• Nounka@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 days ago

    It was not in English… But we had to read the golden egg. Story about a guy who s girl is missing. He keeps looking for her. Has driems about them being close together but not seeing the other. . At the end he finds a guy who sais he can do the same to him as he did to the girlfriend. Last you know he is like burried…

  • JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org
    4·
    2 days ago

    Oh man, let’s talk about short stories that defined my taste in literature!

    • To Build A Fire: definitely built a fascination in me of the morbid and got me way more into survivalism than quick sand ever did. I live in a cold place too and that put it well into perspective how dangerous that can be.

    • The Sniper: This was my start into war literature, and what a good start. I keep coming back to this one when I hear people talk about a civil war in the US. It’s more unsettling now than ever before.

    • The Lottery. How couldn’t that be on the list?

    • Cask of Amontillado: big vibes. Poe made me goth-brained no doubt.

    Our school also had us read Robert Frost. Really great way to introduce kids to the idea that ‘some folks just kinda wanna die all the time’. That and why child labor laws are good and important.

  • ouRKaoS
    491·
    4 days ago

    A Modest Proposal traumatized one girl in my class.

    We all had to write our own versions, trade them randomly, and read them aloud. She ended up with mine: Have the death row inmates build a prison on the moon, then turn off their air supply to complete their sentence. (Wrote it before I’d read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)

    She finished reading, and exclaimed “What is WRONG with you!?” She knew it was mine because of how hard I was laughing at her panic.

    I was outdone by the quiet girl who included a recipe for “kitten kurry” in her essay though. I really should have tried to get with her, lol.

    • AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip
      14·
      4 days ago

      If we’re talking the one by Dr. Johnathan Swift, about selling poor people babies and kids for food, then I absolutely agree. I just found and read it on Gutenberg and it was a little disturbing, in an interesting but absolutely messed up way.

      • ouRKaoS
        10·
        4 days ago

        That’s the one! It was an honors English class & the topic for the week was satire. The teacher had print copies of The Onion that were being passed around the class and I was cracking up the whole time.

    • Inucune@lemmy.world
      9·
      4 days ago

      Was on my way to post this. Revisited in ethics 101 in college, and again in ethics in technology(uni). ‘Harm reduction’ is the answer you are looking for, because no matter how perfect you think your ethic framework is, nature and bad actors will never respect it or take responsibility. Reality mocks philosophy’s ‘utopias.’

      • pyre@lemmy.world
        3·
        3 days ago

        I like the other interpretation, where the writer inserts the suffering so you the reader would find it more believable because you’ve been conditioned to accept that we can’t have a good society without making at least some people suffer for it.

      • ninjabard@lemmy.world
        4·
        4 days ago

        Somebody always suffers in a utopia. That’s why othering people is the first step in taking away rights. Gestures very loudly at current events

    • EvanescentWave@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      We actually had to read that for our English course. What still haunts me is how weird random German words look in an English book. Like they’re not supposed to be there

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
    12·
    3 days ago

    Turkish elementary-school books.

    Wanna read about a small girl getting beat up by her dad and kicked out before freezing to death as she vividly imagines her dead grandma and lighting matchsticks to prolong her suffering for 20 pages?

    I think author was either Russian or Danish. Still no clue why that was a required read at age of 7 in my school.