Whoever picked some of the stories.

"Class, today we're going to start a VERY long lesson on allegory. It starts today with the reading of this short story, and it ends 30 years from now when you're watching your last parent die in a hospital bed of old age with nothing you can do about it."

Flowers for Algernon moment
- Just think of the rabbits.
U ok bro?
- I am! Thanks for asking.
  I was riffing off the OP post. We're exposed to ideas early in life (at school) that we don't understand the gravity of until much later.

“Alright, class! We’re gonna read a story about a guy who locks himself in a hotel room with a decked-out kitchen, a surgery machine, and every prosthesis one could need, and this guy is gonna eat himself from the bottom up and describe it in careful, emotional, joyous detail!”

Yeeeeah, fuck that shit, decades later.

“The Savage Mouth” is the English title, by Komatsu Sakyou.

I have a similar reaction, but it was to “The Yellow Wallpaper”, about a woman locked in a room for a long period of time to deal with her mental health, and the solitude drives her quite insane. In quite haunting detail.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wallpaper
- Fun historical note: many yellow paints and dyes used in that time period had some sort of neurotoxic heavy metal (probably mercury, IIRC) that actually caused or at least exacerbated symptoms of mental illness. Many of these compounds were relatively safe to use as paint in England, but when used in warmer, humid climates, they broke down and caused hallucinations as well as respiratory complications that caused the patients to be bedridden (further worsening the symptoms).
- To be fair I think The Yellow Wallpaper at least has a fucking point instead of … what the fuck…
Omg.
- I got pictures of the text in English, further down my comment history. CTRL-F “autocannibalism”. I don’t have any Japanese copies, that was a long time ago.
Very fun, gonna try to get ahold of it. Thanks!
- Mang, if you want me to, I can just post it.
Hot.
There was a Stephen King short story called Survivor Type where a doctor gets stranded on an island and eventually begins eating himself for sustenance. The story is told through the journal he keeps as he becomes more unhinged.

Nobody going to mention a Cask of Amontillado? Maybe not the most mind-bending example, but the tale of leading a supposed friend to their own horrific murder was not a thing I expected to be reading in school.

“For the love of God, Montresor!”
- The reply to that just being "Yes, for the love of God," was cold as ice.
Funnily enough I did on a similar post a month ago.
https://lemmy.ca/comment/11653719
- i remember that post, was actually hoping to find it again as there had been some great recommendations! glad you mentioned it here.
Was that before or after the school-shooting lockdown drills?
- After the hide under your desk from nuclear bombs drills but before the active shooter drills.
- I grew up in a small town in Canada. We never had any kind of lock down drills.
Wasn't even required reading for me. I was just flipping through my textbook one day and found that in one of the sections the class was never going to reach.
That story still haunts me, and I've been trying to remember where it was from for over a decade.
Feh! Luchesi....

Lots of great nightmares fuel here, but I can't believe nobody's mentioned The Lottery yet. The end of that story still makes me feel absolutely nauseous.

I had blocked that one from my memory; I remember now. Thanks. ಠ_ಠ
I still can't figure out why this is taught to children. What value does it offer, other than being generally well written, which a lot of other less disturbing stories also are? Did the teachers just hate us?
- The theme I remember is that if established in a community and reinforced by tradition, any violence could be perpetuated and even endorsed.
I had this one used by 2 different teachers for different grades.

Maybe try a poem.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell, 1945

Holy fuck who wrote this?
- I should have attributed, sorry.
  Randall Jarrell, published in 1945.
  Bomber ball turret gunners and tail gunners had the shortest life expectancy of any combat occupation in the war, as these were the first targets of incoming fighters. I found one site that said tail gunners' combat life expectancy was four missions.
  Ball turrets couldn't reload in flight. The ball was too small for parachutes, and the mechanisms jammed or froze often. Typically they put small, young, single guys in them.
I think that was the inspiration for the B-17 scene from the animated movie Heavy Metal, which fucked me up as a kid.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows. He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell; Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail. Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail. If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see; It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow, And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe, He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess; And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan: "It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone. Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains; So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail; And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale. He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee; And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven, With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given; It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains, But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code. In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load. In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring, Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow; And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low; The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in; And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay; It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May." And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum; Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire; Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher; The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see; And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so; And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow. It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why; And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear; But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near; I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside. I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar; And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door. It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm— Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.

##The Cremation of Sam McGee

--By Robert W. Service

I actually found this quite enjoyable. Thanks for sharing!
- I love it. It has stuck with me since like 4th grade. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

“Alright Class, today we are going to read “The Jaunt” by Stephen King and write a report about the effects of eternal nothingness on the human psyche” -my sick fuck English teacher in grade 7 for some reason.

- I mean I loved it. We also got to read some ray bradbury and Isaac Asimov in that semester.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas was this for me.

That one definitely fucked me up. Although it wasn't an English teacher but a philosophy professor who had us read it.

I like my country, but not being born in Lithuania would have meant not reading Jurga Ivanauskaitė back at school and you all should consider yourselves lucky.

