Hemingway "Kills"

I have read some of Hemingway's work in high school and must say that I'm not a fan. In this story, in particular, I did not believe the characters. Their actions and dialogue did not seem genuine to me. I could be completely wrong but that is the way I felt. I wanted to know more about why Anderson was not fighting back or fleeing. And I can only assume that the reason for his scheduled death was for something as cliche'd as a gambling debt. 

I have to say that he lost me in the beginning when I really couldn't keep track ast to who was saying what. I am a person who really likes to have everything clarified. If I feel confused or left out in the beginning I am pretty much done with the piece. I also had no idea why these two guys were ordering everyone around and everyone was obeying until near the end when Hemingway mentions that the guy that was in the kitchen was carrying a shot gun. I think that had he mentioned that early in the story then I would have not been so frustrated with the characters. 

I don't mean to be so negative but this piece was almost as bad as the "Old Man and the Sea". Where that story bored me this story did not connect the characters to me. Not my favorite story.

"The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway

I've read a few things by Hemingway before, so his style was nothing new to me. I'm a big fan of it, actually. The way he just cuts out anything extraneous and is still able to create fantastic prose is really astonishing. If I had to choose, I would probably have to say that this my preferred way of fiction writing. Along with Charles Bukowski, Hemingway's writing style is what I usually aspire to. I just like the quick, realistic dialogue and the straightforward, even barren, descriptions. It reminds me a lot of scriptwriting, with which I have a good deal of experience. The notion is to create a picture of the scene with as few words as possible, and let the characters speak for themselves.

As far as the story goes, it's nothing more than a little bit of pulp. A couple of ordinary guys get a taste of the city's underbelly and come to the conclusion that it's just part of it all, and that there's nothing one can do about it other than get out of town before it catches up with you.

I don't see a lot of problems with the story. It's short, it's simple, and deliberately so, so how could I fault it for that? Yes, I have to admit that when I wasn't paying the closest attention, it could get a bit confusing as to who's talking, but I always smile when that happens, because after all, it's Hemingway, and it's just a joy to read.

The Killers Review

The Killers did not necessarily entice me, as a reader. It was an easy read, but, at the same time, it seemed somewhat tedious. I really kept wondering where the story was going, and often found myself saying out loud, “get to the point.” The repetition of some of the lines between the characters was really annoying.

The lack of control of the voice bothered me, too. I understand that Hemingway probably did this on purpose, but without describing accents and how certain lines were said, I just found myself stereotyping accents into the whole Brooklyn mob accent. Actually, I thought a lot about that Hardees commercial from a few months back – the Philly Cheese Steak Burger one.

I guess it also goes back to personal tastes. I like to read and write stories that provoke thought. That’s mostly what I care about when it comes to all art, with few exceptions. I didn’t feel this particular story challenged me into any thought other than imagining the scenario for myself. Granted, the story was fun enough, and, as I said before, an easy read, but I felt there were things left desired.

On a positive note, though, I did think that the dialogue kept a good pace to the story, especially when I read the story allowed (no, I did not use the accents allowed, although I should have). In a way, too, it’s sometimes good to leave things open-ended for the reader. I could have made the mobster’s voices anything I wanted because it was left open.

In the end, I really was looking for something more thought provoking, and that doesn’t mean that I needed “descriptive paragraphs” or specific details. The dialogue used could have been put to better use - at least give more details about what’s going on through the dialogue.

Hemingway's Killers

Hemingway writes phenomenal dialogue.

I've read his work, I've always known that, but every time I read something by him it still blows me away. It's simple, realistic without being "too real" (nothing feels like fluff, and there's none of the dullness that occurs in spoken conversation, no "ums" or "ehs" or stutters or accents), and reads very quickly.

I like the tone Hemingway establishes. This read like a scene out of Pulp Fiction, with us readers being thrust into the middle of a scene with no exposition whatsoever. We get an idea of what is going on while it's "safe"--something feels off, but at the same time, though something feels ominous, the shit has yet to hit the fan. We aren't surprised when we learn that Al and Max are hitmen--it was given to us in the title, and something about the respective subtleties of their dress, mannerisms, and speech tells us that we are in the midst of a steadily-rising action that is ready to peak at any moment. At the same time, we have three other named male characters who also seem to feel that something is, at least to some degree, off. The use of five male characters served, to me, as a clash with the smooth dialogue. The characters names are given to us at a deliberate pace and Hemingway has them speak in a deliberate order with intentional dialogue tags that make us read and reread the dialogue to figure out who is saying what to whom. I would not be strictly for this method of confusion in all works, but for the tone I felt like it worked, deliberately confusing us enough to amp up the impending sense of foreboding but not fully distracting us from what's going on.

