In my fifth grade English class the four term themes were Civil War, Holocaust, dog books, and choose-your-own. For the first three units, my parents read all four options ahead of time and had me assigned to the least traumatizing. For the last term I picked Julie of the Wolves, a dog book disguised as a Wolf book; I’d always wondered why my second grade teacher suddenly stopped reading it to us at story time.
The two short stories that have really stuck with me are the Ray Bradbury one about the automated home and the Edgar Alan Poe one about the beating heart
I was assigned The Westing Game no led than three times from K-12
My favorite report I wrote was when I got to pick Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch in my dual-credit community college English course and the red pen in the margins of my report was all compliments
The two short stories that have really stuck with me are the Ray Bradbury one about the automated home and the Edgar Alan Poe one about the beating heart
“The Veldt” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”? Those two stick with me due to two good readings of it.
The Veldt read by Leonard Nimoy and Tell-Tale Heart acted out by Vincent Price Part 1 and Part 2.
The fall of the house of usher by Mr Poe was also interesting.
SpongeBob did a episode that was a retelling of Telltale Heart even!
Simpsons also, a bit, iirc.
The Veldt, by Ray Bradbury.
They didn’t make everyone read it though, just us “gifted/advanced” kids. It was one of several short stories that were in a special program book that I had to read.
I still think those kids were brats.
Edit: just looked it up and this was supposed to be 9th grade English??? We fucking had to read that as 5th graders.
Edit 2: I need to stop thinking about this, they also made us read All Summer in a Day, Flowers for Algernon, and The Tell Tale Heart in that class
Oh I was gonna call out All Summer in a Day cause holy fuck Ray Bradbury has some issues with kids…
I mean he is right too but damn those stories stick with you. And also did that and basically all the ones you pointed out as a “gifted class”. Do you think they literally had just 1 syllabus for us weird kids for the whole nation to try and scare us back into line or what? Cause, seems like we all getting traumatized by stories of death and emotional torture at like 11 by the same stories.
This was the one. Every once in a while my brain just says “hey, remember that fucked up story where the kids had a smart room that became whatever they wanted and it spoiled them to the point they murdered their parents with lions? Wasn’t that fucked up? Let’s think about how fucked up it was for a while!”
It was 7th grade for me, but still, I can’t believe we read that as kids.
I also took the “fucked up stories for smart kids” class
I was in the “gifted/advanced” track too. Teachers saw this one of two ways. Half of them got the memo: you got extra interesting stuff to noodle through because we’re all under-stimulated in a typical class. The others decided to just double your homework load and call it a day. At least the teachers in the first group had some interesting takes on brain teasers and reading material.
And on that note: I must have thought about Flowers for Algernon every week since I read it. Since the 90’s. I’m tired, boss.
The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst
This one stuck with me way more than others on here. It horrified me as a middle schooler.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K Leguin
Touching Spirit Bear
I vividly remember passage describing in great detail of the main character nearly and slowly dying on the island. he was covered with mosquitos and the book dives headfirst into describing in great detail of this guy chewing into a live mouse/rat and then swallowing it.
Not short stories, but I have two books that I read in high school that have stuck with me more than most:
You read Where the Red Fern Grows in high school? We read it in fourth grade. It was pretty traumatizing. Great, but traumatizing.
I read Fahrenheit 451 and my ass takes everything way too literally so maybe that’s why I was able to handle it. I liked it as a story and kinda saw the deeper meaning, good book
There Will Come Soft Rains
Someone already said it, but The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
To Build a Fire by Jack London
It’s a simple story about a guy trying to build a fire.
Tap for spoiler
He fails to build said fire.
We had to read “The Call of the Wild” by the same author. Every few chapters the main character, a dog, would wax poetic for a few paragraphs about how addicting the warm, salty taste of human blood was in his mouth.
“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" by Gabriel García Márquez would have been that, but it lost its impact because my generation associates the name Esteban with the silly bellhop from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
I remember reading The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty sometime in late middle school, I wanna say.
teacher let us know after that it was about the Irish civil war, and that things similar to the story had actually happened.
This is the exact story that came to mind when I read the post. This one stuck with me for sure.
The Library of Babel by Borges melted my brain as a teenager.
This one is SOOOOOO COOL though. Did not encounter it until I was in college
there is also a searchable website for that: libraryofbabel.info
A separate peace was a book we got in highschool where a kid possibly has homosexual feelings for another and throws him out of a tree which shatters his leg and eventually kills him.
Yup. Real fuckin weird one. I’m sure there was a point but I never got it.
o k then…
Huuuuuge paraphrase there but the book is insane and while the kid with the broken leg is away the one who knocked him out of the tree starts wearing the one with the broken leg’s clothes and all kinds of weird shit
i wasn’t assigned it but i would read all the stories in my english book instead of whatever i was supposed to be doing and ‘The Red Pony’ burned its way into my brain forever. I probably read it in junior high? i dunno. That poor pony.
I still hate Steinbeck as an author. Don’t think that would have changed if I had read any of his works later in life.
I’m surprised by this actually. It may be obvious that I’m a fan of his and I’m curious to see a take so different. If you have time, what is it about steinbeck you hate?
You know what. I haven’t read him in a very long time. I’ll get back to you. Do you have a favorite? (I’m vetoing The Red Pony.)
Edit: Guessing The Grapes of Wrath. I remember not liking it as a kid. But at least it wasn’t The Red Pony.
Actually it’s tied between “east of eden” and “winter of our discontent”. A quote by the character tom joad at the end of “grapes of wrath” is the basis for this handle though, you nailed it.
No judgin of course art is subjective
I don’t believe I’ve read either. I’ll put those on my list. I’d love to be proven wrong. Usually I’m more into light hearted things, which doesn’t necessarily seem to be Steinbeck’s wheelhouse (I can be sad in real life, after all), but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy more down to earth or down right depressing works.
Well i hope you enjoy them! Steinbeck can “paint” a scene very well imho, i still remember places he evoked in “winter” to this day, and i can promise those two won’t end as badly as “red pony” hahaha (pours one out for red pony)
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Oh that fucking thing.
Edit: wait so what exactly is the point of this?
It’s been near 15 years since I read it, but it’s kind of a cautionary tale about tradition, superstition, and how easily humans succumb to their base impulses and can commit insane violence.
The qualifier base is exactly right. Like we use base as a pejorative, but it is what we are. That is our base state.
You know what itd take to drop us back to this level? I would say about a week without electricity. If you said to any given group of what, 50 people. Pick numbers out of a hat. The person with the dot dies, but the electricity comes back on. That would be enough.
Seems all too pertinent these days
Ohhh. I remember now. Thank you.
It’s supposed to make you feel very weird because it is innate tribal behaviour that is not very far from the surface. Individual vs group, traditions, rituals, sacrifice, and the perverse gratitude that you are the survivor etc.
Read it then go read Facebook for a bit…you start to see people for what they are. Panicky, social, tribal animals.
Was gonna say this. Fucked me up for a bit after I read it.
Came here to say this. Now I have to dig even deeper into my high school trauma to find something else, thanks. 🤣
“The Savage Mouth” by Komatsu Sakyou, which involves
Tap for spoiler
A man eating himself in a locked hotel room and relishing every bite. Very body horror, much terrifying, cops rule it a homicide
Or “Cogwheels” by Ryuunosuke Akutagawa, which
Tap for spoiler
ends abruptly with the author’s real-world suicide. Story is the thinnest veneer of fiction, and at some point I think he just stopped writing a story and was trying therapy on a page, then gave the fuck up on everything.
Tap for autocannibalism, I guess
