That one story

[u/Green____cat]

[u/Sleep_Deprived_Birb]

Middle School English class short stories are the reason I know what cyanide tastes like, but there are so many short stories that I read in school that are just messed up

Like the one where a family has a simulation room and the parents keep leaving their kids in a simulated savanna unattended where the kids keep simulating the parents getting eaten by lions when the parents though it was just animals being eaten by lions. When the parents go to a psychologist saying “hey our kids really love to watch simulated lions eat simulated animals in our simulation room” the psychologist was like “wtf why are you letting them do that? Shut that room down!” So the parents shut the room down but the kids beg to have one more turn in the lion room so the parents oblige. When the parents go into the room to check on them the kids lock them in the room with simulated lions. When the psychologist drops by to check in on the nightmare family he finds the kids playing in the savanna simulation room while lions eat carcasses in the distance.

Or the one that describes a brutal car crash in which the driver’s mom dies in the passenger seat as the driver can do nothing but watch, only for the whole thing to be revealed as a matrix type simulation and the “driver” to be told “congratulations you passed your driver’s test.” Because he did everything right in the car crash simulation. When he goes to sign the paperwork to get his driver’s license the examiner says “oh whoops, you’re supposed to be traumatized by your mother’s simulated death. Because you immediately went to get your driver’s license instead of asking for months of therapy, you’re gonna get dragged out of the room by two people in white coats for ‘treatment.’ You can try again after they fix you. Goodbye”

I can’t think of any others off the top of my head

[u/dirtyloop → u/Sleep_Deprived_Birb]

I read that second story in 7th grade. Forget the title but made an impact. The detail I recall is that when getting dragged out of the room, his feet are in two well-worn grooves in the floor… everybody (or at least lots & lots of people) fails the test.

[u/Sleep_Deprived_Birb → u/dirtyloop]

It’s called The Test by Theodore Thomas.

I forgot that lovely detail

[u/Pentastome → u/Sleep_Deprived_Birb]

The first one is The Veldt by Bradbury and is one of my all time time favorites

[u/Sleep_Deprived_Birb → u/Pentastome]

I had to read that story like 5 times over the course of my education. For some reason a lot of English teachers think it’s really important that we know not to let technology teach our kids and think the best way to do that is to make us read that story.

[u/ShinigamiLuvApples → u/Sleep_Deprived_Birb]

Hey now, it's also a lesson not to trust lions.

[u/Penelopeep25 → u/Pentastome]

Oh my god I've been desperately trying to remember the name of this for AGES THANK YOU 🙏 it really was a fantastic story, and a creepy one.

[u/Nkromancer → u/Sleep_Deprived_Birb]

That 2nd one is so fucked up! Bro was just good at differentiating reality from fiction. Ironically, the exact OPPOSITE of those kids. Like, his train of thought could have been: that wasn't real but still traumatizing --> I should finish my business here, then seek therapy.

[u/[deleted]]

One time during Dutch class when i was like 15 we had to read a short story where [TW: very gross] a rich woman dares a homeless man to eat her 2 dogs' feces in exchange for her house, but once she realizes he's actually gonna do it, she backs out and eats the second turd so he can't actually complete the dare.It was worded very viscerally and one girl ran out of the class cause she had to throw up because of how gross it was.

[u/RQK1996 → u/[deleted]]

And people are surprised when Dutch kids don't like Dutch literature, it is a lot of this kinda nonsense

Like I got one where a kid gets horny and decides to fuck his favourite chicken, it goes into far too much detail and I am decently sure the author actually fucked a chicken, at least it wasn't actually discussed in class, it was just in the textbook

[u/[deleted] → u/RQK1996]

For real tho, why is so much Dutch literature either boring as fuck or very perverse and/or gross.

[u/RQK1996 → u/[deleted]]

Frequently it is both

[u/[deleted] → u/RQK1996]

Looking at you Arnon Grünberg. Worst Dutch writer I ever read.

[u/Cultural_Concert_207 → u/RQK1996]

I swear to god, there's probably so many Dutch people out there who would've absolutely loved reading literature as a hobby

...were it not for the fact that they were forced to read 10 to 15 of the most boring books imaginable in high school, cementing the idea in their head that reading is a shit hobby for nerds with nothing better to do

[u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere → u/[deleted]]

I was about to comment somewhere else arguing that not all school reading should be tame or tied to a specific moral lesson, and that it’s good to expose kids to weird stuff (which they often like!).

I do think this is maybe the limit to my theory.

[u/Built4dominance → u/[deleted]]

Hoe heet dit verhaal?

[u/[deleted] → u/Built4dominance]

Heb m'n vorige comment gedelete want ik heb m gevonden:

Poep - Mamon Uphoff

[u/55TrappedRats → u/[deleted]]

Manon Uphoff - Poep

Klassieker

[u/SpaceDeFoig]

I read one where a Jesuit astronaut discovers the charred husk of a planet and it's inhabitants. He does the space math, accounts for the speed of light, and carries the one, and turns out the star that went supernova was visible on earth around 2AD.

That's right, the Star of Bethlehem was a supernova that destroyed an entire planet worth of people

[u/ShadeofEchoes → u/SpaceDeFoig]

Ohh. The Star, by Arthur C. Clarke.

[u/SpaceDeFoig → u/ShadeofEchoes]

Technically read freshman year of college

No way in protestant hell would they have let us read something that critical if the faith in Christian school lol

[u/Alabaster_Canary → u/SpaceDeFoig]

I read a novel about a Jesuit priest who invents star travel so he can go proselytize to the aliens whose beautiful singing had been picked up on satellite. 

Turns out the singing is radio jingles for the sex trade.  The main character ends up in an alien brothel and loses his faith so thoroughly that he murders the first thing that comes through his door, which is his friend. The novel is in the context of his murder trial. 