Finally, I enjoyed the pacing of the piece. Again, this is a very Hemingway story. The sentences are short and read quickly, and the dialogue tags rarely, if ever, stray from a simple "he said" or "Max asked." Everything written is in some way compelling, but not in an over the top, information dump kind of way. Most bits of dialogue are no more than a line long; the longest individual "speech" of the entire story is four lines long, when the landlady describes Andreson's lack of movement all day. Everything else is two lines or less. I feel like we can learn a lot from this. I know, personally, that I can agonize over such things as word choice and order for hours on end, trying to "pretty up" a work and give it some type of "literary merit." And while I'm sure Hemingway agonized over his simple words and order, the piece reads as though he were simply a fly on the wall documenting everything in real time. It's something I would like to start emulating more in my own writing.

The Killers

In Earnest Hemingway's The Killers, the reader is thrown into a terrible situation controlled by two men. These characters, Max and Al, remind me of the kind of jerks you run into standing in line at a concert or a movie. They begin conversing with you, then insulting you to one another.

The dialogue between the characters consumes most of this piece, allowing them to set the scene and provide background information versus the narrator. This is an interesting device, however, at times I had to reread passages in order to keep up with who is saying what.

What stuck out to me most was that the dialogue contributed from Max and Al (to each other and to the other characters) seemed so nonchalant considering they have come to the diner in order to kill a man. Going back and forth with likes like

"So, he thinks it's all right." Max turned to Al. "He thinks it's all right. That's a good one."
"Oh, he's a thinker," Al said.

I felt that this story could go a bit further, meaning I would like to see what came of the characters put in this situation. We don't know what comes of Ole Anderson or why he was put into this situation. However, the last line "you better not think about it,"fit perfectly with the tone of the rest of the piece.

Is it moral ambiguity or helplessness?

Hemingway takes a strictly fly-on-the-wall approach to telling this story, and I don't think this is for the sake of the narrative. One could easily imagine an exposition of this story with more engaging detail, character-developing inner monologue, and more active language to create dynamics. But Hemingway tells his story as blandly and as minimally as possible, and leaves us with not a world and group of characters to be engaged with, but a simple test-tube to be observed.

This nonchalantly told story about actionless characters acting nonchalantly to a horrible occurrence has, in my opinion, two possible underlying themes. The first is moral ambiguity. Not only does Hemingway promote this through his storytelling - handling all the characters exactly the same, whether good or bad, and giving us no moment of justice for the perpetrators of the story - but his characters seem to take no moral initiative at all. Surely someone could have easily and safely alerted the police; a more proactive character could have helped Ole escape. Most importantly, three men had a reasonable chance throughout the bulk of the story to overtake these two unremarkable hitmen. Perhaps most revealing is the defeatist language near the end: "I guess they will," "Well, you better not think about it." Passive language helps to facilitate this ambiguity, in much the way a callous filmmaker might pan over an injured, screaming women unsympathetically.

The other possibility is determinism. The story flows quickly without any accentuations or dramatic elaborations or pauses. It gives you exactly what you think will happen, as if it were happening in our nonfictional universe. There is also a sense of inevitability in their discussing Ole's fate. The story leaves you with every indication that he will be killed.

Either or both of these themes could be commentary on Hemingway's time and place, or America in general. Hemingway often described his generation as victims of post-war disillusionment, having a lack of direction and purpose, and borderline nihilistic. As Hemingway mechanically reels us through the story objectively, with indifference to every character, one senses his belief in a fatalism and purpose-robbing void every bit as ubiquitous as a booky you can't run away from.

Hemingway, Hits, and Misses

To start this review off, I must admit that I am an avid Hemingway fan and almost everything he’s done, I feel, is pure gold. Also, while I am familiar with several of his other shorts, this was the first time I read “The Killers,” and I was ready for a literature feast.

