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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Rice
Short Story by Manuel E. Arguilla. Storms have destroyed half the rice crop. The feudal landlord has taken her due, and there is insufficient left for farming families. The landlord offers to lend them rice until the next harvest, but on exorbitant terms. The desperate farmers contemplate desperate measures.
Aunty Misery
Puerto Rican Folktale. A wish granted by a travelling sorcerer solves a problem for an old woman whose precious pear tree is constantly stripped of its fruit by mischievous children. It also helps her cheat Death when it comes for her and force him to grant her immortality.
Going Fishing
Young Adult Story by Norma Fox Mazer. A plus-sized senior high-schooler who describes herself as “big-footed, big-voiced, big-herself” is having trouble finding her place in the world. Ignored by boys and feeling patronized by her “normal-sized” family, she fantasizes about a white light leading her to somewhere she belongs.
Miss Moberly’s Targets
Short Story by Manoj Das. A spinster living in an Indian home for the aged is proud of her accuracy in throwing morsels to three stray dogs on the street below. When friends belittle her achievement, she decides to shoot them (the dogs, not the friends!)
Solipsist
Quick Read by Fredric Brown. A solipsist decides to end it all… not just his life, but everything. Willing the universe out of existence is not as easy as he had first thought, and he faces the prospect of floating around alone in the void for millions of years!

The School
Quick Read by Donald Barthelme. Death stalks a school. All plants and animals in student projects, an adopted dog, and a sponsored Korean orphan mysteriously die. To experience renewal of life, students ask their teacher to demonstrate sex with his teaching assistant. Fortunately, before they start, something better comes along.
The Grave
Short Story by Katherine Anne Porter. Trading of an object a nine-year-old girl finds in an open grave for a gold ring brings about the first stirrings of womanhood. Seeing unborn kittens in the womb of a dead rabbit adds to the picture of what it is to be female.
The Artist / Painter
Short Story by Rabindranath Tagore. A dying man puts his wife and son under his parsimonious brother's care. The boy has a talent for art, which his mother fosters in secret. When the brother-in-law finds out and decides to put the boy in boarding school, she must take desperate action.
The Quilt / Lihaaf
Short Story by Ismat Chughtai. A mother leaves her young daughter in the care of her adopted sister. The sister’s husband spends his time entertaining “young, fair and slim-waisted boys”, while she spends her day being “attended to” by a personal servant/masseuse who also shares her bed.
In the Great Walled Country
Grade 3-4 Story by R. M. Alden. The king of a country of children living near the North Pole tries to change the way his people celebrate Christmas. Instead of giving presents to others, he orders everyone to get their own. The result was not what he expected.