"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.