It’s more than commendable that this story was written in bed, in a day, and like all Hemingway’s stories, it’s intriguing and has dialogue that flows so effortlessly you could float a boat down it, but I have to say, as a whole, I was kind of let down. It seemed like the piece existed on two planes that could not quite come together: description and dialogue.

I enjoyed the ambiguity of Ole Anderson’s plight, and I liked the low-key, bland way George and Nick handle the ending (“They’ll kill him”/ “I guess they will,”) but I didn’t really feel connected to this story. The descriptions, when present, are glorious and spotless and true-to-form Hemingway, and I love them dearly, but as a whole, I kept finding myself wanting more. Any kind of reaction, any kind of small bone—especially when Max and Al are heckling the other men in the bar—would have not only helped me visualize the characters of Nick and George better, but it would’ve help me blend the dialogue and the imagery into a more accessible soufflé of literary genius, but I just couldn’t get there.

The dialogue is something I could only ever hope to write, but unfortunately, it’s what solely drives the story. By page three, the quotations marks began to feel cumbersome, like I was trudging through a field of mud, and each time it was harder and harder to pull my feet up. When I came across a rare sentence or two that was a description, it was like I’d reached solid land, only to be dragged back down again. Even screenplay and scripts have basic descriptions of action, and while I’m suggesting the piece be inundated with “Nick stood up. George eyed him. Sam ran off,” I would have liked something to help me complete the picture, especially since I am rather far removed from the scene and experience itself.

Hemingway is never bad; let me stress that. This story just seemed to fall on the lower end of his works—something that still has worth and value, but has trouble standing up to his other tales. It was a good experience, and I’m glad I read it, but I am now going to pull out “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and drown myself in the tragedy of Henry and Helen.

The Killers Review

I equally enjoyed and disliked this story. One of the best aspects of the writing style is the intricate use of dialogue. Sometimes stories with a lot of dialogue can lose the ‘flavor’ or overall ‘attitude’ of the story. Also authors run the risk of becoming so caught up in the dialogue that bits and pieces of the original story can become lost. Hemmingway’s story does not lose any attitude or the original aspects of the characters. For this story, the characters are developed through the dialogue. In fact, characters should be developed through dialogue and I think we can all learn from this particular story just how to do that. However, on the flipside of the dialogue, at times it took such a precedent in the story that I forgot some of the basic descriptions I was told at the beginning of the story. I found myself returning to differnet parts of the story as I read. So, alas, the question I take from reading this story is how much of both dialogue and description does it take to create a poignant story without overwhelming the reader?

The story is definitely a great example of building tension. The entire time you read, you are wondering when and if the owner is going to come through the door and get shot. The ending lets you know that eventually the guy is going to get shot. After I put the story down, I was disturbed because though I knew what was going to happen, I still wanted to read about it for closure. Why closure, I’m not sure. I guess because I’m just use to stories giving me an ending of some kind and not leaving me hanging. I liked how this story takes place on two sets, mainly one, that being the diner. By having the story stay in one place for a good portion of the story, you are able to create a specific scene and feel to the overall plot and characters. I think it would be a good challenge to write a short story that happens in one place for the entire story. It would be interesting to see what plot and characters I could develop.

After reading other people's responses, I feel a little better about Borges' "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"--not because I understand it any better, but because I'm kind of relieved I'm not the only one who doesn't really feel like I get it. I enjoyed the story well enough on a superficial level; the premise interested me, and I thought the writing was very good. It throws out a lot of information in a short space, but to me it felt manageable, and I think I enjoyed the early stages of the story better than the later ones, in fact, because they felt more story-like than the simple descriptions of the way of life in Tlon. The philosophical discussions that got brought in with the recitation of what was in the encyclopedia entry were mind-twisting, and I don't think I really understood them yet--the explanations they come up with for the nine coins, their ideas about language, etc.

Even that, though, didn't make me feel completely overwhelmed by the story until I finished it. It feels... Big, like it's supposed to be a story with Meaning. And I feel like whatever greater Meaning it has, I have completely missed it. I got so convoluted somewhere over what was real and what wasn't, and what might it mean that this part is true and this part is completely false, that it became hard to come up with any greater significance to it than showing the reality and fiction are closer than we think, or that one creates the other perhaps. It left me enjoying the story while I read it--and not liking it very much at all once I actually finished and had to sit down and think about what I read. I didn't connect with it, in the end, because it largely lacked characters, and the plot was minimal--the main body of the story was establishing the fictional planet, with just the bare bones to make a story around that. I think that fact was what made it feel very heavy and Meaningful--like there was some huge philosophical significance, simply because there wasn't much there that wasn't heavy and philosophical.

