In this Serbian folktale, a young girl stops her rich but cruel father from setting his dogs on three old men who come begging to his door. The old men are not really beggars, but fairies. They foretell that a baby boy in a nearby village will one day own all the rich man’s money and land. The rich man learns this and tries several times to kill the boy. However, he boy survives and the fairies’ prophesy comes true. As a final punishment, the rich man must work forever in a job that is much worse than begging. More…
The Three-Century Woman
In this humorous story by Richard Peck, a fourteen-year-old girl accompanies her mother and aunt to visit her great-grandmother on her 102nd birthday. Because of the great-grandmother’s “three-century” status (born in 1899, living through the 1900s, and still alive in 2001), her room in the usually quiet nursing home is surrounded by press. Anticipating this, the normally sleepy, forgetful old woman is not only propped up in bed dressed for an interview, but has prepared an elaborate prank to play on them. Themes include playfulness, taking the aged for granted (the aged are more than their memories!), change. More…
Wise Folks
In 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. More…
Look at All Those Roses
In this story by Elizabeth Bowen, car trouble on a deserted country road results in a woman spending several unsettling hours with an amazon of a woman and her seemingly psychic, paralyzed daughter. Her partner has walked to a nearby village to get help, and she becomes increasingly anxious. She falls asleep, and is in the middle of a disturbing dream when her partner returns in a taxi and rudely whisks her away. While in the village, he had heard a frightening rumor about the family. Themes include isolation and alienation, insecurity, emptiness, alternative reality (the white circle), rumor. More…
Midnight Mass
This story, hailed as one of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’s best, involves a seemingly innocent but sexually charged conversation between a seventeen-year-old boy and the thirty-year-old wife of his landlord. The boy is staying up to attend midnight mass, the woman’s husband is away for the night with his mistress, and the woman, who has not slept, appears in her nightgown. Interpretation of the conversation is made all the more difficult because it is related by the boy many years afterwards. Themes include coming of age (sexual stirrings) and ambiguity (as to what might be implied or is unsaid). More…