Featured Stories

Priscilla and the Wimps

Priscilla and the Wimps: Short story by Richard PeckIn addition to this being Richard Peck’s first young adult story, it is one of his most popular. This is undoubtedly because it not only follows the age-old success formula of a victorious underdog, but does so in the context of humiliating a school bully. Another plus is that the denouement is left to the reader’s imagination. Does Pricilla come back later in the day to release Monk? Do her or Melvin’s parents phone the school and arrange for the locker to be opened? Or do they come back in a week’s time and find that Monk is an ice-block?

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Weight

Weight: Short story by John Edgar WidemanIn this story by John Edgar Wideman, a writer calls his mother and reads her a draft of a story he has written. It opens with the metaphor My mother is a weightlifter, and goes on to admire the way she has shouldered so many burdens throughout her life. She is not impressed. Two days later, she dies. As he reflects on the call he realizes it wasn’t the story that upset her, but his opening words: This is about a man scared he won’t survive his mother’s passing. Themes include motherhood, love, racial inequality, suffering, strength, dependence, grief, fear.

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The Storyteller

The Storyteller: Short story by H. H. Munro (aka Saki)This story by Saki satirizes the way many traditional children’s stories had become so “sanitized” during the prudish Victorian period that they lost much of their original appeal. A major theme of the story is pride. The outer or “frame” story highlights the Aunt’s false pride in thinking that a bachelor couldn’t possibly tell a better children’s story than she could. The inner story illustrates the meaning of the English idiom Pride comes before a fall. Other themes include childhood, curiosity, control, “goodness” vs. reality (not all good people/things in life end happily!)

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How to Tell a True War Story

How to Tell a True War Story: Short story by Tim O'BrienThis metafictional story by Tim O’Brien uses observations on a small collection of stories related by soldiers to highlight the difficulty of faithfully communicating one’s wartime experiences. His central argument is that in war it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen and therefore you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself. This leads to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true. Themes include the nature of truth in storytelling, memories vs. imagination, the trauma of war, morality.

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The Storm / At the ‘Cadian Ball

The Storm: Short story by Kate ChopinKate Chopin’s The Storm is widely considered one of her best stories. As a wild storm rages outside, a farmer’s wife (Calixta) and wealthy plantation-owner who had stopped for shelter (Alcée) engage in wild, stormy sex inside. Although both are married, neither feels guilty about the tryst. Afterwards, Calixta continues family life as normal, though seemingly more contented. Themes: family, passionless marriage, lust. In order to fully understand the characters, it is helpful to read the story’s prequel, At the ‘Cadian Ball. Calixta and Alcée were once infatuated with each other, but class and race differences kept them apart.

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The Disappearance

The Disappearance: Short story by Chitra DivakaruniChitra Divakaruni’s hard-hitting story of a woman’s “disappearance” is told from her Indian-American husband’s point of view. After a year of denial, he accepts that she has left him. Their arranged marriage, although blessed with a son, had become intolerable for her. Years later, living in a nursing home and estranged from their son, he reflects on how much his wife must have hated him to leave the boy. The old man still fails to appreciate the effect his repression and sexual abuse would have had upon the poor woman! Themes include insensitivity, authoritarianism, marital rape.

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Idyll

Idyll: Short story by Guy de MaupassantThis little known story from Guy de Maupassant is about a man and woman who meet and become friends during a long train journey. The idyllic countryside they are traveling through is in contrast to the way the woman feels. She is a wet-nurse (a woman who cares for and breast-feeds other people’s babies) and has not had a baby to her breast in the last two days. She is in great pain because of this, and the man offers to help her. In doing this, the man solves a problem of his own.

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The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried: Short story by Tim O'BrienThe strength of this Vietnam War memoir by Tim O’Brien is the matter-of-fact way the life of the soldiers (“grunts”) is portrayed. Although the military and survival equipment carried by the men is listed, the major theme of the story is the emotional burdens they carried – both those the men brought to the war, and those they took on during its course. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross learns an important lesson: in order to do your duty and survive the war, you need to find a way to let go of these. Other themes: war, love, individual and collective responsibility.

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