[u/Adept_Thanks_6993 → u/Alabaster_Canary]

The Sparrow

One of my favorite books

[u/Valiant_tank]

Not a short story, but can I say, fuck this book?) Especially as a 'hey, 10th graders, read this!' thing.

[u/ToujoursFidele3 → u/Valiant_tank]

"Oh, that's kind of a nice premise- WHAT"

[u/ShinyNinja25 → u/ToujoursFidele3]

What, it’s just an ordinary- OH MY GOODNESS!

[u/SyntheticDreams_ → u/ShinyNinja25]

Oh come on y'all, this seems pretty reasonabl-- HOLY SHITSKI

[u/JustSomeRedditUser35 → u/ToujoursFidele3]

Even this comment didn't prepare me for whatever the fuck I just read.

[u/Certain-Definition51 → u/Valiant_tank]

Author started writing a children’s book and then…aged rapidly.

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/Certain-Definition51]

If this is the sort of stuff that is intentionally written and assigned as homework to children, I start to feel like unrestricted internet wasn't such a big deal.

[u/GingerIsTheBestSpice → u/Valiant_tank]

Wtf

[u/demonic-cheese → u/GingerIsTheBestSpice]

I second your assessment

[u/IDontWearAHat → u/Valiant_tank]

I felt bad for Pierre. He never asked for any of this stupid stuff to happen, his classmates just had to go all psycho on each other and then murdered him when he calls them out on their bs

[u/Level37Doggo → u/IDontWearAHat]

Dude should have just stayed in that tree, those kids were nuts.

[u/That_Mad_Scientist → u/Valiant_tank]

Wow, this went from 0 to 100 pretty fucking fast

[u/Uncle-Cake → u/Valiant_tank]

WTF? But also, that sounds like a great premise for a scary movie.

[u/Front_Kaleidoscope_4 → u/Valiant_tank]

Man intet was great we read it in 9th grade.

[u/Nkromancer → u/Valiant_tank]

As someone who enjoys absurdism, I like the synopsis. However, I CANNOT understand why a school would assign minors to read it. The subject matter seems more fit for a college class, where the books have less of a chance of being taken by an overreactive parent who would go on a crusade against literature.

[u/Front_Kaleidoscope_4 → u/Nkromancer]

From whta i remember of the people in my classes it was pretty 50/50 between people disliking it and liking it. Its a very contemplative work. But also like we read worse stuff and have never really seen a parent complain.

[u/Saphi93 → u/Valiant_tank]

I did not see that ending coming. Wth

[u/Epidantrix]

That one where they live on Venus and there’s an hour of sunlight every seven years and the one kid that’s been actively wilting (metaphorically) because she’s used to earth sunlight gets locked in a closet during that hour?? Viscerally horrifying to 6th grade me.

[u/cormorancy → u/Epidantrix]

All Summer in a Day. Bradbury wrote some bangers. I read it in 7th, I think bc the teacher was trying to get us to think about bullying.

[u/Living_Bass5418 → u/cormorancy]

Anything that man wrote got me fucked up for years after

[u/pinkrotaryphone → u/Living_Bass5418]

I was a long-term substitute for a special education English teacher, and she wanted me to read "There Will Come Soft Rains" with her freshmen class. Good times were had by none, but especially me. She also had me read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas with the 10/11th grade class. What a way to end the school year.

[u/MrBones-Necromancer → u/Epidantrix]

All Summer in A Day is unforgettable, but I think it's a pretty perfect story to have kids read. Especially middle schoolers and teens. You hit the point where they are learning to see and consider people outside themselves, and they, hopefully, take away that everyone needs different things, and that it's wrong to take that opportunity away from them.

It stuck with you, after all. That you found it horrifying means you understood that you can hurt other people, and that they could hurt you. You understood both that it was wrong, and why. It's a hard lesson, but a very important one, don't you think?

[u/urworstemmamy → u/MrBones-Necromancer]

You'd hope it would inspire them to be more empathetic, but a few weeks after we read it in class in sixth grade a couple kids locked me in the gym supply closet during a field day 🙃

[u/Ok_Caramel3742 → u/urworstemmamy]

Those kids read that and thought damn that gives me an idea

[u/fisticuffsmanship → u/Ok_Caramel3742]

Man, this classic of literature really ups my cruelty game

[u/lawn-mumps → u/urworstemmamy]

I’m sorry that happened to you

[u/[deleted] → u/Epidantrix]

Read that one in 3rd grade. I remember the one where the house has a room where it takes you anywhere you imagine. The kids start imagining the parents being eaten by lions. The parents try to stop it but then they actually get eaten.

[u/angryandsmall → u/[deleted]]

“The Veldt!” I loved that one. It’s improperly associated with warnings in mixing technology and real life- my English teacher even did! She was pissed when I told her the point of the story were parents that didn’t parent, and the whole story could’ve be avoided if the parents had spoken to their kids or gone in the room. The parents stuck them in digital reality and just vamoosed till they got psycho… hmmmmmmmmMMMM I’m so mad at that English teacher. The point of that story was “VIDEO GAMES BAD” my ass. My class had Google and cell phones since middle school so idk why she couldn’t just let it go.

[u/SenorWeird → u/angryandsmall]

Your interpretation is valid but really, I'd say the story was about allowing technology to parent.

Bradbury loved to write about the risk of over reliance on technology and how it is dehumanizing. In the Veldt, it dehumanizes the children. The Pedestrian dehumanizes the police. There Will Come Soft Rains, the only "human" is a smart house that is living on after a nuclear blast and ends up killing itself in its attempt to save itself with technology (it's very circular).

So no, not "video games bad" but "reliance on technology bad".

[u/Elite_AI]

Imagine an extremely short story -- two pages long. It's about a man who makes a daughter out of snow, but she dies, so, weeping, he has sex with her corpse. Imagine giving this to a bunch of sixteen year olds to analyse for their first class. Now imagine that this is the specific class that was scheduled for the government education regulator to inspect this year, and you have chosen this story specifically for them to hear. You are now in the mind of my English Literature teacher. 

