In this story from Paul Dunbar, a faith healer provides the last hope for a desperate woman who has been told that medical science can do nothing more for her seriously ill daughter. Despite the narrator’s skepticism, the tragic ending neither proves nor disproves the validity of faith healing. Although the mother certainly has the “faith”, the poor child is too young and/or sick to understand or even care about what is happening around her. The major theme of the story is that distraught people are easy prey to those offering false hope. Other themes: love, desperation, hope, faith, death. More…
Ghosts
The ghosts in this Edwidge Danticat story are not the spectral kind. They are chimès… gang members of the Haitian slums. The story takes readers into one of these slums, and provides a glimpse of what life is like for young people growing up inside. It helps explain why young men join the gangs, the problems they face with police brutality and corruption at every level of society, and how the only way out for many is a bullet. Sadly, the problems described are not unique to Haiti. Themes include: social breakdown, gang culture, betrayal, parental love and sacrifice. More…
A Haunted House
If you read Virginia Woolf‘s A Haunted House expecting it to be a horror story, you will come away disappointed. Rather than scary, the best word I can think of to describe it is bittersweet. Sweet because two ghosts are still very much in love after hundreds of years; sad because the ghostly couple appear to be anxiously searching for something. Although the central theme of the story is the immortality of love, it also carries the message that life is short, and we should treasure each moment with those we love. Other themes include loss, time, memories, the supernatural. More…
The Ghost of Michael Jackson
This story by Ngugi wa Thiong’o satirizes attempts to instill Western & Eastern religious values in post-colonial Kenya. In the process, it lampoons some widely documented scandals of the modern church and the growth of contemporary megachurches with fallen celebrity pastors. A charismatic parish priest flees when a psychic boy reveals some of his vices. His loving flock are so upset by the disappearance that they overlook the boy’s revelations and are overjoyed when the priest mysteriously reappears in the form of a resurrected Michael Jackson. Themes: childhood innocence, the supernatural, superstition, culture clash, religious rivalry, zealotry, hypocrisy. More…
The English Pupil
In addition to being a celebration of the life and work of renowned biologist Carl Linnaeus, major themes of this touching story by Andrea Barrett are aging, memory and approaching death. The dying scientist has his coachman take him to his empty country estate where, amid a fog of fading memories, he reminisces about his life and the fate of some of the “apostles” he sent around the world to collect biological specimens. Later, he is joined by a concerned daughter and an unknown man he imagines to be his only surviving pupil. Other themes include family, pride and regret. More…