"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges

I guess, on the one hand, the easiest response to this story would be to write, "What the hell just happened on those pages?"  The story was detailed and complicated, contained what seemed like far too many particulars, and managed to jump around like crazy while still moving chronologically.

I think the postscript was the most interesting aspect of the story.  Even though I'd read the entire "article," I still was not entirely sure that I was reading fiction and not some radical and/or underground article from the '40s when I reached this section.  This had to be intentional, as Borges plays up this potential by naming a relatively innocuous, generic publication (Anthology of Fantastic Literature(1940)) in the first paragraph, making statements that were entirely in keeping with what an author might say about a now-dated piece, right down to addressing that he used different tones and metaphors for the "article."  This was his own form of "breaking the pattern" we talked about with Barthelme, totally throwing the reader before plunging back into the myth of "the Tlon conspiracy/takeover," going even more over the top than he had before AND incorporating his own philosophical conclusions about man's seemingly greatest achievement.

I liked Borges' form of story-telling.  I thought that the precise manner in which he diverted the reader's (or at least my) attention, by both overloading the reader with imagined particulars such as names and dates and on occasion using what would typically just be the end of sentences to go off on brief-yet-vivid anecdotes about individual instances both within Tlon and in the human creation and "discovery" of the imagined Tlon, were brilliant.  Though the piece is certainly difficult and confusing to the reader, such absurdity feels meticulously constructed.

"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges

I have mixed feelings about this story. At some points I felt like I knew what was going on and then in others I was always wondering what the hell it was talking about. There were several parts of the story that I had to read multiple times just so I wouldn't lose track of the story. But more times than not I lost track of it.

Something that probably might of helped me understand this story would have been a well established main character. If there would have been a main character taking us on an adventure to find information about this imaginary country, then I might have been able to follow the story a little easier.

While I was reading the story, I kept thinking about the DaVinci Code. This story had a lot of similarities to Dan Brown's book. Like the secret society in this story that was chosen to carry this idea reminded me of the "Priory of Sion" that is found in the DaVinci Code.

The story did give some interesting theories that I had never thought of. But, the reason why I probably had never thought of them is because they are so unrealistic. They just really didn't make any logical sense.

"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges

I have to say that “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” is easily the weirdest short story I’ve ever read. When I finished it, I concluded that the idea of writing about a secret society creating a fictitious encyclopedia about a made-up planet, complete with a made-up language and made-up ways of thinking, was very compelling, but I simply did not enjoy Borges’ execution.

I found the story hard to read, often times uninteresting because of the sheer mountain of made-up facts, and was bothered by the descriptions of Tlön’s laws and customs. Things like the argument about the nine coins story I just found nonsensical.

The strangest thing about the story was the fact that I didn’t feel like I was reading a short story. Several times I asked myself whether this was the right handout or if I had mistakenly started reading the assignment for my nonfiction class. The challenge of reading about of a work of fiction as the subject of a short fiction piece was very demanding.

This might also have to do with the narrator’s extremely dense voice. There is an endless number of facts and references to things that aren’t real, not even in the world of the story, yet the narrator seems to assume that the reader is familiar with them. I never felt a personal connection to anything the narrator said. I have to say that the story left me cold, with the exception of the very beginning, when he brings up the saying Bioy claimed to have read. I found that part amusing.

At the beginning, I was hoping for some sort of tense story about a mysterious book. I was reminded of the movie The Ninth Gate by Roman Polanski. But the further I read, the more abstract the story became, and the more I lost interest.

I have a strong feeling that everything Borges tried to say with his story went completely over my head. This seems to be confirmed by the enormous length of the Wikipedia article devoted to the story. Maybe if I read up on it, the brilliance of the story will become self-evident. But for now, it’s lost on me.

I Miss Barthelme

The first half of this week’s story, “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,“ was undeniably interesting. I was quite taken with the idea of a mysterious encyclopedia entry existing, falsified (yet possibly true) information being read and cross-referenced, not to mention the language used or how it created an eerie, almost uncomfortable feeling within the reader. The quote Bioy recites as an old Uqbarian proverb, “Mirrors and copulation are abominable, for they multiply the number of mankind,” is completely brilliant, and even though within the confines of the story, inaccurate, easily one of my favorite lines from a text. I was curious to find out why Uqbar couldn’t be tracked down, and the two men being left, confused and shocked in a national library, was exciting. I wanted more.