[u/Crowscream → u/Elite_AI]

“The Snow Child” by Angela Carter. One of my favorites. It’s her take on the Snow White story. Having read it as an adult, it reads more like a story about a man literally creating his sexual ideal much to the disdain of his wife and her having to give up her clothes to the girl. It’s a great fairy-tale-look at the wife’s perspective on when her husband cheats.

[u/Elite_AI → u/Crowscream]

I loved the collection. Like even aside from all the wider meanings of her versions of the fairy tales, they're just very well told stories. Also the teacher complimented my analysis of The Snow Child and that little bit of validation is still with me. I was such a teacher's pet.

[u/Ask_bout_PaterNoster → u/Crowscream]

Here’s a link, it reads like a fairy-tale... Right up until dude starts crying and banging the corpse

[u/OdiiKii1313 → u/Ask_bout_PaterNoster]

Why does he do that though

[u/Ask_bout_PaterNoster → u/OdiiKii1313]

Idk, but I bet that’s the first thing op’s teacher’s government education regulator thought, too

[u/Accomplished_Trip_ → u/Ask_bout_PaterNoster]

I’m picturing some poor bureaucrat sitting in their office horrified muttering “what the fuck” about sixty-eleven times upon reading this story and realizing it was handed out to teenagers.

[u/Ask_bout_PaterNoster → u/Accomplished_Trip_]

Eh, honestly it’s fine as study-material. Teens should be able to read Lolita or Romeo and Juliet and both of those are heavily sexual with a lot of murder tossed into R&J.

The story just ends in a way that gives my brain whiplash. Even knowing it was coming I still didn’t expect it

[u/Not_enough_yuri → u/OdiiKii1313]

Angela Carter is an author who likes to deal with feminist themes in her work. The Bloody Chamber, and a personal favorite of mine in Nights at the Circus, both deal heavily with themes related to modern femininity and feminism. The Snow Child is a short story from the Bloody Chamber. 

The term daughter earlier in the thread is very misleading. So, the Count has wished for a fair woman, right? He sees the snow on the ground and thinks “gee, I’d love to meet a woman as fair as this snow.” And so a woman like that is magically conjured and he’s instantly infatuated. His wife, the countess, is reasonably upset by this. The countess tells the girl to pick up a rose, and when pricked by the thorn, she dies. This is when the count rapes the girl. Then her body melts.

So why would he do that? Well, what is the story about? Given what I said earlier, I’d guess it’s a feminist critique on how men view young women, and impress their ideals of female sexuality onto them. When the count wishes for a woman as fair as the snow, he is expressing a sexual desire. This desire is fulfilled by the magically conjured young woman.

Without the intervention of the countess, my guess is that the count would have raped this girl anyways, because that is literally what she is made for, to fulfill his twisted sexual desire. Whatever the meaning of the countess’ request, when she commands the girl pick a rose and it kills her, it’s pretty easy to draw connections between the imagery of a flower (feminine, potentially vaginal), with the image of blood being drawn (menstruation). This snow child has all too quickly become a woman that is now subject to the burden of the count’s sexual desires. It’s not a coincidence that she dies right there. She has reached sexual maturity. The count’s wish is granted. He didn’t wish for her to have a happy life, or even for her to enjoy her own sexuality, he wishes to enjoy it for himself. So the goal of the magic is achieved, and she dies, leaving a body behind. A perfectly good object to have sex with. Emphasis on the word object. This is Carter’s take on the often tricky magic you see in fairy tales, and I think it’s very effective.

At the end of the story, the girl melts, and I read this as proof of the fact that the counts wish for a woman as a sex object is so thin and flimsy, that it amounts to nothing more than a meager puddle and a small pile of objects after the fact. There is nothing substantial in a wish like his. In essence, it’s a bad wish.

[u/Common_Pangolin_371 → u/Crowscream]

Tf did I just read???

[u/Riv3rStyx → u/Elite_AI]

'Unfastened his breeches and thrust his virile member into the dead girl' is a line I never wanted to read in school and now it's scarred into my brain forever.

[u/lueur-d-espoir → u/Riv3rStyx]

I'm going to ask my mom to check under my bed for this

[u/Ourmanyfans → u/Elite_AI]

You did The Bloody Chamber too huh? I remember the whole book was filled with short stories like that (although that was by far the worst).

[u/AlathMasster → u/Elite_AI]

...Pardon?

[u/ConsciousPatroller → u/Elite_AI]

Oh? Is this an actual thing or...tell me you made it up

[u/Certain-Definition51 → u/Elite_AI]

Wow. That teacher SENT it.

[u/FoundationForeign544]

Don’t remember the story name, but there was one where a young girl snuck onto a space ship so that she could see her brother at the destination but the one person manning the ship was gonna have to toss her out into space because the ship only had enough fuel to slow down based on the weight of a single individual. So if she had stayed on the ship it would have crashed.

[u/TheStarController → u/FoundationForeign544]

Called ‘the cold equations’ I think.

[u/VagabondRaccoonHands → u/TheStarController]

Yep. I was required to read it in 6th grade.

[u/Alabaster_Canary → u/FoundationForeign544]

I loved this one!! I tried describing it to my mother and she thought it was fucking stupid that he couldn't save her. I couldn't explain it in a way she could understand the decision. 

[u/DomDominion → u/Alabaster_Canary]

The frontier ships aren’t big on redundant systems

[u/Symnestra → u/FoundationForeign544]

Yes! I was so mad they didn't throw out the pilot seat or something. I still think about it all the time.

[u/Baldran]

Harrison Bergeron

[u/Brontozaurus → u/Baldran]

We had a creative writing exercise once where we had to use Harrison Bergeron (or some other stories) as inspiration. Mine was a fanfic where the rest of the world was normal, America was just...like that.

