Anyone else remember that one roald dahl story where a woman kills her husband by hitting him over the head with a leg of lamb and then serves it to the cops investigating his death?
That is by far one of the greatest horror stories with a purpose. So, so well written. I would also consider Twain's The Mysterious Stranger for being very weird, entertaining, and thoughtful.
My interpretation of The Veldt diverged from the one you presented. In fact, if I recall correctly, most of my classmates also interpreted the moral as more "don't neglect your children" or "don't let technology take on the role of a parent" instead of being "don't spoil your children". Perhaps it's a generational thing, since my classmates and I grew up with essentially unmonitored access to the internet, and I think a lot of us could relate to being raised by technology in a way. The parents in The Veldt didn't understand the technology behind the house (much like the reader) and they outsourced their duties as parents to the house, which ended up being their downfall since the kids ended up seeing the nursery as a parental figure. To them, their biological parents threatening to turn off the nursery would be akin to them saying that they'd kill their "real" parent, the one who raised them. When you see how they talk about the machines in the house as if they are alive, and grieve when their father turns them off, the children's reaction to the parent's threats are a lot more understandable IMO. In the end though, the house isn't at fault, the parents aren't at fault, and the children aren't at fault - it's the lack of knowledge that is responsible for the parents' death. I found The Veldt to be really nuanced, and the parallels to the internet are almost eerie to me considering that it was written in 1950. I hope my explanation didn't ramble too much, I'm prepping for finals and am operating on... uh... a less than ideal amount of sleep.
I'd love to see a part 2 of this. The following could be good additions: - Harrison Bergeron - The Yellow Wallpaper - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
@@RicoSeattle ngl I said this on a whim while very drunk, but the more I think about it, the more of a perfect joke it is. Thank you for appreciating it lmao 🫠
I get where you're coming from. But I said the whole "be careful what you wish for" thing had been done to death, not the monkey's paw itself. King Midas, for example, a legend that's centuries older, effectively has the same moral as "The Monkey's Paw." But keep in mind, even though I ranked the story pretty low, I don't hate it. As I said at the end of the video, I don't think any of the stories on the list are bad by any means. They all have their place in classrooms for a reason. So, even though I like Jacobs' story less than the others on the list, I still think it's very good.
@@RoughestDraftstbf its a personal ranking and you vibed with it the least so its in the right spot, but from the way you talked about it its like you were saying 1970s Star Wars was derivative of scifi because we have 2020s Star Wars
All Summer in a Day DESTROYED ME. I didn’t think about anything else for days. No story has filled me with dread and horror like that and nothing truly gory actually happens, god it’s so effective
I read “There Will Come Soft Rains” when I was 10 years old, as a part of a standardized test. I found it so fascinating that I just KNEW I had to look it up afterwards and read it again. It also led me to read more of Bradbury’s short fiction, both his horror stories and fantasy/sci-fi, and I regret nothing. I read “The Yellow Wallpaper” much later, in my senior year of high school. It was just as captivating, and my interest was helped by the research I did while writing an essay about the symbolism. I found one guy named Todd McGowan who argued that the woman in the story (possibly named Jane) wasn’t actually going insane, contrary to what many others thought was the storyline. He claimed that the language is from the point of view of the world she and her husband live in, where women cannot leave their strictly defined roles. She gains her freedom at the end of the story, but NOT at the cost of her sanity. That’s actually just how her husband and the world sees it-they can’t comprehend her actions, her motivations, and so all they can see is a mental breakdown. She’s coming at issues from the other side of the tunnel, but her husband’s vision is distorted by the values that he stands for and upholds, so he doesn’t see the true nature of what’s happening, leading him to believe she has gone crazy. The Yellow Wallpaper would definitely be a valuable addition if a 2nd part is made or if it becomes a series.
Man, I love Omelas. The reason we read it in school was because the kids in one class (I think it was English II?) loved it so much the teacher recommended that other English classes use it. Kids from that class were literally talking about it at lunch and telling others to go read it. We read it in AP Lit, which was a relatively small class (12ish kids), and the shock on our faces when we got to the reveal was priceless. I absolutely love it when short stories end with the most vile, shocking twists possible, especially when the twist is more than mere shock value and has actual commentary and contributes to the story. I think Omelas, The Monkey's Paw, and The Lottery are all great examples of this, so it kinda hurt to see you put them so low (but I do understand that they've become overexposed, losing a lot of their initial power).
As someone who hasn’t read omelas, thank you for not spoiling it in the comments because I’m gonna go read it right now. So glad I found your comment before finishing the video lol
“The Box Social” by James Reaney is similar, although because the twist comes so late in the story, there’s practically no follow-up. You really have to re-read the story with new perspective to get at the messaging.
For me, the rubric for 'good short story' is 'how much do I apply the story to my real life decision making?' For that reason, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin is my top pick, because it's directly relevant to so many of my choices. How much harm can a company cause before I walk away from purchasing their products? How bad can one's family be before one walks away? How much suffering in war justifies supporting the end goals? Is suffering more justifiable if it's concentrated in a few victims, or spread out to as many people as possible, to lessen the individual burden? I also like the ambiguity of those who walk away. Where are they going? Do all those who walk away join up later, or do they not get along because they all walk away with different ideas? Who are the heroes of the story, are there any? It's just beautiful to me
We read The Scarlet Ibis in ninth grade in class. I'm a fast reader so I finished well before the rest of the class. The teacher asked what I thought and I said it was OK. The teacher got pretty pissed and said that meant I hadn't read it right and to read it again. A few years later, I mentioned this to the same teacher and she said something to the effect of "Knowing you as well as I do now, I understand your response." It's been about 25 years and I still regularly wonder what she meant by that and what my thoughts on the story told her about me.
"the scarlet ibis" and "of mice and men" (i know that's not a short story, but my teacher taught them back to back) are stories that i was given to read in my freshman year of high school that truly crushed me. i think about both to this day and still get sad
“There will come soft rain” is one that flashes in my mind from time to time, it was so eloquently crafted that it has too. “The Landlady” is a personal favorite of mine though, the ending is just the right amount of subtle.
Harrison Bergeron was one that we read in numerous classes between middle and high school, and for I for sure would love to hear it discussed in this format. There was another one that I loved, All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury, but you already grabbed a Bradbury. Roses for Emily was one that appeared at least twice in my grade school classes as well and that one was *weird* but it sure stuck!