However, this is where the piece lost me. Part two and the entrance of the encyclopedia of Tlon, some other world, made little sense to me, and if anything, began to feel like I wasn’t reading a story, but rather some stuffy textbook. The part discussing how the people strung together words based on their regions was original and made me smile--I actually tried dabbling in the adjective combination myself--but the story immediately fell back in to a rhythm and tone that did everything this side of heinous save fashioning me a pair of cement shoes and tossing me over a bridge, laughing all the while.

I couldn’t figure out the importance of knowing the Tlon geometry system or any other aspect of their life. It just became a burden to read, and I blame the narrator voice and tone for that. It was difficult to read, which made it difficult to care. Maybe, in time, I’ll go back and read it, try to grasp more of its true meaning, but for now, I’m going to tap out quietly on this one.

Conspiracy Theory? Maybe...

I thought the story was a very interesting progression of thought process. To be honest, it reminds me a lot of how someone who is a conspiracy theorist or someone suffering from schizophrenia might think. The beginning is so fact oriented, but it’s when those pieces of facts come together that the mind runs wild for the narrator. Although sifting through all the facts, at times, seems a bit boring and tedious, I definitely see the purpose in it. I think the story isn’t supposed to be entirely engaging from first read, or at least as a progressive read. I think it’s really a comprehensive thought process on paper. You have to read the story, then go back and actually see what all has happened – look at it from the outside in.

One thing I have struggled figuring out, though, is the purpose or meaning behind Tlon. It seems to serve so many potential metaphors in the story. At first I really did think it was a representation of conspiracy theories, but I questioned that toward the end. Certainly my favorite line in the story is “Spellbound by Tlon’s rigor, humanity has forgotten, and continues to forget, that is the rigor of chess masters, not of angels” (81). This line was so powerful by itself, and it really has that conspiracy theory quality to it. You have the manipulators, the chess masters, and the mention of angels, the religious sect that the chess masters are trying to conquer.

I really enjoy the end of the story, as well. It’s the perfect peak to the out of control mind of the narrator. It’s as if the narrator becomes Tlon – embodies it. Then, you have this notion that this world will expand and continue on – that this process will continue to go on through time and continue to spiral until perhaps it is the only reality accepted.

The Objective and the Subjective in a Parallel Universe

In the fictional world of Tlön, the objective world and the subjective mind are the same, so every thought is reality, and vice versa. My guess is that the reader is supposed to apply that school of thought to the fictional world that the narrator of the story is informing us about. So the fact that someone took the time to write about Tlön means, ontologically, it actually exists.

A meta-fictional Möbius strip exists between the narrator’s story and the heresiarch that formulates the “nine copper coins” thought experiment. Someone has written an encyclopedia about a world called Tlön, which we as readers, as least initially, think is kind of silly. Within that world, there is a philosopher who formulates a set of rules that is very much like our universe, and his colleagues chastise him and call it absurd. For the collective brains of this parallel universe, all minds, ideas, and objects are one and the same, and they can’t imagine something existing outside of their scope of sentience. They cannot imagine the coins just sitting their in the sand, existing along, even though no one perceives them. 

As we read of this universe, our very disbelief in it shows that we have the inverse problem. The existence or nature of this place is not up for discussion – it either exists or it doesn’t, no matter what we think of it. We can’t fathom our consciousness having any bearing on the universe.

The “Volume 11,” and a lack of any other volume, I think, is evident that the inhabitants of Tlön are redefining their universe step by step by their thoughts. And the fact that the Earthlings who formulated this universe are doing the same suggests that we can do the same.

The thing I liked most about this story is that is in an ontological exercise in its very format. I don’t recall if you mentioned this story’s status as being fiction or nonfiction, and it could very well be either. It begs the question of what the difference is between fiction and nonfiction. Then again, as the story teaches us, it may not matter – perhaps if we were all to come to a consensus one way or the other, that decision would be objectively true.  

Borge's Tolon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius: Why can't it be real?