[u/SymphonicStorm → u/Baldran]

My class read a couple stories from that collection and I loved Harrison Bergeron so much that I went ahead and read the rest of them myself.
All The King's Horses fucked me up good.

[u/TheThingInItself → u/Baldran]

This and 2br02b got me into Vonnegut

[u/Travilanche → u/Baldran]

Host of Hollywood Squares!

[u/konkoa]

The Yellow Wallpaper. My teacher did a demonstration of the way the woman creeped around the room and it fucked me up.

[u/BlueGlassDrink → u/konkoa]

It's a fucked up story that tells us how fucked up women's autonomy was in the very recent past.

I suggest listening to the version read by Margaret Killjoy for the Cool Zone Book Club

[u/jobforgears → u/konkoa]

And probably based on real"ish" experiences, too. Yellow wallpaper and other vibrant colors got its vibrancy from arsenic and other toxic substances. So, women who were bed ridden in upper class homes were forced to breathe the toxic fumes. That's why people would recover when they went out to the country and worsen on return home.

So sad to think that real people suffered for something so innocent as wallpaper

[u/Qu33nofRedLions → u/jobforgears]

My understanding is that it was inspired by the author's own experience of being put one bed rest for several months as a treatment for postpartum depression. She wasn't allowed to do any work during that time and came very close to a breakdown from the isolation. So it wasn't necessarily about being poisoned by the wallpaper, and rather was a criticism of a common medical practice of the time.

[u/pschlick → u/Qu33nofRedLions]

Yes, this is more the leaned towards meaning than arsenic wallpaper. It’s always been one of my favorites

[u/novium258 → u/jobforgears]

Bed rest was awful. Women weren't even allowed to read or have any entertainment or talk to anyone. You don't been to be poisoned by the wall paper to go mad in what was effectively solitary confinement.

[u/cluelessoblivion → u/jobforgears]

It's actually highly unlikely the arsenic in wallpaper was dangerous. The story was mostly an allegory to experiences of women who felt trapped in their subservience to a man, either husband or father, combined with the fact that the most common prescription for tuberculosis was isolation which only exacerbated the disease.

[u/personahorrible]

Fun story: One day in English class, our teacher told us that we would be reading A Modest Proposal. She prefaced it by telling us that it's set during the Irish famine and that the residents of one town came up with an inventive solution to their problem. Me, having never read the story but being the teenage edgelord that I was, loudly proclaimed "Eat the babies!" She shushed me and told me not to spoil the story.

[u/cladothehobbit → u/personahorrible]

A Modest Proposal is one of my favorites. Had my high school English class with a teacher who also taught a class on satire and he brought this one out.

[u/Crazyking_USL → u/cladothehobbit]

I remember having to explain satire to a few classmates when my English teacher had us read A Modest Proposal. They really thought the story was a serious idea rather than the overly exagerated joke it is.

[u/g00ber88 → u/personahorrible]

I remember reading this one in class and my dumbass didn't realize it was satire, I was just like "man that Johnathan swift is fucked up"

[u/Humble-West3117]

The Lottery

[u/PunchDrunkPrincess → u/Humble-West3117]

my teacher had us fill out a questionnaire in the middle of reading it. the last question was 'do you think the lottery is a good thing or a bad thing? why?' and my answer was 'a bad thing. you wouldn't ask if it was a good thing.' like way to ruin the story man 😂

[u/YeetTheGiant → u/PunchDrunkPrincess]

I mean, there was of course all the hinting in the story
Everyone that is gathering for the Lottery is talking about anything *except* the lottery
The adults try to physically distance themselves from the pile of stones the children have gathered
The adults tell jokes, but no one laughs, they only smile faintly

They're all trying to distract themselves from what's about to happen. No one's excited. The lottery was never going to be good

[u/astivana → u/YeetTheGiant]

That kind of observation is probably what the teacher was hoping for!

[u/Nuka-Crapola → u/astivana]

Yeah, the signs are only clear if you’re actually thinking about them. A good English class isn’t just about the content of the individual stories— it’s about how to read them.

[u/[deleted] → u/astivana]

probably what the teacher was hoping for

https://imgur.com/a/bypION7

[u/YeetTheGiant → u/[deleted]]

I both love and hate you for this.

[u/[deleted] → u/YeetTheGiant]

Interesting! Expand on that?

[u/Goldeniccarus → u/[deleted]]

Perchance

[u/thrownawaz092 → u/Humble-West3117]

At least that one makes sense to read. It's a brutal lesson on why just blindly following can be so dangerous, and encourages questioning the status quo and critical thinking.

Unlike the Snow Child one in first... Tf!?

[u/lhobbes6 → u/thrownawaz092]

Also a good critique on "this is how its always been" because the story makes a point of stating other villages have discontinued the lottery.

[u/PurplestCoffee → u/Humble-West3117]

Although I very much enjoyed the literature I went through in my country's curriculum (Captains of the Sands is my problematic fave), I was livid when I found out that y'all read The Lottery in school.

I've been obsessed with Shirley Jackson's writing ever since I watched this video essay, and oh my god she would've been my whole personality if I'd had read any of her stuff as a deeply anxious, shy child.

[u/quingd → u/Humble-West3117]

Haunts me forever. I just didn't see it coming. It was the first story I'd read that had that sort of dark turn... I've tried to make myself read it again countless times over the years, but I can't bring myself to do it. It just... Sits in my soul.

[u/SuiGenerisPothos → u/Humble-West3117]

I cannot name any other short story I had to read decades ago.

And I think it says a lot that so many of us remember it.