This is fascinating, all these stories are alien to British schools. I don't think we covered short stories but from the 2000s I remember Shakespeare, WWI poems and Of Mice and Men - no wait, we did The Raven and The Telltale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
You should rank all of Bradbury's short stories!! Also "it's a good life," "lamb to the slaughter," "flowers for Algernon," and "the box social" are incredible. There is also The Big Book of Classic Fantasy which compiles rare old short stories that pretty much cannot be found anywhere else, and they are amazing (Evening Primrose, the diamond lens, the rat catcher, etc.🤩)
some other ones that stuck in my mind from english class are: - "All summer in a day" and "Dark they were, and golden eyed" both by Ray Bradbury - "The landlady" and "Lamb to the slaughter" by Roald Dahl - "Rain rain go away" by Isaac Asimov
I feel like the lottery isn't really diminished by being spoiled, and that if a story can be "ruined" by a spoiler, then it must not have much value besides surprise in the first place. When you read it a second time or after being spoiled, it just takes on a different tone. You see the lottery as they do but as an outsider that isn't caught up in the tradition. You see it as the cruelty that it is and are disgusted by how accepting they are about murdering friends and family so casually. The impact of the story isn't just in the shocking reveal of what the lottery is, it's in your reaction to something so savage and reflecting on what lotteries might exist in your society.
These are less short stories and more works of satire, but A Modest Proposal and Body Ritual Among the Nacirema were both pretty funny and influential, although I feel like they’re not the type of things you still think back to every once in a while
my class read the lottery in the 4th grade and that was definitely too early because we were too young to get it, but i think of there will come soft rains to this day and it still influences my work.
I had to read The Lottery once in 4th grade and Ive never forgotten it. Finishing early, being horrified, and watching all my classmates faces transform when they reached the end was a surreal experience lmaoo
My high school English teacher's obsessive teaching and re-teaching of The Lottery never made sense to me. We had, like, 3 assignments on it in our short story unit freshman year. It's a great story, well-written with a good twist, but I think the problem with studying it in school (at least the way it was taught to me) is that you're required to do so many re-reads and close reads to answer questions about foreshadowing, dramatic irony, plot devices, etc. that it gets old. By the 5th run-through of the text it's obvious what Shirley Jackson is doing to build tension + dread, and it loses most of the qualities that make it interesting. (Obviously you can't expect the same story to be different on a second+ read lol, but the way my teacher chose to teach it was exceptionally poor). I like The Lottery nowadays, but personally I think that Jackson's The Possibility of Evil (another story I read for that unit) is a better story.
Man, this got me to return to some of the short stories I read in elementary-high school. Still love the Lottery and The Most Dangerous Game, but I'd forgotten about To Build a Fire. I also keep getting more from The Snows of Kilimanjaro as I age
The Lottery is a great story and really sticks with you when it comes to the ideas of unquestioned loyalty to tradition, but... I don't really understand how the ending is a twist? Or how having it spoiled could ruin it? Like, I never had it spoiled for me but I still knew what was going to happen because it just felt SO obvious to me lol
when I first read "the scarlet ibis" for an assignment, it was during a really hard time in my life, so a sad story like that just shook me to my core and I cried every time I thought about it. as someone with younger siblings, I sorta understood the frustrations of the protagonist/narrator, but I wasn't ready for the ending. it felt like y heart was ripped out then stomped on. a similar book (in terms of breaking me completely) is "monday's not coming"... just wrecks your heart and breaks you completely. I really recommend it, but content warning for abuse and child death
Recently read The Kaleidoscope by Ray Bradbury, and it really made me wish we'd had more of his stories assigned than just The Veldt. Made me cry, haha. I remember when we read The Lottery, we were given the entire short story collection it was published in, so I read the others on my own time before we had to return the book. I think that really helped me develop an appreciation for short stories. It's interesting that so many of the stories we were assigned had a similar kind of dystopian theme.
i've never read any of these stories before, i'd only ever even heard of a few of them, but you actually made me pause the video several times so i could experience them myself! english isn't my first language, and since i didn't get introduced to any of the "classics" in school, i've always found it difficult to approach english/american literature. so even if it wasn't your primary goal, to me you've made these stories a whole lot more accessible, i love your explanations and just generally the way you talk about literature. thanks for making this video
I have watched about a minute, but I think about "The Lottery" so often. It is my "Roman Empire". The discussion about tradition and whether it is good or not to blindly follow it is so prescient in my life as well as the realities of a large portion of this planet's population. I haven't reread it since high school, but it has been stuck in the inside of my skull since.
This was great. I would love a video where you go more in depth into some short stories, spoilers and all. I love me a thorough analysis. About Amontillado - I wrote an essay in uni about guilt in Poe's short stories. I argued that supressed guilt and conscience are central motifs to many of Poe’s narratives and the driving force behind many of the plots. Many of Poe's characters are, in one way or another, haunted by their guilty conscience or the weight of their crimes, which is often what directs some of their more desperate actions, what drives them to madness, or what brings about their undoing. It's also what compels them to tell their stories. The Cask of Amontillado, imo, is one of those stories, even though it's a lot more subtle there; it's also prominently in The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, or William Wilson (that's perhaps the most obvious one). I feel like Poe's short stories are deeply psychological, and even though on the surface, they usually seem to deal with various supernatural occurences, there is more often than not a much more grounded interpretation and a more "psychological" reading to be found.
Loved this video. I'm not American, but my country's school system is very American and so we had a lot of these stories in our elementary & secondary school English classes. This came up recently when I was speaking with by bf about how strange and dark a lot of required reading was back then (aside from what you mentioned, we also did A Rose for Emily, The Jaunt). I'd really like to see more ranking videos of these kinds of curriculum staples, maybe with the O. Henry staples (Gift of the Magi/The Last Leaf)?
I never read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" so I paused the video to read it and yeah. I can see why my conservative small town teachers never gave us this one lol. Not surprising considering Le Guin's other works but wow. Just fantastic.
the story “the box social” by james reaney was assigned in my english course. i was in an alternative school where there werent traditional classes. students learned independently at their own pace from books and worksheets. so some students had already finished a course others were just starting. any time someone mentioned that they were doing the english course, everyone that had already finished it would chime in, “have you got to the box social yet?” “ooh wait till you get to the box social!” this almost ruined the story since it made it clear that there was some sort of surprise at the end. but even though i knew something was coming, it was still a shock. its well written. personally i wouldnt say its the best, but definitely the most memorable short story i was assigned in high school. its very short and easily found by googling if anyones curious.
As part of a group project, I had to lead a class discussion about "The Lottery" for high school English class. Although everyone in class was meant to read the story before the discussion day, it was clear not everyone did. The look of horror dawning on some classmates' faces as the twist sunk in for them has stuck with me ever since. Another story I liked, probably as disturbing as "The Lottery", is "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor. That one has also stuck with me.
