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…
End of the Game
This Julio Cortázar story involves two “games”. One is the daily Statues role-play three adolescent girls perform to entertain passengers on a passing train. The second is also a game of pretend… ignoring the effect a debilitating disability will have on one of their lives. For the disabled girl (Letitia), Statues is the only physical activity in which she can match the others. They in turn are resentful of Letitia’s special treatment at home. When a boy on the train takes a special interest in Letitia, both games end. Themes: fantasy vs. reality, envy, guilt, confronting disability, coming of age. More…
Eleonora
In this atypical Edgar Allan Poe story there is madness, but not the destructive kind; death, but not the gruesome kind; and a spirit, but not a frightening one. Also unusual is Poe’s extensive use of poetic prose. His description of the idyllic valley may be an allusion to the Garden of Eden, leaving readers to wonder if the couple’s incestuous lovemaking beneath the serpent-like trees was the “apple” that destroyed their paradise. Themes: the beauty of nature, innocence, passion, love, death, moving on. Poe’s message: true love endures; despite the loss of a loved one, life must go on. More…
A Small, Good Thing
In this heart-wrenching story by Raymond Carver, parents mount a vigil by their unconscious son’s hospital bed after he was struck by a car on his eighth birthday. On the few occasions one of them goes home to freshen up and feed the family dog, they receive prank phone calls, often mentioning the boy’s name. The boy dies after three days, but the calls continue. The mother soon realizes the caller is a baker from whom she had ordered a birthday cake, and insists on immediately confronting the man. Themes include family, tragedy, helplessness and isolation, compassion, connection, loneliness, forgiveness. More…
Unto Dust
The major themes of this story by Herman Bosman are attitudes towards the dead, and equality in death. A Boer farmer and native enemy die side by side while fighting in a ‘Transvaal Kafir War’. When the farmer’s friends return to take his body home for a proper burial, they find that wild animals have mixed up the bones. The friends spend a lot of time trying to sort out which is which so that the dead farmer does not have to lie forever among the warrior’s bones. A yellow ‘kafir’ dog judges the result. Other themes: war, mateship, racism. More…