In this story by MacKinlay Kantor, a blind peddler stops a man in the street to sell him a cigarette lighter. The man buys one and, in the hope of getting extra money, the peddler tells him a sob story about how he lost his sight after being held back while trying to escape poison gas released during a factory chemical explosion. The customer points out an error in his story, and how blindness need not be a hindrance to success. Themes include positivity and self-belief vs. denial and self-pity, bitterness, manipulation, deceit, cowardice. More…
The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant
Many 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. More…
The Way It Felt to Be Falling
The major theme of this story by Kim Edwards is fear. For the nineteen-year-old-protagonist working to save money for college, the principal fear is losing her mind like her father. Her life revolves around work, helping her overwrought mother with her home cake-decorating business, and hanging out with her mentally unstable boyfriend. When the boyfriend talks her into going skydiving, she faces an even greater fear: death. Her exhilaration over confronting this fear and making the jump help displace her other fears and turn her life around. Other themes include responsibility, loneliness, mental illness, substance abuse, shame, freedom. More…
Reunion
This story by Arthur C. Clarke packs a powerful message into just two pages. It takes the form of a radio message reassuring the people of Earth that they have nothing to fear from a group of beings approaching from space. The visitors claim to share a common ancestry with man, both being descended from an advanced race of aliens who colonized Earth during the time of the dinosaurs. Those who could fled when a terrible genetic plague brought on division, conflict and savagery among the population. They are returning with a cure for any who might still be affected. More…
The Sacrificial Egg
The major theme of this story by Chinua Achebe is culture clash, as reflected in the changes forced on the Ibo (Igbo) people of South-Eastern Nigeria as they reconciled their traditional values and beliefs with the effects of Westernization under British colonial rule. One of the biggest changes observed by the narrator is the move from a village-based to an urbanized society, which resulted in a resurgence of smallpox. We also learn how some people, including the narrator, try to minimize such conflicts by maintaining a foot in both cultural camps. Other themes include colonialism, tradition, superstition, compromise. More…