The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne is one that I read in the 6th grade and I’ve never forgotten it. Another one I read then was “All Summer in a day” by Ray Bradbury. Both of those have clung to me I don’t think I’ll ever forget them. The Cask of Amontillado is crazy. The way the main character does what he does is wild. With the lack of any emotion or feeling just the drive of vengeance is unbelievable. It’s not even exactly vengeance either what I recall is the feeling of a coldness of duty.
My favorite short story I read in school was Edgar Allen Poe’s the “Masquerade of Red Death.” I think what made it stick with me was how it was one of the first stories I read that had such a dark and unreal feeing. I was in middle school when I read it so most of the books I read weren’t like this at all.
The Scarlett Ibis really is something. I instantly started tearing up when you mentioned it, and I only read it one time, in high school, 14 years ago.
Your videos are so chill and I love your opinions it would be cool to see you rank a bunch of Bradbury or Poe stories in one video. I think it could also be a fun series id love to see ranking of authors like Kurt Vonnegut and HP Lovecraft too.
this video was very cool like all of your other ones. i always look forward to your content. i read Harold Bergeron in middle school and still think about it a lot, so that would be a cool one to see talked about. thank you
THE VELDT i forgot about that one! i think i read that in middle school/jr high actually and was so baffled by the ending! i read The Lottery after this video and HUH?! just the absurdity and apathy behind it all, and i feel like it has some relevance to our culture today and adherence to tradition no matter what. all this to say i loved english in school and i loved it more when my teachers would help us engage in conversation about the application of these books and stories to our day and what they might be commenting on.
Some other ones: "The Yellow Wallpaper," "Where are you going, where have you been," "A good man is hard to find," "The Lady or the Tiger," and "The Two Bottles of Relish."
Love it! I wish my schools were cool enough to have us read Bradbury. For me the one that stuck out though I can't remember the name had a woman excited to marry a rich man damage his mother's wedding dress on accident. He shows his explosive temper for the first time and she's able to turn around and avoid getting trapped with that. The amount of people who ignore red flags is sad and scary. Craziest thing they had us read was Mark of the Beast by Rudyard Kipling. Best homework I ever had, reading a werewolf horror story!
I think another key aspect of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" which most people teaching and reading the story alike likely miss, perhaps due to a lack of familiarity with LeGuin's other views, is that it is (surprisingly pointedly) an anarchist's rebuttal to the notion that the organisation of humanity and society must be premised on a compromise with oppression and systemic cruelty rather than its wholesale abolition. It is an argument that "utopian" aims are not naïve, but a rejection of the notion that things as they are in some arrangement or another are the only way that they *can* be. P.S. My favourite thing that I ever had to read for English class was, hands down, "The Bear" by William Faulkner. Incredibly vivid writing. The bit where we see things from the bear's own perspective made my eyes shine with awe in a way little else has done since.
I like the monkey's paw because my high school English made the terrible decision to have us rewrite the ending. Most of us, including me, made her curse while reading our endings. Luckily she was a good sport about it! Also, my favorite book I was told to read was Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. We split into groups and read the book with our groups as a sorta book club and I end up reading ahead. 😅
There's an argentinian writer called Horacio Quiroga, his stories are pretty commonly read in high school as well. They're fun and have a kind of light, innocent tone, but they're all actually pretty horrible. I never really stopped to think about big thematic messages in them (i should reread them), but they certainly are impactful, and the world they're in is kind of fascinating. They have a sort of myth, fairy tale or fable logic but everything that happens is almost needlessly cruel. Dunno why they made us read it.
Using "the crown" for "royalty" is metonymy, not synechdoche. Using "threads" for "clothes" or "wheels" for "car" is synechdoche. The difference is subtle but crucial for literary critics.
@makiroll5827 Metonymy is when you represent something with an object closely associated with it. Synechdoche is when you represent something with the parts that make it up and vice versa. Similar, yes, but different in an important way.
Surprised you didn't go with 'A Sound of Thunder' for the one Bradbury short story, since it's probably his most famous (that Treehouse of Horror segment helps). However, I can definitely see your point about 'The Veldt' feeling more relevant in this day and age
You should do more rankings, especially of individual authors like Poe. As for the list, I would put the Lottery in the top tier. It is such a universal and timeless story that you would think it was written hundreds of years ago. I would also add Chicamauga by Ambrose Bierce, another writer who deserves more attention. I have never heard of The Scarlet Ibis but thanks to your video I will certainly read it.
for your consideration, here is a bit i already wrote about the monkey's paw a while back. For context, I broke the story up into three parts: The Promise - The Author makes clear to the Reader what the Reader should expect to be scared of. This family will make a wish that goes badly The Performance - The Author frightens the Reader in the way they promised they would. The wish’s fulfillment gruesomely kills their son. The Punchline - The Author recontextualizes the nature of the Promise in a way that disorients the reader. Attempting to wish their son back brings them back as they currently are. And my analysis went as follows: The multifaceted horror-idea in The Monkey’s Paw is that altering fate comes with a price. This is conveyed by the Promise. The first prong of this idea is displayed with The Performance, where wishing for modest wealth carries the greater cost of losing a loved one. The second prong of this idea is that some wishes are inherently costly or contradictory, conveyed when wishing a lost loved one back to one’s life is taken to its literal, horrific extreme. The reader could have assumed this was the direction the story would take as soon as the Paw was introduced, but the Performance focuses on the first prong sharply enough for the second prong’s introduction in the Punchline to feel momentous and dramatic. This is a good example of a story which chooses to elaborate on previously held information, rather than introduce new information, to the same shocking effect.
I remember reading “the necklace” and not liking it for similar reasons, it felt like the author was really trying to make us hate the mc just because she wanted to enjoy herself and have fun for once. Plus the story feels like suffering for suffering’s sake, I understand that the author was trying to make the story realism and go against the romanticized escapism but still.
So I read a short story for a test in freshman English, and I could have sworn it was called the Harvest. I've tried to find it online, but the wrong stories keep coming up. From what I remember, the story followed a young boy living in a rural American farm town after all the crops had just been harvested. The boy notices a man, sort of the town's recluse, would go into the fields alone only to return with nothing changed. Following him one day, the boy sees the man bury his arm in the tilled Earth with an empty coffee can. It's unclear why the man does this, but he's visibly euphoric. Once the man leaves, the boy tries it for himself. Once his arm is buried, the boy can feel movement in the ground. It's almost like the Earth is settling after just being tilled for the harvest, like a fire burning down to coals. Again, I could have sworn that this story was called the Harvest, but I read it all the way back in 2017 so I must be wrong. If anyone recognizes the story, please let me know. I would love to read it again. Thank you!
