Heather on "The School" by Donald Barthelme

It's really strange the way humor manifests itself in us. At first, I took this story pretty seriously. Actually, it even made my skin crawl at first, especially from the revelation of the mass deaths of trees to the mass deaths of snakes... and then mice and salamanders and gerbils. I was wondering what was wrong with this school (since the title is "The School" especially) but once I got to the part where they adopted a Korean kid named Kim, I couldn't help but let out a little laugh. Not because the idea of an orphan dying is funny, but because a class adopting a kid just seemed absurd and unrealistic. However, once I got up to reading about the parents, my mood turned somber again and I once again found the story creepy. The abrupt and volatile changes in my mood surprised me.
Then, later towards the end of the story, where the kids asked Edgar to "make love" with Helen, I was a bit confused. Because these kids are called "kids" and they have class pets, I was imagining them to be little children, but they spoke like adults. And because the narrator refers to them as "they" when speaking, as if they are one collective whole who are droning on at the same time, it creeped me out even more, and made me wonder if the kids were actually the ones who may be responsible for the weird things happening at the school.

"Happy Endings" by Margaret Atwood response

Hi, this is Carson.
I think "Happy Endings" is sort of a story about stories. It reminds me of the fairytale ending "they lived happily ever after", which I always hated when I was younger because it doesn't make sense; obviously people get old and die, and anyways doesn't living happily get boring after a while?
Margaret Atwood more or less dismisses endings in general. Two things in particular stand out to me. First, the way that mundane worries are tied in with highly dramatic scenes is interesting. In about three pages, there's a murder and two suicides, and real estate values are also mentioned twice. The same words, "stimulating and challenging", vague words that often lack meaning to begin with (as in college applications, for example), are used to describe everything from hobbies to the main characters' sex life. Second is (obviously) the structure. It resembles a "choose your own adventure" book at the start, except you don't actually get any choices in the story. I'm not usually a fan of unusual structures (I have to admit, I like a plot) but I think the contrast between the author's cynical voice and the structure that parallels a not very literary or serious genre works quite nicely.

Hi this is Charlie.

“Happy Endings” is an ironic title. It mocks the idea of a happy ending, emphasized by the simplistic and repetitive description of the story that supposedly ends happily: the generically named John and Mary “fall in love and get married” (265), a very simple way of describing what is usually a story in itself, and find their jobs and later their hobbies “stimulating and challenging” (265). The author’s tone describing the happy ending is very dismissive. She furthers her dismissal of happy endings by creating various other scenarios all resulting in the first, but becoming increasingly ridiculous and tragic--by scenario “D” thousands of people drown in a random tidal wave and the two main characters, now named Fred and Madge, survive and move to their happy ending (267). The author mocks the happy ending by showing its cause to be something far more interesting and powerful--the death of thousands--making the ending seem superficial and unimportant. Moreover, by moving the same ending across multiple stories, the author increases its superficiality. But the final ironic touch is written in italics: “John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die” (268). The only real ending, the one that will not, like the others, seem superficial and meaningless, is death. Thus, the only real ending is not a happy one.

“The School” by Donald Barthelme

Hi, this is Lucy Liang. This story is written in a very casual way. Barthelme also uses “you” throughout this first person narrative. I read it as if “you” is directed at me, and felt very involved with the situation. The narrator talks about the deaths that had occurred in this school, but starting with plants, even though it sets up a sad and depressing tone, I didn’t feel much affect by it. As the story goes on, the narrator talks about deaths one after another, from trees to snakes to fish to puppies, and then to human beings, from orphan to parents, and to kids from the class, which becomes more and more relatable, and the impact of the deaths becomes increasingly greater. Just as I thought was the end of this list of deaths, there comes more. This puts the reader in a very depressed mood, but at the same time, I start to wonder how closely did these deaths happen?  If we think back a long time and count all the deaths we have experienced it isn’t necessarily less than what the narrator has told us. At the end of the story, the discussion about life and death with the children makes me think. What is the meaning of death? What about life? We do, indeed, need an assertion of value constantly. That is what the new gerbil did, no matter if it’ll die in the end.

Happy Endings - Josephine Surer

I enjoyed this story a lot because I didn't really see it as a story but more of a list of different outcomes. We never got any type of characterization of the characters, instead we got their reactions to different types of situations. The sentences were all very short which added a lot to the instruction manual feeling. I also thought this technique made the story kind of depressing; the quick sum up of the reactions of characters we don't know anything about made their lives sound very short and only based on those events. What added to this dryness was also the fact that there is no dialogue or physical reactions of the characters. The reader sees the characters more as fictional objects and less of possible people.

Happy Endings- Vedica Bhasin

Hi this is Vedica

   Happy Endings was one of my favorite stories this semester- in a short space it touches upon the realities of long term relationships while taking into account different perspectives of both men and women and the obstacles the social construction of long term relationships and marriage creates for them and the different manners in which each deals with their circumstances. The irony of the story lies in the title- no one really ends up happy; that is if you interpret "stimulating and challenging" as monotony as I did. 

The writer intelligibly embeds identifiable themes that manage to engage the reader through the story. For instance, the use of “real estate” as a symbol for economic standing reiterated the importance of money in a stable relationship. This was further re-emphasized when John didn’t “even consider her worth the price of a dinner out.” This technique greatly complemented the underlying theme of realism through the story. Additionally, by focusing on the insecurities of each of character; aging for John in C “in two years he’ll be bald as an egg and can’t stand it”, marriage for Mary “She hopes he’ll discover her and get her to the hospital in time and repent and then they can get married.” etc, the manner in which the writer builds the characters, each of whom are representative of daily realistic problems makes the characters all the more identifiable, engaging readers further.

   

The School

This is Lena Gruber.

"The School," by Donald Barthlme, is a short story that is narrated by a teacher of a school. The narrator is speaking directly to the reader using "you" and even expects the reader to fill in what the narrator leaves out. He uses "you know" even though the reader does not actually know and must imagine what the narrator means and must make his/her own assumptions about the bizarre deaths that are taking place within the school or that are connected to the school somehow.
The narrator speaks about the deaths casually, never really questioning whether the deaths are due to the class' behavior in someway; it is the job of the reader to question the deaths if he/she wishes to. The story thus depends on the reader's assumption and will to fill in the blanks. The reader must make sense of the story that doesn't exactly have a conclusion/resolution because there really isn't one given by the narrator, which links back to the confusion that the class has between the meaning of death and life due to their teacher.
In conclusion, the reader plays an important role in the story.