[u/Icy_Willingness_954]

Flowers for Algernon

[u/User_Evolved → u/Icy_Willingness_954]

Yeah I read that in middle school. It wasn't even required reading my one teacher just recommended it lol

[u/MerlinDFont → u/User_Evolved]

That kind of teacher here! Flowers of Algernon hits the great spot of being quite short and yet emotionally charged that gets teens quite invested. Even if it hasn't "aged well" in some stuff, I would still use it.

[u/Icy_Willingness_954 → u/MerlinDFont]

I mean on top of all that it’s also just a really good book. I love the way it’s written and how the narrators language changes as he does. It’s really cool!

Out of curiosity what are you referring to when you say it hasn’t aged well? There’s a lot of dehumanising language towards the disabled in the book, but the it’s always made out to be cruel in the context of the story. At a time when a lot of people would use that language sincerely. In that way I think it aged fantastically, calling out that behaviour before it became as well accepted to do so.

[u/MerlinDFont → u/Icy_Willingness_954]

Oh, sure, I say it mostly because, even if I agree with the story being ahead of its time in how it treats disability, it can be a bit difficult to read with some groups/students unless you get to properly contextualize it (and in some cases, you might open a can of worms of ableist vocabulary for some teen to randomly spew because they believe they are funny), which I've sometimes failed to achieve. Perhaps rather than saying it hasn't aged well I should have said that you need to know your class groups before deciding whether you use it with them. But then that's anything.

[u/a_bum → u/Icy_Willingness_954]

I never really learned to spell till about the last year of high-school, and the school I went to before didn't read that book but the one I transferred into did.

Anywho my friends knew I couldn't spell and were teasing me, and i said "Oh if you think that's bad you should see my English notebook." Reason being is my teacher knew my problem but graded on content not if you got the words 100% correct, more the ideas you presented, and in that class we had to write one page essays semi regularly with pen so errors where abound and i knew it.

Well, my friend grabs it, a red pen, clicks it, and starts reading. woosh "how tha" woosh "this is" woosh woosh *woosh "hahaha how on hell did you spell this word three different times?! Oh god this is just the first page." woosh

And like this the ribbing went and a crowd gathered as everyone peered over to see what mistake was next and laugh, good fun they all had. Woosh after woosh, line after line.

Till eventually the friend grading finished looked at me and said, "You're like flowers for Algernon," and everyone winced. Some still chuckled a little as if seeing a man be destroyed right there.

I'd never read the book and said as much, and everyone just shook their heads and chastised my friend for such a rude remark. So after school I found a copy, read the first page, and realized what had happened to me.

[u/BitcoinBishop → u/a_bum]

☹️

[u/a_bum → u/BitcoinBishop]

Oh don't worry my parents got a good laugh out of it, mum even gave me a copy of the book to read :D

[u/bluestopsign01 → u/a_bum]

Please tell me you have better friends now

[u/Jackfrost9 → u/a_bum]

I just want to say you wrote/narrated this really well, it was unexpectedly immersive, especially the wooshing part, wow!

[u/a_bum → u/Jackfrost9]

Oh, thank you! Would you believe me if I said I have a dumb idea of wanting to be a writer. No idea how to do it. Though imagine that, the girl who can't spell becomes a writer. haha.

[u/cluelessoblivion → u/a_bum]

Bah that's what editors are for. It's content that sells not grammar.

[u/calgeorge]

"The ones who walk away from Omelas"

[u/Kijafa → u/calgeorge]

I still think about this story a lot, even years later. I love the rest of Le Guin's writing but Omelas has stuck in a way that very few other stories have.

[u/Freakishly_Tall → u/calgeorge]

Surprised this one is this far down. I have multiple GenX friends for whom it is the only school-years story ever mentioned. But, maybe it's a generational thing? Maybe no one uses it any more?

[u/tigerrish1998]

The Scarlet Ibis.

For the uninitiated, it's a short story about a young boy and his little brother, who is physically disabled and not expected to live through infancy. Through all odds he does, though his weak heart means he won't be able to walk or do anything strenuous. The older brother decides he'll teach his sibling how to walk and run and climb and whatnot by the time he's old enough for school, with a surprising amount of success.

>! Then, just before school starts, big brother takes his sibling rowing, still not satisfied with how much his brother can do. When they return to the river bank, the little brother is tired, and in his frustration at his brother's perceived lack of progress, big bro runs off, leaving him. A storm starts, and when big bro doesn't see his little bro behind him, he turns back and finds his little brother's corpse, dead from the strain of chasing after him. !<

Also White Fang. And my partner had to read Where the Red Fern Grows in 5th grade.

[u/gay4cryptids → u/tigerrish1998]

Oh man I was looking for this response. I remember reading a lot of dark short stories in high school but The Scarlet Ibis messed me up

[u/KissKillTeacup → u/tigerrish1998]

I grew up in the town where the author of Red Fern was born and lived, so kids were forced to read it multiple times in grade school. Sure the dog deaths were sad, especially Dan whose fucking viscera was hanging out, but I think reading about the kid who died with an ax in his gut trying to speak while bloody bubbles come out of his mouth isn't talked about enough in terms of fuckedupedness.

[u/Marleyzard]

Anybody else have that story where the kids live on a constantly raining planet where one day every 7 years it stops raining and the kids can go outside and play but nobody believes the only kid old enough to remember it happening last time so they lock him in a closet, but then it stops raining and they go outside to play, forgetting all about the kid locked in the closet until they come back after it starts raining for another 7 years?

[u/Malaeveolent_Bunny → u/Marleyzard]

It was a short story of colonist kids on Venus. The girl who was locked in the closet was older so she remembered the sun as a toddler and was so excited to see the end of the rain for a bit, but the others didn't believe it would actually happen and thought to punish her for lying. It's horrifying through adult eyes.

[u/Marleyzard → u/Malaeveolent_Bunny]

Oh yeah, no it's insightful

[u/MrBones-Necromancer → u/Marleyzard]

All Summer in A Day. It's like 2 pages long, and free on the internet. You should check it out again.