There is no easy way to read a story about a fictional place. This is my second time reading this story for class and even now, I find myself re-reading parts of the story to make sense. One thing about this story is that now matter how hard you try to fight the urge to make the imaginary worlds of Tlon and Uqbar real, they are, in the end, fake. That is hardest part about reading this story. I know, most of the things we read are fiction. But the narrator in this story is so involved in discovering the worlds that the reads are also pulled into believing the places are real.

One thing I didn’t like about the story was the structure the first few pages of the story took. Honestly, when I first started reading the story I was pretty bored. Had I not read the story before, I might not have finished it. But I stuck it out hoping to have a different experience than my previous. There is a lot of encyclopedia language in the first few paragraphs that bogs my reading experience down. I feel like I’m thrown into the middle of an on going story and I’m missing some vital information that I never have fully revealed once I finish the story.
Once I get through the first part of the story, I’m immediately swept into Borges’ attempt to create a story within a story. One fallacy I see when writing like this is the relationship developed between the narrator and reader. Once we start seeing that fictional world appear in the different encyclopedias, it established a trust relationship with the reader – that same trust I began to feel in hopes that Tlon was real.

I wonder if other readers/writers who read this particular story felt betrayed, or for a lesser word, let down that the land of Tlon wasn’t real.This story has challenged me to attempt to create my own planet/fictional world within a story. Some of the other stories that come to mind like this are Star Wars and other fantasy driven story lines. I think what distinguished those stories from Borges’ story, is that Borges’ story doesn’t develop any characters or conflict. Borge’s conflict is developed once the narrator finds some ‘holes’ in his search for Tlon’s existence.

I would have liked to see Tlon come full force with characters and other conflicts, but I guess it’s best that the story didn’t take that turn. Instead it leaves me wondering what exactly is real and what isn’t. A pretty good way to leave the reader hungry for more

Barthelme's "The School"

I think the most effective element Barthelme employs in this work is the narrator’s voice and tone. The teacher, our narrator, refuses at any point to fully commit to any one thought or opinion, repeatedly using ellipses and such phrases as “you know,” refusing to give us anything concrete. While we certainly would not refer to this form of recounting and story-telling as objective, we nevertheless do feel as though we are getting a relatively genuine viewpoint. At no point in the reading did I feel like he was skewing the facts for any reason; I believed what I was being told. Instead of seeing these deaths as tragic, or deserved, or horrific, or any of the other countless emotions that could be applied, the narrator is instead simply jaded. We feel that, unlike his students, he has experienced enough death to see this string of fatalities as an existential coincidence. Were he not forced to deal with death in the sense that his students look to him to help them understand, his tone could have just as well been used to describe the weather or the daily grind of rush hour. Though we may accuse our narrator of being apathetic, at no point do we find him to be untrustworthy.

I would almost describe this form of narration as stream of consciousness. This is obviously not true in the strictest sense; it does not feel like one never-ending rant full of random one-liners and observations. However, I feel like so much death has occurred that the teacher has in some sense checked out, not wanting to deal with it anymore. He has allowed his brain to turn on and observe, but he refuses to engage it. As I have already said, this gives us a genuine view of the happenings of the story. It also conjures a vivid-yet-dreamlike image of the story, one in which I can completely buy school children talking like English and philosophy grad students, the narrator’s orphaned thoughts embodied in them despite their respective ages and maturity levels. The same goes for the gerbil arriving. In the narrator’s mind, it makes no difference whether or not it knocks on doors and walks in like a Disney character.

I am sure that in some ways the teacher is the epitome of the unreliable narrator. The argument could be made that he is indeed so scarred by death that he is seeing and hearing things that are not really there. However, as a reader, I took the noncommittal narration to be a brilliant tool that allowed me to experience things objectively, albeit through the narrator’s eyes.

"The School" by Donald Barthelme

The School by Donald Barthelme is a great example of blending short story narrative along with flash fiction to give the reader a great image alongside great ideas. I love how the themes of death and loss are played throughout and how bluntly put these themes are written.

Lines such as "We weren't even supposed to have a puppy."
"We weren't even supposed to have one..."
really drive the point home, all the while keeping a dark, humorous tone. I especially like how the reader is put into this situation of being in a deadly school, where nothing seems to live long and there is tragedy around every corner.
This could be a metaphor for how fragile life is and how the years spent in grade school can actually be fairly tragic, despite there being actual death.

