The Pale Man – General Understanding Quiz

Other stories you may like:

See top menu for all 1,500+ stories

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

The Other
Short Story by Jorge Borges. A younger man sits beside an aging teacher on a riverside bench. As they talk, the teacher realizes that the younger man is himself at an earlier age. An 'impossible' date on an American banknote convinces the skeptical young man that this is true.
Mitya’s Love
Novella by Ivan Bunin. A young Russian is so hopelessly in love with a woman that his jealousy stifles their relationship. They decide to separate for a short period to test their feelings. When she fails to respond to his increasingly desperate letters, things don’t end well.
A Sound of Thunder
Short Story by Ray Bradbury. Five men travel back in time on a safari to hunt a T-Rex. One of them panics when he sees the monster and steps off a specially prepared path. The last thing the clumsy man hears is a sound of thunder.

Gimpel the Fool
Short Story by Isaac Singer. A meek man whose trusting and accommodating nature results in him being branded a fool finds peace and wisdom through religious faith. The real fools are those who took advantage of him, especially his debauched wife who suffers the consequences in the afterlife.
A Tiger in the House
Grade 3-4 Story by Ruskin Bond. An old man finds an orphan tiger cub and takes it home as a family pet. When the cub grows out of its ‘playful’ stage, he donates it to a zoo. He gets an unexpected surprise when he visits it six months later.
The Philanthropist’s Christmas
Grade 5-6 Story by J. W. Linn. A lonely philanthropist’s only companion, a young puppy, runs away from home and is taken in by a poor family. As the philanthropist helps with their Christmas preparations, he experiences a special joy that changes the way he thinks about his work.
A Man Who Had No Eyes
Quick Read by MacKinlay Kantor. A blind peddler tells the wrong person a sob story about how his blindness was caused by poison gas released during a factory explosion. The man points out an error in his story, and how blindness need not be a hindrance to success.

The Sun, the Moon, the Stars
Short Story by Junot Díaz. A Dominican-American man attempts to shake off the stereotype of Latino machismo to maintain the relationship with his Cuban-born girlfriend. The man maintains he is “not a bad guy”, but doesn’t seem to understand how to treat a woman with consideration and respect.
Life
Short Story by Bessie Head. An attractive young prostitute is forcibly relocated from the bright lights of Johannesburg to her home village in Botswana. Villagers are shocked when she takes up her old profession, and even more so when she marries the village’s most eligible bachelor.
Clay
Short Story by Juan T. Gatbonton. A sensitive sixteen-year-old Filipino boy is left horrified and disillusioned after an American soldier he had come to idolize boasts about having seduced a pure woman he is infatuated with (his teacher) and reduced her to being “just like the other girls”.