This comment made me curious, so I tried my hand at Googling the story and I think I found it!! It is called Harvest, written by Tomás Rivera; the plot summary seemed right, but I haven't read the whole thing yet!
havent watched the video yet but İ hope that disturbing story they told me in middle school about a family who went to mexico where the parents got murdered in a hotel and the hotel covered it up by changing the wallpaper.... it was crazy
I reread The Artist of the Beautiful recently and while it's a little simplistic and angsty, it really resonated with how I've been feeling lately about trying to pursue creativity under capitalism and productivity culture.
On the note of The Necklace and beauty, that hasnt actually changed. All our beauty models, our gorgeous celebrities, our presentable top businessmen are all extremely wealthy and spend a lot of money that most people cant afford on entire curated lifestyles and surgeries to keep looking young. People working the bad, basic, necessary and overwhelming common jobs look normal at their best and clearly worn down most of the time. You can tell a 50 year old celebrity actor and a 50 year old checkout clerk apart in seconds, it hasnt changed
I did the lottery twice in high school. I think it does a really effective job at making a point through a metaphor, but other than that metaphor there dosnt seem to be that much. I would put it in a tier.
We didn't read any of these either, it's interesting how much schools will favour works from their own country and culture. We read very little from American authors.
man I genuinely do not understand the love for The Scarlet Ibis no matter how hard I've tried. It's just wayy too ableist to me. I think if the story was written from Doodle's POV I would love it, but as it stands, Doodle just feels a pitiable plot device who exists just to die and teach the horrible narrator a lesson.
I was lucky to read The Lottery without spoilers. It's well-written and explores important topics well, but the ending itself wasn't especially impactful. I was familiar with The Purge and The Hunger Games series' inspired by The Lottery, so the reveal was somewhat predictable. I found the reread a lot more meaningful: knowing the full story, it got me to think about how tradition is discussed, and the Lotteries that make up our own society
Due to my username, I am disappointed in your ranking of The Most Dangerous Game, but I see where you’re coming from, and I respect your opinion. That being said, be careful the next time you’re on the open ocean.
How'd you pick 'the Veldt' over Bradbury's other bangers that show up in short fiction collections like 'All in a summer day', and 'A sound of thunder'? Edit: Also I really like how most of the adaptations you picked were all pretty old and felt like the kind of stuff a teacher would wheel out a tv cart to show
Maybe this is just me but I actually was not a fan of Scarlet Ibis when I read it and having reread it after watching this video, I still don't like it. Out of the ones listed I would give Amontillado the S tier rather than Ibis and give Ibis a low C tier. This could easily be down to personal experience since I was an only child who grew up without siblings /and/ I was an unathletic, fragile, but clever little freak who was often bullied in a manner similar to the way the brother does (being tricked into chasing the more athletic kids around because they knew they could turn my fragile body into a perpetual motion machine and point + laugh.) While the technical aspects of Scarlet Ibis are indeed quite good (the quote cited in the video is a quite good one!), from that dual perspective it kind of doesn't click for me as something to be sympathetic to the narrator for, nor does it read like a tragedy. It just reads like an obscenely kid realizing that his actions have consequences, and further, it even reads to me like he never /actually/ cared about Doodle at all, no matter how guilty he feels. Does he feel guilty that his brother died, or does he feel guilty that there will be consequences from their family and the world after this? Based on his behavior to that point, I tend to read it as the latter, and that just makes the story feel even more vile in a way that isn't lampshaded or borne out by the text itself the way some other narratives about bad people do (like, for example, the ambiguity in Amontillado and the creeping doubt of what someone could have done to warrant what Montresor ends up doing to Fortunato. Amontillado also gets my gold medal for the gruesomeness of Fortunato's inevitably slow death and how hauntingly it's described, the premeditation that clearly went into it from Montresor, all of the things that Poe doesn't really elaborate on- or need to- but that leave you thinking about it for a while afterward.)
Anyone else remember that one roald dahl story where a woman kills her husband by hitting him over the head with a leg of lamb and then serves it to the cops investigating his death?
yeah, read it for class in 8th grade then my junior year
"Lamb to the Slaughter"
Yeah, loved that one
Omg yes that one stuck with me. I believe it was "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl
Yes! Loved that story. I still think about the one about the man with a tattoo, I think it was called Skin
I think about The Lottery far more than someone should.
As do I and if someone doesn’t know about it I always tell them about it.
the yellow wallpaper should be in there to imo. Both deeply terrifying and deeply symbolic
That is by far one of the greatest horror stories with a purpose. So, so well written.
I would also consider Twain's The Mysterious Stranger for being very weird, entertaining, and thoughtful.
do people read that in highschool classes?
English teacher detected 🚨
i read it just now- harrowing!
The yellow wallpaper is TOP TIER, I remember reading it in middle and highschool and it definitely left a huge impact
My interpretation of The Veldt diverged from the one you presented. In fact, if I recall correctly, most of my classmates also interpreted the moral as more "don't neglect your children" or "don't let technology take on the role of a parent" instead of being "don't spoil your children". Perhaps it's a generational thing, since my classmates and I grew up with essentially unmonitored access to the internet, and I think a lot of us could relate to being raised by technology in a way. The parents in The Veldt didn't understand the technology behind the house (much like the reader) and they outsourced their duties as parents to the house, which ended up being their downfall since the kids ended up seeing the nursery as a parental figure. To them, their biological parents threatening to turn off the nursery would be akin to them saying that they'd kill their "real" parent, the one who raised them. When you see how they talk about the machines in the house as if they are alive, and grieve when their father turns them off, the children's reaction to the parent's threats are a lot more understandable IMO. In the end though, the house isn't at fault, the parents aren't at fault, and the children aren't at fault - it's the lack of knowledge that is responsible for the parents' death. I found The Veldt to be really nuanced, and the parallels to the internet are almost eerie to me considering that it was written in 1950.
I hope my explanation didn't ramble too much, I'm prepping for finals and am operating on... uh... a less than ideal amount of sleep.
I'd love to see a part 2 of this. The following could be good additions:
- Harrison Bergeron
- The Yellow Wallpaper
- An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
- Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
yes! loved Harrison Bergeron
That amontillado got me bricked upp
Oh my god. That's so good.
@@RicoSeattle ngl I said this on a whim while very drunk, but the more I think about it, the more of a perfect joke it is. Thank you for appreciating it lmao 🫠
Why rag on The Monkey’s Paw for being “done to death” when it was written in 1902? At that point it should’ve been a trope codified.