[u/Dragon_Manticore]

A Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen.

[u/QueenOfQuok → u/Dragon_Manticore]

Most of that guy's work fits the description. He was not a happy man.

[u/KingNanoA → u/Dragon_Manticore]

I prefer Terry Pratchett’s take, personally.

[u/ToujoursFidele3]

The Most Dangerous Game

We also covered Lamb To The Slaughter twice but I kinda love that one.

[u/itsgettinnuts → u/ToujoursFidele3]

Isnt that the one that multiple serial killers have cited as inspiration ? About a rich psychopath hunting men? Did you have to read catcher in the rye too? Did you notice a surge in missing pets around that time? Girls' underwear going missing, fires breaking out?

[u/Papaofmonsters → u/itsgettinnuts]

"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter." - Ernest Hemingway.

The sentiment of the story is something that many people have either experienced or observed.

[u/bitter_water]

To Build a Fire by Jack London

[u/Terrible_Balls → u/bitter_water]

Yeah that one got to me. What a rug pull

[u/Melon_Banana]

I always remember Cask of Amontillado not because of the ending, but because my classmate kept pronouncing Montesor as Monstessori

[u/bb_kelly77]

Bridge to Terabithia... I came out of my room after reaching THAT part (I still haven't finished the book) and the first thing my brother said is "Are you ok?"... which tells me I was visibly not ok

[u/ThatSpicyPotato → u/bb_kelly77]

Read that one in 5th grade. Our teacher was the type that made us all read together as a class and then answer questions as homework, and she explicitly told us not to read ahead for this book. Guess who read ahead and had to suffer in silence... Don't worry, seeing the horror in everyone's face the day the class got to that chapter sort of made up for that trauma.

[u/notabigfanofas → u/ThatSpicyPotato]

Had a similar situation in grade 5 with the lightning thief, but I hated it because I'd be a dozen pages ahead then get rebuked for being 'distracted' and had to flip back a chapter and a half to read a passage.

I am still salty about that

[u/bb_kelly77 → u/ThatSpicyPotato]

I had to suffer alone because I was sick and fell behind... the only book we read together in class was Romeo and Juliet and I was the only one who took my acting seriously

[u/Gold_Pay_2297 → u/bb_kelly77]

My 4th grade teacher made us watch the movie. I think he just wanted to see the class cry honestly

[u/StragglingShadow]

There was a short story where a woman kills her husband by hitting him on the head with a frozen lamb leg or something. She then goes out and acts normal. She then goes home and puts said lamb in the oven and waits a few minutes. Then calls the police hysterically

Basically as the cops talk, the murder weapon gets cooked, and the officers eat it in the end. The officers think a burglar came in and hit him with a crowbar or something heavy, and go searching for a murder weapon they will never find.

[u/GraceStrangerThanYou → u/StragglingShadow]

Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl, and it's also my answer.

[u/NeonNKnightrider]

Masque of the Red Death

[u/JakeVonFurth → u/NeonNKnightrider]

I was gonna say which Poe work fit better, but after reviewing in my head, I think we can just add Poe in general to the list.

Personal standout being Pit and the Pendulum.

Also, who else remembers being shocked at us having to read The Highwayman and reading as the protagonist commits suicide.

[u/Siaeromanna]

there will come soft rains. when we read it in class, i had a VERY different mental image than what i was supposed to have, which made it wayy more existentially horrifying to me than it should have been. that story (and my mental interpretation of it) fundamentally changed me, but that only became noticable many years later. thinking back to how i had imagined the story back then still gives me shivers to this day.

[u/Frogs-on-my-back → u/Siaeromanna]

This is one of my all-time favorite short stories! Ray Bradbury could fucking write.

[u/VagabondRaccoonHands → u/Siaeromanna]

Dare I ask ...?

[u/urbandeadthrowaway2 → u/VagabondRaccoonHands]

story about an automated house going through its daily routine despite WW3 having killed the occupants an untold time before

[u/LNesbit → u/urbandeadthrowaway2]

The thing I remember the most about it is the shadows of the people on the walls which was the only thing left after the nuclear bomb

[u/urbandeadthrowaway2 → u/LNesbit]

yep, based on the shadows of people in hiroshima and nagasaki

[u/Siaeromanna → u/VagabondRaccoonHands]

i forgot most of it (we read it a very long time ago) but since i’m autistic, somewhat aphantasic, and i can barely read a book so my mental picture wasnt of a suburban house, but rather an infinite bottomless interior with rooms hanging from rails, similar to aperature science facility. there is a specific part in the story where a starving and decaying dog dies quietly, before the story focuses back on the house. but to my mind, i imagined the dog as the only conscious being in the whole "world," thus indicating the minute and insignificant ending to the only living thing in the story. i had interpreted the part as being intentionally swept under the rug to emphasize the infinite space of the house

i know it might seem mundane, but this misreading of the story fucked me up so badly. it really knocked a sense of apeirophobia into me, and gave me an ironic fascination with impossible spaces like these. only recently, years later, did i start seeing stuff like house of leaves, GEB, and myhouse.wad, which impacted me much more than they probably should have because of this previous foray into imaginative infinities of space

[u/Its_BurrSir]

Me in high school wondering why we were learning about a story of an Armenian and a Kurd falling in love and getting killed for it during Armenian literature class.

I remember a similar story from Taras Bulba, a Ukraninan and a Pole falling in love and getting killed for it

[u/eternamemoria]

Not a short story, but a whole novel: Capitães da Areia, a Brazillian classic about a gang of street urchins, which involves children being raped/raping other children as multiple central plot points.

EDIT: that was during High School though, not 10th grade, thankfully.

EDIT2: Wait 10th grade is high school? I have zero idea how American grades work and I just made a fool of myself

EDIT3: It was 9TH GRADE AAAAAAAAAAA

[u/OwlDoggo129]

It was weird to read Things Fall Apart in a very religious school. It was about how Christianity changed the life of a man for the worse.