Is that a story or an author?
- She was a writer, an essayist, a poet and a traveler.
  A lot of her creations feature powerlessness of women in various dramatic events.
- It's the sound the machine made when it ate people.

For sale:

Baby shoes.

Never worn.

I can do that author one better (or three better):
For sale: baby.

Ah yes, a nice short story about yellow wallpaper.

Not exactly a short story, but Kipling's The Young British Soldier still tumbles around in my head some 25 years later. Really cemented in me that I don't want to go die in some other country for some fabricated sense of duty to my country. Not that I wanted to at that point, but for sure made it seem like an extra terrible idea.

The Great Gatsby is a great novel about the immobility of class in America, despite the country's claim to the opposite. I didn't realize this in highschool when I read it, but damned if it wasn't a warning of things to come.

Not a short story but I recall we read Call of the Wild in school. Some nice animal cruelty for kids to think about.

"Today, students, we are going to learn about Carcosa."

I don't really remember any of the short stories assigned in English specifically, but I do remember one in my middle school textbook that I only remember because of the artwork. It was done by Stephen Gammel; the same dude that did the original artwork for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. It's especially memorable because the story was just about some cute anthropomorphic animals working on a farm or something, but it had the same crazy "spider webs dripping with blood" style from the Scary Stories books.

I hella wish I could remember the name of the story, or at least the specific textbook it was in.

For me that was "The Man in the Well" which the school librarian read to us in 4th grade during library story hour.

https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/the-man-in-the-well#

9th Grade English, got assigned Invisible Man by Ellison. It wasn't science fiction like I thought it'd be 😅

Incredible book

Are we ready to talk about The Girl with the Green Ribbon now?

Is that the one where
(spoiler to be nice cuz if it’s the one I’m thinking of it was actually pretty good)
- Yep
- I got that book from the library when I was less than ten and I remember that one fucking with me.

I remember being 12 when my english teacher read out loud: Ray Bradbury - The Coffin.

The Coffin short film: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Either I have a higher tolerance than most or my English teachers were pansies.

Though we did read the play version of The Diary of Anne Frank when I was in 8th grade.

Wait...you read the play version of a book? The fuck?
- I don't know that I've ever read the Diary in it's entirety, but I've heard that there are some rather explicit parts, especially pertaining to Anne's puberty, so maybe they did it to avoid that.
- Oh id forgotten they did that. We had to read the play of Of Mice and Men. It is not a book that is improved by being a play.

This is not limited to short stories and English. If I had not been an avid reader when entering my teen years, the selection of books thrown at me in school would have turned me into a passionate hater of books.

for me it was the cold equations by Tom Godwin

Y'all are taking about the girl with the green ribbon, my first year college lit teacher had us read a short story where a kid fist-fucked his mom and I'm feeling like maybe my education was problematic.

Terrible!
Tell me the title so I can shun it!
- Oddly enough, Google is not turning up the story but it's coming back with a lot of results

Flashbacks to when only the teacher and I understood A Modest Proposal and not being able to explain to anyone else in that class that i was appreciating that he was sassing the english NOT the actual idea of eating babies. 🙃

Grew up with animals of farthing wood before school, your stories have no power here.

A good thing imo

All of it was a largely unmemorable slog with one teacher being adamant that their interpretation was the only correct one every time, even after they chose a book with a living author and I got it in writing that what the teacher thought was not the author's intent. I actually made use of the business letter lesson from an earlier year...

Except one class was good and did stick with me. As a result Atwood still has me bugged out over chickie knobs and pigoons, especially now that we pretty much have both. And depression over alex the parrot.

Ray Bradbury "The Pedestrian"

My dad read "All summer in a day" to me when I was 5ish. I think I was being mean to another kid and he was trying to teach me a lesson. That story still sucks me up.

This thread unlocked an old memory of a poem we read Sophomore year about a frog getting killed by a lawnmower.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has entered the chat

I can honestly say that not a single book or story I read in so left me with any impression whatsoever. I just learned that literature teachers of all languages are waaay too absorbed in their own circle jerks.

Could I possibly be missing the intended message or callously drifting through life without ever genuinely empathasizing and connecting with the highs and lows of the human experience?
...
No, it's the entire history of human storytelling that must be wrong.
- See, that's what I meant by circle jerk. You simply can't accept that other people don't care about your hobby.
  Instead you insult them, proving that you in fact are the low of the human experience you're talking about.
Imagine actually admitting this
Now imagine somehow bragging about it
It boggles the mind
- Imagine not even being capable of thinking other people might think differently than yourself.
  Imagine taking a statement that doesn't contain any value judgement about the writer and misinterpreting it for bragging.
  Imagine being so self absorbed, that you don't only misinterpret intention so drastically, but doing that with the intent of defending literature interpretation.
I won't comment on the circle jerk thing, but I mostly agree with the first sentence (Great Expectations being the lone exception for me for some reason). I've just never enjoyed reading, it just doesn't do it for me. In fact I recently found a 20 year old high school report card and apparently I took a Humanities class that year and completely forgot about it. But then I also didn't remember taking AP Econ that year either.