahead has been sabotaged. Themes: colonialism, race and racism, war/rebellion, honesty, idealism vs. reality, despair. More…
In the Zoo
In this story by Jean Stafford, a sorry-looking blind polar bear in a Denver zoo reminds adult sisters of a gentle alcoholic ne’er-do-well who befriended them during their traumatic childhood. As eight and ten year-old orphans, the two were fostered out to “Gran”, a possessive, unloving, scornful woman who runs a boarding house. Academically backward and teased at school, they find comfort in their friendship with a kindly Irishman and a puppy he gives them. That is until Gran converts the loveable pup into a ferocious attack dog. Themes include arranged psychological trauma, isolation, confinement and control, companionship and love. More…
Diary of a Madman
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…