The Great Gatsby is a great novel about the immobility of class in America, despite the country's claim to the opposite. I didn't realize this in highschool when I read it, but damned if it wasn't a warning of things to come.
For sale:
Baby shoes.
Never worn.
I can do that author one better (or three better):
For sale: baby.
For sale: baby. Never used.
Not exactly a short story, but Kipling's The Young British Soldier still tumbles around in my head some 25 years later. Really cemented in me that I don't want to go die in some other country for some fabricated sense of duty to my country. Not that I wanted to at that point, but for sure made it seem like an extra terrible idea.
"Class, today we're going to start a VERY long lesson on allegory. It starts today with the reading of this short story, and it ends 30 years from now when you're watching your last parent die in a hospital bed of old age with nothing you can do about it."
U ok bro?
I am! Thanks for asking.
I was riffing off the OP post. We're exposed to ideas early in life (at school) that we don't understand the gravity of until much later.
Nobody going to mention a Cask of Amontillado? Maybe not the most mind-bending example, but the tale of leading a supposed friend to their own horrific murder was not a thing I expected to be reading in school.
Wasn't even required reading for me. I was just flipping through my textbook one day and found that in one of the sections the class was never going to reach.
“For the love of God, Montresor!”
The reply to that just being "Yes, for the love of God," was cold as ice.
Maybe try a poem.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Randall Jarrell, 1945
I think that was the inspiration for the B-17 scene from the animated movie Heavy Metal, which fucked me up as a kid.
Holy fuck who wrote this?
I should have attributed, sorry.
Randall Jarrell, published in 1945.
Bomber ball turret gunners and tail gunners had the shortest life expectancy of any combat occupation in the war, as these were the first targets of incoming fighters. I found one site that said tail gunners' combat life expectancy was four missions.
Ball turrets couldn't reload in flight. The ball was too small for parachutes, and the mechanisms jammed or froze often. Typically they put small, young, single guys in them.
“Alright, class! We’re gonna read a story about a guy who locks himself in a hotel room with a decked-out kitchen, a surgery machine, and every prosthesis one could need, and this guy is gonna eat himself from the bottom up and describe it in careful, emotional, joyous detail!”
Yeeeeah, fuck that shit, decades later.
“The Savage Mouth” is the English title, by Komatsu Sakyou.
There was a Stephen King short story called Survivor Type where a doctor gets stranded on an island and eventually begins eating himself for sustenance. The story is told through the journal he keeps as he becomes more unhinged.
I have a similar reaction, but it was to “The Yellow Wallpaper”, about a woman locked in a room for a long period of time to deal with her mental health, and the solitude drives her quite insane. In quite haunting detail.
Fun historical note: many yellow paints and dyes used in that time period had some sort of neurotoxic heavy metal (probably mercury, IIRC) that actually caused or at least exacerbated symptoms of mental illness. Many of these compounds were relatively safe to use as paint in England, but when used in warmer, humid climates, they broke down and caused hallucinations as well as respiratory complications that caused the patients to be bedridden (further worsening the symptoms).
To be fair I think The Yellow Wallpaper at least has a fucking point instead of … what the fuck…
Lots of great nightmares fuel here, but I can't believe nobody's mentioned The Lottery yet. The end of that story still makes me feel absolutely nauseous.
I still can't figure out why this is taught to children. What value does it offer, other than being generally well written, which a lot of other less disturbing stories also are? Did the teachers just hate us?
The theme I remember is that if established in a community and reinforced by tradition, any violence could be perpetuated and even endorsed.
I had blocked that one from my memory; I remember now. Thanks. ಠ_ಠ
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has entered the chat
“Alright Class, today we are going to read “The Jaunt” by Stephen King and write a report about the effects of eternal nothingness on the human psyche” -my sick fuck English teacher in grade 7 for some reason.
I just read this as an adult a few weeks ago actually. Pretty dope thing to have read in class but I can see how it would make a lasting impression
I mean I loved it. We also got to read some ray bradbury and Isaac Asimov in that semester.
There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows. He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell; Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail. Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail. If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see; It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.
And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow, And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe, He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess; And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan: "It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone. Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains; So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."
A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail; And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale. He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee; And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven, With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given; It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains, But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code. In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load. In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring, Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow; And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low; The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in; And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay; It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May." And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum; Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire; Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher; The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see; And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so; And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow. It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why; And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear; But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near; I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside. I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar; And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door. It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm— Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."
There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.
##The Cremation of Sam McGee
--By Robert W. Service
"Today, students, we are going to learn about Carcosa."
For me that was "The Man in the Well" which the school librarian read to us in 4th grade during library story hour.
I like my country, but not being born in Lithuania would have meant not reading Jurga Ivanauskaitė back at school and you all should consider yourselves lucky.
Ah yes, a nice short story about yellow wallpaper.
9th Grade English, got assigned Invisible Man by Ellison. It wasn't science fiction like I thought it'd be 😅
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