I get where you're coming from. But I said the whole "be careful what you wish for" thing had been done to death, not the monkey's paw itself. King Midas, for example, a legend that's centuries older, effectively has the same moral as "The Monkey's Paw." But keep in mind, even though I ranked the story pretty low, I don't hate it. As I said at the end of the video, I don't think any of the stories on the list are bad by any means. They all have their place in classrooms for a reason. So, even though I like Jacobs' story less than the others on the list, I still think it's very good.
@@RoughestDraftstbf its a personal ranking and you vibed with it the least so its in the right spot, but from the way you talked about it its like you were saying 1970s Star Wars was derivative of scifi because we have 2020s Star Wars
1:03 I rewrote that as if the two of them were frat bros for an English class. Zero regrets.
That sounds great
I wrote a paper comparing the story to the video game Portal, probably my favorite project I've ever done at school.
All Summer in a Day, Cold Equations and There Will Come Soft Rain - all stuck with me to this day
"There Will Come Soft Rains" _ruins_ me.
All Summer in a Day DESTROYED ME. I didn’t think about anything else for days. No story has filled me with dread and horror like that and nothing truly gory actually happens, god it’s so effective
I think about all summer in a day a lil too much
@@ConvincingPeopleI just read that and it was ruinous.
I read “There Will Come Soft Rains” when I was 10 years old, as a part of a standardized test. I found it so fascinating that I just KNEW I had to look it up afterwards and read it again. It also led me to read more of Bradbury’s short fiction, both his horror stories and fantasy/sci-fi, and I regret nothing.
I read “The Yellow Wallpaper” much later, in my senior year of high school. It was just as captivating, and my interest was helped by the research I did while writing an essay about the symbolism. I found one guy named Todd McGowan who argued that the woman in the story (possibly named Jane) wasn’t actually going insane, contrary to what many others thought was the storyline. He claimed that the language is from the point of view of the world she and her husband live in, where women cannot leave their strictly defined roles. She gains her freedom at the end of the story, but NOT at the cost of her sanity. That’s actually just how her husband and the world sees it-they can’t comprehend her actions, her motivations, and so all they can see is a mental breakdown. She’s coming at issues from the other side of the tunnel, but her husband’s vision is distorted by the values that he stands for and upholds, so he doesn’t see the true nature of what’s happening, leading him to believe she has gone crazy.
The Yellow Wallpaper would definitely be a valuable addition if a 2nd part is made or if it becomes a series.
Man, I love Omelas. The reason we read it in school was because the kids in one class (I think it was English II?) loved it so much the teacher recommended that other English classes use it. Kids from that class were literally talking about it at lunch and telling others to go read it. We read it in AP Lit, which was a relatively small class (12ish kids), and the shock on our faces when we got to the reveal was priceless. I absolutely love it when short stories end with the most vile, shocking twists possible, especially when the twist is more than mere shock value and has actual commentary and contributes to the story. I think Omelas, The Monkey's Paw, and The Lottery are all great examples of this, so it kinda hurt to see you put them so low (but I do understand that they've become overexposed, losing a lot of their initial power).
As someone who hasn’t read omelas, thank you for not spoiling it in the comments because I’m gonna go read it right now. So glad I found your comment before finishing the video lol
“The Box Social” by James Reaney is similar, although because the twist comes so late in the story, there’s practically no follow-up. You really have to re-read the story with new perspective to get at the messaging.
@@spam-el3ee just read it, it was incredible! Thanks for the recommendation.
For me, the rubric for 'good short story' is 'how much do I apply the story to my real life decision making?' For that reason, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin is my top pick, because it's directly relevant to so many of my choices. How much harm can a company cause before I walk away from purchasing their products? How bad can one's family be before one walks away? How much suffering in war justifies supporting the end goals? Is suffering more justifiable if it's concentrated in a few victims, or spread out to as many people as possible, to lessen the individual burden? I also like the ambiguity of those who walk away. Where are they going? Do all those who walk away join up later, or do they not get along because they all walk away with different ideas? Who are the heroes of the story, are there any? It's just beautiful to me
We read The Scarlet Ibis in ninth grade in class. I'm a fast reader so I finished well before the rest of the class. The teacher asked what I thought and I said it was OK. The teacher got pretty pissed and said that meant I hadn't read it right and to read it again.
A few years later, I mentioned this to the same teacher and she said something to the effect of "Knowing you as well as I do now, I understand your response." It's been about 25 years and I still regularly wonder what she meant by that and what my thoughts on the story told her about me.
"the scarlet ibis" and "of mice and men" (i know that's not a short story, but my teacher taught them back to back) are stories that i was given to read in my freshman year of high school that truly crushed me. i think about both to this day and still get sad
“There will come soft rain” is one that flashes in my mind from time to time, it was so eloquently crafted that it has too. “The Landlady” is a personal favorite of mine though, the ending is just the right amount of subtle.
There will come soft rain is so eloquent and musical. It has a deep musicality that runs throughout the entire story that’s really entrancing.
Those are my top two most memorable short stories from school. I think about them multiple times a year.
the sniper, the telltale heart, and the yellow wallpaper always stuck with me. i think about at least one of them daily.
I loved this video, I’m really curious to hear your thoughts on the yellow wallpaper. I’d love another ranking video like this
Harrison Bergeron was one that we read in numerous classes between middle and high school, and for I for sure would love to hear it discussed in this format. There was another one that I loved, All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury, but you already grabbed a Bradbury. Roses for Emily was one that appeared at least twice in my grade school classes as well and that one was *weird* but it sure stuck!
This is fascinating, all these stories are alien to British schools. I don't think we covered short stories but from the 2000s I remember Shakespeare, WWI poems and Of Mice and Men - no wait, we did The Raven and The Telltale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
I'm mad you didn't start it with the joke Fortunado was laughing at, b/c it kills me every time
You should rank all of Bradbury's short stories!! Also "it's a good life," "lamb to the slaughter," "flowers for Algernon," and "the box social" are incredible. There is also The Big Book of Classic Fantasy which compiles rare old short stories that pretty much cannot be found anywhere else, and they are amazing (Evening Primrose, the diamond lens, the rat catcher, etc.🤩)
Was looking for someone else who said flowers for Algernon. That one always stuck with me
*“The Box Social” is not written by Ray Bradbury. The author is James Reaney
‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ was by Roald Dahl, by the way, not Ray Bradbury! Still a good story, and would love to see more of these short stories covered
some other ones that stuck in my mind from english class are:
- "All summer in a day" and "Dark they were, and golden eyed" both by Ray Bradbury
- "The landlady" and "Lamb to the slaughter" by Roald Dahl
- "Rain rain go away" by Isaac Asimov
Rain rain go away has always stuck with me and I forgot the author so I couldn't find it, thank you!!