The tone to this story is dark and humorous, yet it's written in a very intelligent voice to keep the actions within the story from seeming too silly or amateur.

My only criticism is the end of the piece where the children challange the teacher and assistant to make love. I understand how this could be fitting to the rest of the pice, considering the theme is tragedy and this could be referring to sex and orgasm as being "beautifully tragic," and at times, a loss. However, I wanted more from this idea to confirm my thoughts of this being a metaphoric device for the reader.

"The School" by Donald Barthelme

I love the short story “The School” by Donald Barthelme. I had to read it once before for EN 200, along with “The Perfect Gerbil” by George Saunders. Our instructor, Nick Pincumbe, was very fond of the concept of “gas stations,” the little surprises in the story that prevent a pattern from becoming boring and send us back on our way replenished and satisfied, and had us look for them in each other’s stories at every workshop.

I think every accomplishment of Barthelme’s story is noted by Saunders, so I can only agree with what he says. The pattern he establishes is so bold and well-executed that it’s a pleasure even after Barthelme repeats it a half dozen times. The ending then takes a completely different direction, and is a sheer delight. The students’ elevated tone and the presence of Helen are left unexplained, and incredibly, Barthelme manages to take the absurdity even a step further forward, with the students requesting a demonstration of lovemaking. The ending is positive and not as cynical as I would have expected. Sure, there is a new pet whose fate is uncertain, but it seems like there is a lot of hope.

But most of all, I think, I enjoy the tone of the narrator. It’s not the tone I would expect from an elementary school teacher. He’s very wise and dry; he tells us the whole story and doesn’t hold back. He seems to be without emotion and just recounts what happened, not acknowledging any escalation. At the same time, his “stuttering, fragmented syntax,” as noted by Saunders, gives him a comfortingly real personality without taking away from his authority to tell the story. At the end, I’m happy for him as things seem to look up again; he’s found love and the new class pet might actually have a chance this time.

The story ends, not with an escalation of the same pattern in some kind of boring punch line way, but by taking a whole new unexpected direction. There’s a real resolution to a story that could have been just a long, drawn-out joke that would have been amusing, but nevertheless nothing more than a joke, instead of a fully-formed, and in my opinion, great, short story.

Barthelme's Super Fun Field Trip to the Afterlife

“Then they said, but isn’t death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of—“

The tone and curt language, the repeated use of ellipses and conjunctions, and narrative movement within Barthelme’s “The School” makes the piece unusual and highly poignant. The simplicity of the story lends well to its deep and philosophical undertone without robbing the reader of the wonderful “Aha” moment that comes with the realization that this piece is about more than children who kill things unintentionally. It’s a brief look at the relationship people have with death.

There could have been any setting with children, but Barthelme chose a school, a place for intellectualism and rationalization, not emotional excess or feel-good theories. He could have selected any narrator–a parent, a child–but he has the teacher relay the story, which is done in such a static, pragmatic, “this is how it is” way, it seems derived of any true sympathy. Even the line on the first page, “It was depressing,” is in reference to the children looking at the dead trees, not the death of the trees themselves.

The narrator in this piece is willing to rationalize and over-simplify the deaths as accidents, happenings due to human interference, instead of confronting them as inevitable. Harkening back to the borrowed passage at the top, most of the things that pass away are things a majority of people take for granted: animals, fish, plants, and even an impoverished orphan from a foreign country. By highlighting these within the text, Barthelme asks, not only his narrator but the reader, to consider the possibility that these are as equally important as the loss of human life. Yet, even in response to the deaths of family members and children alike, the narrator still offers a nonchalant, almost complacent explanation to these deaths as well. This move by Barthelme flushes out the idea that people not directly affected by death take an evasive, somewhat derisive stance on the notion. The borrowed passage shows this in the way the teacher interrupts the children. By not allowing them to continue, the teacher revokes the children’s right to see death as an affirmation of life. On the flipside, by refusing to let the children see (a presumable) he and Helen make love, the teacher also takes away their right to see life as an affirmation of death. Blinding the children to either thought helps bring about, in this author’s opinion, a brilliant end to the piece, with the new gerbil coming in, and the cycle of sweeping death under the rug forever doomed to repeat itself until the children die themselves.

At four pages, Barthelme does a marvelous job of keeping the prose light yet darkly humorous. An excellent story with an interesting message, “The School” is by far one of my favorites.