Featured Stories

Gimpel the Fool

Gimpel the Fool: Short story by Isaac Bashevis SingerIf you take the story at face value (which is often dangerous with a first person narration), Isaac Singer’s Gimpel is no fool. He understands and rationalizes all that has happened in his life, claiming to have been misjudged due to being too trusting and accommodating towards others. Sadly, although not considering himself a fool, he feels compelled to accept the title. The real fools are shown to be those who took advantage of Gimpel, especially his debauched wife who suffers the consequences in the afterlife. Themes: faith, kindness and integrity, forgiveness, strength and wisdom, acceptance.

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The Metaphor

The Metaphor: Short story by Budge WilsonIn this coming-of-age story by Budge Wilson, a seventh-grade girl flourishes under a flamboyant English teacher. Inspired by the teacher, she learns to endure problems at home by writing metaphors. Four years later, she has the same teacher in high school. The unruly tenth graders constantly humiliate the poor woman, who has difficulty coping. Rather than acknowledge their past or offer thanks for her help in seventh grade, the girl ignores her. When the teacher dies in a tragic after-school accident, the devastated teen copes with her guilt by writing a metaphor. Themes include identity, peer pressure, guilt, self-realization.

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Wise Folks

Wise Folks: German folktale from the Brothers GrimmIn this folktale (aka The Clever People), a cruel farmer is angry with his wife because she was cheated out of two cows. He promises not beat her for it if can find someone more foolish. He soon finds one: a widow who is worried about how well her dead husband is doing in Heaven. The farmer makes up for losing his cows by cheating the widow out of a bag of money and stealing a horse from her son. At the end of the story, he seems to think that it is OK to cheat foolish people.

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How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again

How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again: Short story by Joyce Carol OatesThe experimental style of this Joyce Carol Oates story takes a little getting used to. In the form of a disorganized set of notes for an English writing assignment, a sixteen-year-old girl reviews the events that landed her in government care. Starved of affection by her wealthy parents, her acts of rebellion escalate from shoplifting to running away from home and falling under the spell of a prostitute and her Svengali-like, drug-addicted pimp. Sadly, the House of Correction isn’t the sanctuary she thought it would be. Themes parental neglect, rebellion, human trafficking, drug use, class and racial conflict.

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The Californian’s Tale

The Californian's Tale: Short story by Mark TwainThe major themes of this story by Mark Twain are loneliness, love, loss, madness and friendship. A prospector wandering the desolate Californian goldfields after the mines had all closed is surprised to come across a beautifully maintained cabin. When asked inside by the owner, he marvels at the comfort and quality of its furnishings and obvious signs of a woman’s touch. The man tells him that his wife is away visiting family but will return in three days. The prospector accepts the man’s invitation to stay and meet her, but later wishes he hadn’t.

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The Minority Report

The Minority Report: Short story by Philip DickPhilip Dick’s The Minority Report is a dystopian adventure story set in a society that takes policing a step even further than the infamous “Thought Police” in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Its premise is that the authorities have found a way to identify a crime and imprison the would-be perpetrator before he or she even thinks of committing it. Their methods in doing this are disturbing to say the least. Themes: (general) free will vs. fate, injustice, trust vs. paranoia, self-fulfilling prophesy, extrajudicial murder; (for the “precogs”) violation of human rights, enslavement, degradation.

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The Jungle

The Jungle: Short story by Elizabeth BowenThe “jungle” in this story by Elizabeth Bowen is a sealed-off area of woods overgrown with tussocks of bramble (blackberry bush) near an English boarding school. It becomes a secret haven for a lonely student, a fifteen-year-old girl who has difficulty maintaining friendships with others in her class. Things change when she breaks tradition and bonds with a girl in another class. The relationship has its ups and downs, largely because of her new friend’s assertiveness, and culminates in an implied sexual awakening in the jungle. Themes include alienation, teenage relationships, social class, escape, sexuality.

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Naga

Naga: Short story by R. K. NarayanIn this story by R. K. Narayan, a widowed Indian snake charmer trains a monkey for his young son so the two can work together entertaining people in the streets. All goes well until the father runs away with a strumpet in a blue sari, taking the monkey with him. Left alone with the snake, which has grown too old to perform, the boy misses the monkey more than his father. He reluctantly keeps the snake after realizing it can’t survive in the wild, and looks for another kind of work. Themes include poverty, selfishness, abandonment, independence, loyalty, compassion.

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