I would love for this to become a whole series, one of my favorites is “There Will Come Soft Rains” and I’d love to see you rank it
I feel like the lottery isn't really diminished by being spoiled, and that if a story can be "ruined" by a spoiler, then it must not have much value besides surprise in the first place. When you read it a second time or after being spoiled, it just takes on a different tone. You see the lottery as they do but as an outsider that isn't caught up in the tradition. You see it as the cruelty that it is and are disgusted by how accepting they are about murdering friends and family so casually. The impact of the story isn't just in the shocking reveal of what the lottery is, it's in your reaction to something so savage and reflecting on what lotteries might exist in your society.
I read the most dangerous game for middle school English and thought it was the coolest thing ever
These are less short stories and more works of satire, but A Modest Proposal and Body Ritual Among the Nacirema were both pretty funny and influential, although I feel like they’re not the type of things you still think back to every once in a while
A Modest Proposal is iconic; I definitely think back to it sometimes.
The short story I read in high school that hit me that hardest was The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. "Free! Body and soul free!"
Everyone I tell about Story of an Hour gives me a crazy look. I found it unintentionally very funny.
@@leoncaw326 yeah the fact that she dies of shock at the end is very Victorian and I love that
my class read the lottery in the 4th grade and that was definitely too early because we were too young to get it, but i think of there will come soft rains to this day and it still influences my work.
I had to read The Lottery once in 4th grade and Ive never forgotten it. Finishing early, being horrified, and watching all my classmates faces transform when they reached the end was a surreal experience lmaoo
My high school English teacher's obsessive teaching and re-teaching of The Lottery never made sense to me. We had, like, 3 assignments on it in our short story unit freshman year. It's a great story, well-written with a good twist, but I think the problem with studying it in school (at least the way it was taught to me) is that you're required to do so many re-reads and close reads to answer questions about foreshadowing, dramatic irony, plot devices, etc. that it gets old. By the 5th run-through of the text it's obvious what Shirley Jackson is doing to build tension + dread, and it loses most of the qualities that make it interesting. (Obviously you can't expect the same story to be different on a second+ read lol, but the way my teacher chose to teach it was exceptionally poor).
I like The Lottery nowadays, but personally I think that Jackson's The Possibility of Evil (another story I read for that unit) is a better story.
The Lodger, The Sniper, My Financial Career- all high school reads that have stood the test of time for me
Man, this got me to return to some of the short stories I read in elementary-high school. Still love the Lottery and The Most Dangerous Game, but I'd forgotten about To Build a Fire. I also keep getting more from The Snows of Kilimanjaro as I age
The Lottery is a great story and really sticks with you when it comes to the ideas of unquestioned loyalty to tradition, but... I don't really understand how the ending is a twist? Or how having it spoiled could ruin it? Like, I never had it spoiled for me but I still knew what was going to happen because it just felt SO obvious to me lol
when I first read "the scarlet ibis" for an assignment, it was during a really hard time in my life, so a sad story like that just shook me to my core and I cried every time I thought about it. as someone with younger siblings, I sorta understood the frustrations of the protagonist/narrator, but I wasn't ready for the ending. it felt like y heart was ripped out then stomped on.
a similar book (in terms of breaking me completely) is "monday's not coming"... just wrecks your heart and breaks you completely. I really recommend it, but content warning for abuse and child death
Recently read The Kaleidoscope by Ray Bradbury, and it really made me wish we'd had more of his stories assigned than just The Veldt. Made me cry, haha. I remember when we read The Lottery, we were given the entire short story collection it was published in, so I read the others on my own time before we had to return the book. I think that really helped me develop an appreciation for short stories. It's interesting that so many of the stories we were assigned had a similar kind of dystopian theme.
i've never read any of these stories before, i'd only ever even heard of a few of them, but you actually made me pause the video several times so i could experience them myself! english isn't my first language, and since i didn't get introduced to any of the "classics" in school, i've always found it difficult to approach english/american literature. so even if it wasn't your primary goal, to me you've made these stories a whole lot more accessible, i love your explanations and just generally the way you talk about literature. thanks for making this video
I have watched about a minute, but I think about "The Lottery" so often. It is my "Roman Empire". The discussion about tradition and whether it is good or not to blindly follow it is so prescient in my life as well as the realities of a large portion of this planet's population. I haven't reread it since high school, but it has been stuck in the inside of my skull since.
This was great.
I would love a video where you go more in depth into some short stories, spoilers and all. I love me a thorough analysis.
About Amontillado - I wrote an essay in uni about guilt in Poe's short stories. I argued that supressed guilt and conscience are central motifs to many of Poe’s narratives and the driving force behind many of the plots. Many of Poe's characters are, in one way or another, haunted by their guilty conscience or the weight of their crimes, which is often what directs some of their more desperate actions, what drives them to madness, or what brings about their undoing. It's also what compels them to tell their stories. The Cask of Amontillado, imo, is one of those stories, even though it's a lot more subtle there; it's also prominently in The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, or William Wilson (that's perhaps the most obvious one). I feel like Poe's short stories are deeply psychological, and even though on the surface, they usually seem to deal with various supernatural occurences, there is more often than not a much more grounded interpretation and a more "psychological" reading to be found.
I literally love Cask of Amontillado so much
Loved this video. I'm not American, but my country's school system is very American and so we had a lot of these stories in our elementary & secondary school English classes. This came up recently when I was speaking with by bf about how strange and dark a lot of required reading was back then (aside from what you mentioned, we also did A Rose for Emily, The Jaunt). I'd really like to see more ranking videos of these kinds of curriculum staples, maybe with the O. Henry staples (Gift of the Magi/The Last Leaf)?
Would love to see your take on A Rose for Emily
I never read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" so I paused the video to read it and yeah. I can see why my conservative small town teachers never gave us this one lol. Not surprising considering Le Guin's other works but wow. Just fantastic.
the story “the box social” by james reaney was assigned in my english course. i was in an alternative school where there werent traditional classes. students learned independently at their own pace from books and worksheets. so some students had already finished a course others were just starting.
any time someone mentioned that they were doing the english course, everyone that had already finished it would chime in, “have you got to the box social yet?” “ooh wait till you get to the box social!”
this almost ruined the story since it made it clear that there was some sort of surprise at the end. but even though i knew something was coming, it was still a shock.
its well written. personally i wouldnt say its the best, but definitely the most memorable short story i was assigned in high school. its very short and easily found by googling if anyones curious.