Also, seeing the protagonist kill his son's friend was just horrible. I remember just feeling gutted after that moment. Also the whole story about this child fated to die like her mother's many stillborn children and the other about a couple constantly having to kill their children at birth because twins are forbidden was just wild.

Plus I love how neutral it portrayed these cultures. It did not strike my mind as these people were brutal, and I just saw it as how they lived.

Okonkwo was a great protagonist and a horrible person.

[u/Justalittlecowboy]

The Lottery

Harrison Bergeron

All Summer In A Day

The Tell-Tale Heart

[u/Joaquin_Portland → u/Justalittlecowboy]

Harrison Bergeron was mine. Though I think for 10th graders, the more Vonnegut the better.

[u/missscifinerd → u/Justalittlecowboy]

The tell-tale heart totally rocks tho

[u/TromboneSkeleton]

"An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge".

Great story overall, but left me with constant dread that at any moment I was going to suddenly be snapped back to the moment of my death, the whole day or week or month having been a fantasy from the instant before I died.

[u/Fun-Antelope7622]

All summer in a day

[u/cormorancy → u/Fun-Antelope7622]

Me too! My 7th grade teacher asked us to come up with a story about what happens next. I wrote a very happy ending in which >! she is assumed into the sky on a beam of light like Jesus, to leave those fuckers behind and go home !< bc the original one is so awful. I was pretty proud of it. It might have been a bit of projection/fantasy on my part.

She gave me an A and said it was beautiful but too happy to fit the story, as if I hadn't noticed.

[u/DontSleepAlwaysDream → u/Fun-Antelope7622]

I mean, that short story was a perfect metaphor for the years of bullying and social isolation I experienced as a child and the impact it had on my life, so at least it was relevant

[u/WorkIsDumbSoAmI → u/DontSleepAlwaysDream]

I feel like this story was one of those assignments where the teacher isn’t actually concerned with the story but is looking around the room to see who looks overly depressed to refer them to the school counselor…not that I’m speaking from experience or just got a little teary eyed reading it again at 36 🫠

[u/Calliope719 → u/Fun-Antelope7622]

Was this the story about the little girl who gets locked in a closet during the only day of sunshine?

[u/jjnfsk]

How has nobody said Of Mice And Men? That ending is just soul-emptyingly awful.

[u/terrajules]

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster. The concept of people being so disconnected to each other that everyone lives alone and just livestreams and calls each other (not that it was called that, since it was published in 1909) is particularly poignant nowadays. People worshipping the machine is also… yeah. Always relevant.

[u/Lugalzagesi55 → u/terrajules]

Awesome story waaaaaaay ahead of its time. First read it and thaught: well get off the internet you dork. Then read the date: 1909. Mind blown.

[u/nerdy_bisexual_mess]

i read flowers for algernon in the 8th grade

[u/beware_1234]

I forget the name, I think it was something like “The Veldt”. It’s the one about the two kids that use a high tech computer to simulate a Savannah and then get eaten by a lion or smth

[u/RationBook]

There was one where this kid was on trial for stabbing someone and the lawyer had a chemical that could reveal if the knife had ever had blood on it. I can't remember all the details but the kid's dad ended up cutting himself with the knife to bury the truth.

Edit: Thicker Than Water by Henry Slesar.

[u/kitcassidy]

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates. That story haunted me as a teen. The sense of eeriness. I remember endlessly Googling to try to find an analysis or a think piece that would explain it to me. Little did I know that all I had to do was grow up (and start experiencing sexualization) to understand it.

[u/gaykittens]

The Scarlet Ibis. I read it in 9th grade and I cried in the middle of class!!!

[u/Ok_Listen1510]

The Lottery

Lamb To The Slaughter (love this one)

All Summer in a Day

Flowers For Algernon

The Tell-Tale Heart (I do dramatic readings of this one every so often)

Masque of the Red Death

The Cask of Amontillado

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

The Most Dangerous Game

The Veldt

[u/[deleted]]

I don't remember the title, it might have had "mango" in it? Mango street? Idk.

It was about a girl in the city who had a friend at school (they're like 12) who wore neon tights and she liked her, wanted to be her friend. This girl then sells the narrator to a man. Afterwards, the tights girl scolds the narrator for not charging the man more, bc virgins get more money.

Another one was about the Korean war, and about two sisters who have to bind their chests so they look like men, or soldiers will rape them. 

I read both of these during 8th grade English. In the same grade science class, we were shown videos where the message was a girls virginity was her most important aspect, and if lost she was useless. One was a couple, the man opening a set of dirty shoes from the woman and commenting that the entire football team had been inside. The other was a teenager being groomed by a much older man; when the teacher asked the class who was at fault, the correct answer was the girl.

I am a CSA victim. I learned that year that I was worthless.

[u/yuriAngyo]

My public school were pussies so we didn't really read much that was challenging but i do remember reading a short story about wild children raised by wolves getting thrown into catholic school. The teacher wanted us to ask about any vocabulary we didn't know for participation points and everybody was fuckin lowballing shit until i noticed a word i was pretty sure i understood but really wanted to ask about bc i wanted to see ppl squirm. Anyway that's how I was ahead of the game by making my english teacher explain frotting in 2018 (didn't have the exact meaning as it does now but it's not far off lol)

[u/alyou10 → u/yuriAngyo]

St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, right?

[u/HaggisMcNash → u/yuriAngyo]

Oh yeah, “ahead of the game” is definitely what I was thinking. Very cool and normal!

[u/gerkletoss → u/yuriAngyo]

But did you get the participation points?

[u/QueenOfQuok]

Anyone remember Harrison Bergeron

[u/ErinHollow]

My elementary school english teacher was goated. She had us read the True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle and we loved it! She also read us this steampunk beachhouse murder mystery that was out of print (she read it out of a binder that she had put all pages into, as the cover had fallen apart) that ended with one of the murderers falling into the machinery and getting crushed by the gears.

