Heavy snow can cause many problems, closing roads and stopping people from going to work or school. Today’s story from Cynthia Rylant is about Doris, an only child from a poor family. A cold, shivering puppy comes into her yard as she is clearing snow from around the front door. It has been abandoned. She takes the animal inside and cares for it, knowing that her parents will say they don’t have the money to keep a dog and take it away when the snow clears. The story’s themes are loneliness, compassion, responsibility, understanding, cruelty to animals, kindness and love. More…
Mammon and the Archer
Mammon is a biblical term for great wealth. In this story by O. Henry, a self-made millionaire is initially of the belief that money can buy anything. When his son falls in love with a woman from an aristocratic family, he learns there are two things his money can’t buy: love and family recognition among New York High Society. Fortunately for his son, it is able to buy the young man enough time to allow the archer to do his job. Themes include money vs. love, pride, new vs. old money, upper class etiquette, superstition, deception. More…
Sorrow-Acre
This story by Isak Dinesen (aka Karen Blixen) has an “overall” plot, a “subordinate” plot, and an “incomplete” plot. The overall plot considers how moves towards democracy elsewhere in Europe might affect late eighteenth-century Danish society. The subordinate plot (the tragic story of a mother given a near-impossible task to save her son) illustrates why change is necessary, and the difficulty the ruling class will have in adjusting to it. The incomplete plot (see below) foreshadows a possible affair between the protagonist and his seventeen-year-old love-starved aunt. Themes: culture and tradition, birthright, duty, feudalism vs. democracy, injustice, motherhood, suffering. More…
Last Courtesies
This story by Ella Leffland contrasts the way the protagonist, a widow in her late fifties, handles life’s challenges with the approaches taken by her dignified, “old-fashioned” aunt and an eccentric, sometimes mentally unstable friend of her aunt who has appointed himself her “protector”. Unable to cope with noisy neighbors and daily problems following the death of her aunt and long-time companion, the woman suffers a nervous breakdown. After an argument with her “protector”, she falls prey to a vicious serial killer. Themes include alienation and isolation, eccentricity, judgement, passivity vs. assertiveness, rudeness vs. civility, fear, violence. More…
The Distant Past
In this story by William Trevor, Irish villagers ridicule an elderly brother and sister for living in the past by clinging to their family’s long-held British allegiance. Almost forty years have passed since the Anglo-Irish War. The rest of the community, who are predominantly Republican, have moved on. That is until “The Troubles” of the late 1960s, when the other villagers’ hatred and mistrust of the British resurfaces. The once well-liked siblings find themselves ostracized, proving that the past is never far away. Themes: family loyalty and pride, isolation, tolerance, friendship, religious/political conflict, alienation, the interrelationship between past and present. More…