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14 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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"A Hunger Artist"
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by Frank Kafka
This story takes place in an unspecified time and place, is about a man worldfamous for his public performances of the act of fasting, for as much as forty days at a time. Even at the height of his career, the hunger artist is unsatisfied with his work and frustrated by both his manager and his audiences, who never fully appreciate his true talent or the purity of his ‘‘art.’’ The hunger artist struggles internally with his sense of dissatisfaction with himself and his feelings of alienation from the world outside the ‘‘cage’’ in which he fasts. As the years go by, the hunger artist’s profession goes out of vogue, while audiences move on to newer trends in mass entertainment. |
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"The Management of Grief"
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by Bharati Mukherjee
Bharati Mukherjee's story "The Management of Grief" tells the story of an Indian woman living in Canada whose husband and two sons are killed in a plane explosion. Through a process of deciding what parts of her culture to accept or reject and what parts of Western culture to adopt or reject, she works past her grief and begins rebuilding her life. It is a story about the kind of grief that any human experiences, but it highlights the difficulties faced by immigrants in another country, namely, how to negotiate conflicting cultural demands and expectations, yet still draw on the strengths of culture. |
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"A Souvenir of Japan"
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by Angela Carter
The main character and also narrator of this story is in denial of the truth, her lover is not in love with her, he is just obsessed with the idea of being in love with her. Both of these characters are conscious of this doomed relationship, but both are powerless to stop it. In the beginning of the story the main character describes the customs of Japan and the role of the women and how they just occupy the room and rarely come out of it. “In a society where men dominate they value women only as the object of men’s passions” therefore to her lover she was just an object, but not just any object a rarity in Japan. |
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"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
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by Ambrose Bierce
The story centers on Peyton Farquhar, a southern planter who, while not a Confederate Soldier, is about to be hanged by the Union Army for attempting to destroy the railroad bridge at Owl Creek. As Farquhar stands on the bridge with a noose around his neck, Bierce leads the reader to believe that the rope breaks and that Farquhar falls into the water below, only to escape to his farm, where he is reunited with his wife. It is revealed at the end of the story, however, that Farquhar has, in fact, been hanged and that these imaginings took place in the seconds before his death. |
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"Hills Like White Elephants"
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by Ernest Hemingway
The story, told nearly in its entirety through dialogue, is a conversation between a young woman and a man waiting for a train in Spain. As they talk, it becomes clear that the young woman is pregnant and that the man wants her to have an abortion. Through their tight, brittle conversation, much is revealed about their personalities. At the same time, much about their relationship remains hidden. At the end of the story it is still unclear as to what decision has or has not been made, or what will happen to these two characters waiting for a train on a platform in Spain. |
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"Bartleby, the Scrivener"
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by Herman Melville
The plot involves one man's difficulty in coping with his employee's peculiar form of passive resistance. One day, Bartleby the scrivener announces that he "would prefer not to" follow his employer's orders or even to be "a little reasonable." The resulting tragedy follows from Bartleby's inability or unwillingness to articulate the reasons for his rebellion and from his employer's inability to comprehend Bartleby's reasons for resisting and ultimate unwillingness to accommodate him. |
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"Gorilla, My Love"
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by Toni Cade Bambara
The story of Hazel, a young girl who feels that adults do not treat children with respect and honesty. Narrating her own story, she tells of two incidents in which adults demonstrated their untrustworthiness. Hazel comes from the kind of family that the author, Toni Cade Bambara, believed was under-represented in fiction of the 1970s: she is an African American girl living in New York City, in a home with two loving parents who emphasize the values of education and of keeping one’s word. Although Bambara herself was a political activist, the story is not primarily political. Hazel’s feelings are nearly universal, shared by most adolescents. |
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"Why I Live at the P.O."
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by Eudora Welty
‘‘Why I Live at the P.O.’’ takes the form of a dramatic monologue. Sister, the first-person narrator, tells her side of the family spat that has led her to leave the family home where she had lived into adulthood and move into the local post office. She appeals to the reader to take her side as she indignantly recounts her younger sister’s unjust maneuvers in turning the rest of the family against her, but her self-pity and exaggeration render her position unintentionally humorous. Though the story is comic, its underlying themes are complex, concerning the tensions between family affiliation and independence, the relative nature of truth, and the insularity and uniqueness of life in a small southern community. |
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"Sonny's Blues"
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by James Baldwin
Frequently anthologized, James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" tells the story of two brothers who come to understand each other. More specifically, it highlights, through its two main characters, the two sides of the African-American experience. The narrator has assimilated into white society as much as possible but still feels the pain of institutional racism and the limits placed upon his opportunity. Conversely, Sonny has never tried to assimilate and must find an outlet for the deep pain and suffering that his status as permanent outsider confers upon him. Sonny channels his suffering into music, especially bebop jazz and the blues, forms developed by African-American musicians. |
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"Cathedral"
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by Raymond Carver
"Cathedral," like many of Carver's other stories, portrays individuals isolated from each other for a variety of reasons. The narrator drinks too much and seems unable to adequately communicate with his wife. The wife has earlier tried to commit suicide because of loneliness. Only the blind man, Robert, seems able to form lasting human connections. Unlike Carver's other stories, however, "Cathedral" ends with hope; although there is no proof that the narrator will overcome his isolation, for the moment, he is in communion with himself and another human being. |
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"The Story of an Hour"
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by Kate Chopin
Chopin's stories and novels shocked many of her nineteenth-century readers. In the 1960s, with the rise of the feminist movement, critics rediscovered Chopin. "The Story of an Hour," first published in 1894 in Vogue magazine, is one of Chopin's briefest and most widely read stories. Louise Mallard's response to the news that her husband has been killed and her demise upon his appearance, exemplifies Chopin's beliefs regarding women's roles in marriage and feminine identity. |
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"The Yellow Wallpaper"
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by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The story is a first-person account of a young mother's mental deterioration and is based on Gilman's own experiences with post-partum depression. Like Gilman, the unnamed protagonist of the story is advised, based on medical theories of the time, to abstain from any and all physical activity and intellectual stimulation. She is not allowed to read, write, or even see her new baby. To carry out this treatment, the woman's husband takes her to a country house where she is kept in a former nursery decorated with yellow wallpaper. |
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"A Good Man is Hard to Find"
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by Flannery O'Connor
O'Connor introduces the character of the Misfit, an escaped murderer who kills the entire family at the end of the story. Through this character, O'Connor explores the Christian concept of "grace"—that a divine pardon from God is available simply for the asking. In the story, it is the Grandmother—a petty, cantankerous, and overbearing individual—who attains grace at the moment of her death, when she reaches out to the Misfit and recognizes him as one of her own children. For O'Connor, God's grace is a force outside the character, something undeserved, an insight or moment of epiphany. Often, however, O'Connor's characters miss moments of opportunity to make some connection; their spiritual blindness keeps them from seeing truth. |
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"In Memory of W.B. Yeats"
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by W.H. Auden
The ode form is traditionally reserved for important and serious subjects and is written in an elevated style, so Auden gave Yeats great value and dignity by using this genre. The poem was written within one month of Yeats’s death and published shortly thereafter. It has three distinct parts. |