We read the script of "the monsters are due on maple street" and i remember that being very impactful
As part of a group project, I had to lead a class discussion about "The Lottery" for high school English class. Although everyone in class was meant to read the story before the discussion day, it was clear not everyone did. The look of horror dawning on some classmates' faces as the twist sunk in for them has stuck with me ever since.
Another story I liked, probably as disturbing as "The Lottery", is "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor. That one has also stuck with me.
The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne is one that I read in the 6th grade and I’ve never forgotten it. Another one I read then was “All Summer in a day” by Ray Bradbury.
Both of those have clung to me I don’t think I’ll ever forget them.
The Cask of Amontillado is crazy. The way the main character does what he does is wild. With the lack of any emotion or feeling just the drive of vengeance is unbelievable. It’s not even exactly vengeance either what I recall is the feeling of a coldness of duty.
My favorite short story I read in school was Edgar Allen Poe’s the “Masquerade of Red Death.” I think what made it stick with me was how it was one of the first stories I read that had such a dark and unreal feeing. I was in middle school when I read it so most of the books I read weren’t like this at all.
I like this format, and i think you should do it more often. I'd actually prefer an even longer version of it.
The Scarlett Ibis really is something. I instantly started tearing up when you mentioned it, and I only read it one time, in high school, 14 years ago.
Your videos are so chill and I love your opinions it would be cool to see you rank a bunch of Bradbury or Poe stories in one video. I think it could also be a fun series id love to see ranking of authors like Kurt Vonnegut and HP Lovecraft too.
this video got me to read the scarlet ibis and i cannot thank you enough for
Anyone remember that one short story that’s the smart house going through its daily routine even after a nuclear fall out? Awful and sad.
There will be soft rains, or something like that
Fantastic story. Still creeps me out.
“There will come soft rains” Bradbury
Thanks all!!!
this video was very cool like all of your other ones. i always look forward to your content. i read Harold Bergeron in middle school and still think about it a lot, so that would be a cool one to see talked about. thank you
i genuinely loved your breakdowns of these stories :>
THE VELDT i forgot about that one! i think i read that in middle school/jr high actually and was so baffled by the ending! i read The Lottery after this video and HUH?! just the absurdity and apathy behind it all, and i feel like it has some relevance to our culture today and adherence to tradition no matter what. all this to say i loved english in school and i loved it more when my teachers would help us engage in conversation about the application of these books and stories to our day and what they might be commenting on.
I LOVE THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO
Harrison Bergeron and The Machine Stops were the ones that really stuck with me.
THE MAGHINE STOPS IS AMAZING.
man I love your content, thank you for making these.
The Giver was a wild ride as a kid
Some other ones: "The Yellow Wallpaper," "Where are you going, where have you been," "A good man is hard to find," "The Lady or the Tiger," and "The Two Bottles of Relish."
Love it! I wish my schools were cool enough to have us read Bradbury.
For me the one that stuck out though I can't remember the name had a woman excited to marry a rich man damage his mother's wedding dress on accident. He shows his explosive temper for the first time and she's able to turn around and avoid getting trapped with that. The amount of people who ignore red flags is sad and scary.
Craziest thing they had us read was Mark of the Beast by Rudyard Kipling. Best homework I ever had, reading a werewolf horror story!
I think another key aspect of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" which most people teaching and reading the story alike likely miss, perhaps due to a lack of familiarity with LeGuin's other views, is that it is (surprisingly pointedly) an anarchist's rebuttal to the notion that the organisation of humanity and society must be premised on a compromise with oppression and systemic cruelty rather than its wholesale abolition. It is an argument that "utopian" aims are not naïve, but a rejection of the notion that things as they are in some arrangement or another are the only way that they *can* be.
P.S. My favourite thing that I ever had to read for English class was, hands down, "The Bear" by William Faulkner. Incredibly vivid writing. The bit where we see things from the bear's own perspective made my eyes shine with awe in a way little else has done since.
I like the monkey's paw because my high school English made the terrible decision to have us rewrite the ending. Most of us, including me, made her curse while reading our endings. Luckily she was a good sport about it!
Also, my favorite book I was told to read was Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. We split into groups and read the book with our groups as a sorta book club and I end up reading ahead. 😅
I can't wait to watch this after work!♡
There's an argentinian writer called Horacio Quiroga, his stories are pretty commonly read in high school as well. They're fun and have a kind of light, innocent tone, but they're all actually pretty horrible. I never really stopped to think about big thematic messages in them (i should reread them), but they certainly are impactful, and the world they're in is kind of fascinating. They have a sort of myth, fairy tale or fable logic but everything that happens is almost needlessly cruel. Dunno why they made us read it.
A short story that had a big emotional impact on me when i read it in high school was Where are you going, where have you been?
this was a great video! would love to see a part 2
I love falling asleep to these videos
Using "the crown" for "royalty" is metonymy, not synechdoche. Using "threads" for "clothes" or "wheels" for "car" is synechdoche. The difference is subtle but crucial for literary critics.
What exactly is the difference between synecdoche and metonymy? I dont rlly understand the difference from the examples given?
@makiroll5827 Metonymy is when you represent something with an object closely associated with it. Synechdoche is when you represent something with the parts that make it up and vice versa. Similar, yes, but different in an important way.
My favourite writer is Flannery O’Connor, I discovered one of her stories online by chance and was completely hooked.
Surprised you didn't go with 'A Sound of Thunder' for the one Bradbury short story, since it's probably his most famous (that Treehouse of Horror segment helps). However, I can definitely see your point about 'The Veldt' feeling more relevant in this day and age
You should do more rankings, especially of individual authors like Poe. As for the list, I would put the Lottery in the top tier. It is such a universal and timeless story that you would think it was written hundreds of years ago. I would also add Chicamauga by Ambrose Bierce, another writer who deserves more attention. I have never heard of The Scarlet Ibis but thanks to your video I will certainly read it.
for your consideration, here is a bit i already wrote about the monkey's paw a while back. For context, I broke the story up into three parts:
The Promise - The Author makes clear to the Reader what the Reader should expect to be scared of. This family will make a wish that goes badly
The Performance - The Author frightens the Reader in the way they promised they would. The wish’s fulfillment gruesomely kills their son.
The Punchline - The Author recontextualizes the nature of the Promise in a way that disorients the reader. Attempting to wish their son back brings them back as they currently are.
And my analysis went as follows:
The multifaceted horror-idea in The Monkey’s Paw is that altering fate comes with a price. This is conveyed by the Promise.
The first prong of this idea is displayed with The Performance, where wishing for modest wealth carries the greater cost of losing a loved one.
The second prong of this idea is that some wishes are inherently costly or contradictory, conveyed when wishing a lost loved one back to one’s life is taken to its literal, horrific extreme.