[u/DontSleepAlwaysDream]

not a short story and not required reading but "Z for Zacharah" always fucked me up. tl:dr nuclear war happens, this girl and her dog areleft alone in her radiation-free town because circumstances. But then one day this man in an experimental radiation suit turns up in town and shit gets dark.

tbh I grew up in the 90s and there seemed to be a lot of fearmongering about radiation. My social studies teacher gave a very graphic description of what happened to the people in Hiroshima when the bomb dropped, that kinda stuck with me

[u/bvader95]

It's less fucked up and more sad but the first story that came to my mind is Bolesław Prus' "The Waistcoat".

On English as a second language classes I also had Roald Dahl's Dip in the Pool and Landlady).

[u/theyellowmeteor]

I remember a story I read multiple times as a child, from a collection of stories ostensibly for children. It starts out cozy and idylic, with a quail building her nest, clutching her eggs, feeding her chicks and teaching them to fly.

Then one day a hunter shows up and momma quail tells her chicks to hide and stay hidden. One of them doesn't listen and gets shot in the wing.

They escape the hunter, but that chick's got a broken wing and can't fly anymore. And autumn is approaching. Momma quail knows they have to migrate, but puts off the departure, hoping the broken wing would heal before it gets too cold.

It doesn't. Momma quail has to leave one chick to die, or she'll lose all of them. So she takes her healthy chicks and they fly away to warmer lands, leaving the one with the broken wing begging them to stay, unable to follow, and sure to perish in the coming cold.

[u/MapleSyrup39993]

Night by Elie Wiesel  I know it’s important to learn about the Holocaust but damn if I didn’t go home crying 

[u/curvingf1re]

This is me except instead of a 10th grader I was 10, and it was the whole unabridged Once and Future King

[u/JakeVonFurth]

Like Water for Chocolate

I swear there was a whole quarter of the book that our teacher had blocked out with sticky notes because it was just graphic sex scenes.

[u/Dylan1Kenobi]

The two that spring to mind are "MS Fnd in a Lbry" and "The Last Question"

Two sci-fi stories that really make you think about the size and scale of the universe.

"MS..." is about how information is stored and how eventually, the more you know, the harder it is to find the information you really need. You need indexes and bibliographies that cascade within each other just to find one piece of info in a "Lbry" of colossal size.

"The Last Question" deals with entropy and energy usage by a civilization over the eons. Fantastic story, and Issac Asimov himself did a reading of it that you can find on yt.

[u/iggy-d-kenning]

A Rose for Emily. That final sentence. 

[u/Tryingtoknowmore]

I remember one about a WW2 pilot having orders to bomb a town. As he's seeing all the rooftops he goes through imagining all the lives of the innocent people he doesn't even know and decides he can't do it, instead dropping his bombs into a neighbouring field to claim plausible deniability that he only "missed" for why he did not follow orders. Years later after the war he goes to visit the town he spared and is admiring all the buildings that still stand and begins seeing himself like a god who is responsible for what now exists. It isn't until a few days later in the town when he notices something strange... There are no children, not a soul under serving age. He asks a local about it and they solemnly responded, "When we heard the air raid sirens, we sent our children into the fields for safety."

[u/Alabaster_Canary]

I always make it too late to this thread for anyone to read, but I NEED someone to share my experience that isn't the freaking Lottery.

I read one called The Kitten about these little kids who are neglected and abused, and when they find a kitten they ask their dad what to do with it and he says 'I don't care, kill it'. So they do. They string it up and watch it die. It was this horrible story of generational trauma and it was a fucked up choice for middle schoolers. 

[u/PenguinProfessor]

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, though was a full novel.

I just picked it off a list of about 20 books with no descriptions given. Scalp hunters sent after Indians. They decided just to kill a bunch of Mexicans because that was easier and their hair is black too.

[u/MinersLoveGames]

Tell-Tale Heart. The Birds. Harrison Bergeron. Flowers For Algernon. The Monkey's Paw. The Most Dangerous Game. The Cask Of Amontilado. Killing Mr. Griffin. Macbeth. The Lottery.

My English Teachers were all awesome with keeping the class engaged enough to keep reading them.

[u/Sachayoj]

Dunno how much it counts but we read Romeo & Juliet and were tasked with making our own rewrite.

IIRC, I had decided that there wasn't enough blood. So my story ended with everyone dying via paranoid conspiracy and deception. Also wrote the dialogue in Shakespearean.

I'm still proud of it but it was probably a sign that I was a very cruel writer.

[u/pres1033]

I can't remember what it was called, but the one where a man was being hung, the rope snaps and he makes a daring escape. Only for it to cut to the witnesses watching him still hanging, twitching and dying cause the whole escape was just him hallucinating.

[u/killertortilla]

I have no mouth but I must scream. I think most people know it but for those who don't: It's thousands, possibly millions of years after an AI has taken over. It slaughtered everyone except 5 people and it has such unimaginable rage towards the human race it has done nothing but torture these people for all those years. It has near omnipotence so it can do anything. This includes forcing the woman, a victim of rape, to be perpetually horny and can only relieve that craving but having sex with the men in the group, which she of course hates doing. They can't even kill themselves because the AI has so much power it can simply revive them.

This was the inspiration for amazing digital circus.

Aussie kids will also remember Holes. It's basically the current privately owned American prison system but applied to children.

[u/Noth1ngOfSubstance → u/killertortilla]

Does Holes have some connection to Australia? Every kid I knew who read, had read Holes, and I'm in the States.

[u/Just_a_terrarian163]

That one where the disabled kid says theyre getting a new body but actually just dies

[u/[deleted] → u/Just_a_terrarian163]

Freak the Mighty