The reader could have assumed this was the direction the story would take as soon as the Paw was introduced, but the Performance focuses on the first prong sharply enough for the second prong’s introduction in the Punchline to feel momentous and dramatic.
This is a good example of a story which chooses to elaborate on previously held information, rather than introduce new information, to the same shocking effect.
Love this! Great breakdown
I remember reading “the necklace” and not liking it for similar reasons, it felt like the author was really trying to make us hate the mc just because she wanted to enjoy herself and have fun for once. Plus the story feels like suffering for suffering’s sake, I understand that the author was trying to make the story realism and go against the romanticized escapism but still.
the scarlet ibis was one of my favorites from freshman year. it has a lot to analyze and really stuck with me. doodle deserved better.
all summer in a day genuinely upset me so much in fifth grade or whenever tf that was. i still think about margot locked in that closet
Would love your thoughts on The Yellow Wallpaper and Lamb to the Slaughter!
So I read a short story for a test in freshman English, and I could have sworn it was called the Harvest. I've tried to find it online, but the wrong stories keep coming up. From what I remember, the story followed a young boy living in a rural American farm town after all the crops had just been harvested. The boy notices a man, sort of the town's recluse, would go into the fields alone only to return with nothing changed. Following him one day, the boy sees the man bury his arm in the tilled Earth with an empty coffee can. It's unclear why the man does this, but he's visibly euphoric. Once the man leaves, the boy tries it for himself. Once his arm is buried, the boy can feel movement in the ground. It's almost like the Earth is settling after just being tilled for the harvest, like a fire burning down to coals.
Again, I could have sworn that this story was called the Harvest, but I read it all the way back in 2017 so I must be wrong. If anyone recognizes the story, please let me know. I would love to read it again. Thank you!
P.S.
I'd like to also submit Bradbury's Kaleidoscope, for some reason it struck a cord with me more than the Velt or his other short stories did.
This comment made me curious, so I tried my hand at Googling the story and I think I found it!! It is called Harvest, written by Tomás Rivera; the plot summary seemed right, but I haven't read the whole thing yet!
@@gracegrrl007 Thank you so much dude
love your vids!!!
havent watched the video yet but İ hope that disturbing story they told me in middle school about a family who went to mexico where the parents got murdered in a hotel and the hotel covered it up by changing the wallpaper.... it was crazy
This is goated, I wish people ranked this type of stuff more often
Did you ever read "Chickamauga"? Along with The Most Dangerous Game, those two stick out in my memory from my childhood.
I think about "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl on a weekly basis
The rain falls softly… by ray bradbury
I reread The Artist of the Beautiful recently and while it's a little simplistic and angsty, it really resonated with how I've been feeling lately about trying to pursue creativity under capitalism and productivity culture.
On the note of The Necklace and beauty, that hasnt actually changed. All our beauty models, our gorgeous celebrities, our presentable top businessmen are all extremely wealthy and spend a lot of money that most people cant afford on entire curated lifestyles and surgeries to keep looking young.
People working the bad, basic, necessary and overwhelming common jobs look normal at their best and clearly worn down most of the time. You can tell a 50 year old celebrity actor and a 50 year old checkout clerk apart in seconds, it hasnt changed
I did the lottery twice in high school.
I think it does a really effective job at making a point through a metaphor, but other than that metaphor there dosnt seem to be that much.
I would put it in a tier.
We didn't read any of these either, it's interesting how much schools will favour works from their own country and culture. We read very little from American authors.
man I genuinely do not understand the love for The Scarlet Ibis no matter how hard I've tried. It's just wayy too ableist to me. I think if the story was written from Doodle's POV I would love it, but as it stands, Doodle just feels a pitiable plot device who exists just to die and teach the horrible narrator a lesson.
I feel like the odd one out because man i did not care for The Lottery, but I also had the ending spoiled for me. Felt too on the nose i suppose.
I was lucky to read The Lottery without spoilers. It's well-written and explores important topics well, but the ending itself wasn't especially impactful. I was familiar with The Purge and The Hunger Games series' inspired by The Lottery, so the reveal was somewhat predictable.
I found the reread a lot more meaningful: knowing the full story, it got me to think about how tradition is discussed, and the Lotteries that make up our own society
it was fun video. please do it again when able.
Due to my username, I am disappointed in your ranking of The Most Dangerous Game, but I see where you’re coming from, and I respect your opinion. That being said, be careful the next time you’re on the open ocean.
5/8; only 3 more years 2 go yippie
i would love to hear your take on Gregory by Panos Ioannides. i read it in eleventh grade and i think about it all the time.
How'd you pick 'the Veldt' over Bradbury's other bangers that show up in short fiction collections like 'All in a summer day', and 'A sound of thunder'?
Edit: Also I really like how most of the adaptations you picked were all pretty old and felt like the kind of stuff a teacher would wheel out a tv cart to show
You make very nice videos. I wish your music was a bit more quiet, as i enjoy falling asleep to your videos. Good job nonetheless
I have to read pride and prejudice and Oliver Twist on apple book. I do mostly read on actual book.
Harrison Bergeron ranking when?
you should start a podcast
Maybe this is just me but I actually was not a fan of Scarlet Ibis when I read it and having reread it after watching this video, I still don't like it. Out of the ones listed I would give Amontillado the S tier rather than Ibis and give Ibis a low C tier. This could easily be down to personal experience since I was an only child who grew up without siblings /and/ I was an unathletic, fragile, but clever little freak who was often bullied in a manner similar to the way the brother does (being tricked into chasing the more athletic kids around because they knew they could turn my fragile body into a perpetual motion machine and point + laugh.) While the technical aspects of Scarlet Ibis are indeed quite good (the quote cited in the video is a quite good one!), from that dual perspective it kind of doesn't click for me as something to be sympathetic to the narrator for, nor does it read like a tragedy. It just reads like an obscenely kid realizing that his actions have consequences, and further, it even reads to me like he never /actually/ cared about Doodle at all, no matter how guilty he feels. Does he feel guilty that his brother died, or does he feel guilty that there will be consequences from their family and the world after this? Based on his behavior to that point, I tend to read it as the latter, and that just makes the story feel even more vile in a way that isn't lampshaded or borne out by the text itself the way some other narratives about bad people do (like, for example, the ambiguity in Amontillado and the creeping doubt of what someone could have done to warrant what Montresor ends up doing to Fortunato. Amontillado also gets my gold medal for the gruesomeness of Fortunato's inevitably slow death and how hauntingly it's described, the premeditation that clearly went into it from Montresor, all of the things that Poe doesn't really elaborate on- or need to- but that leave you thinking about it for a while afterward.)