• AngryCommieKender@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    The Veldt, by Ray Bradbury.

    They didn’t make everyone read it though, just us “gifted/advanced” kids. It was one of several short stories that were in a special program book that I had to read.

    I still think those kids were brats.

    Edit: just looked it up and this was supposed to be 9th grade English??? We fucking had to read that as 5th graders.

    Edit 2: I need to stop thinking about this, they also made us read All Summer in a Day, Flowers for Algernon, and The Tell Tale Heart in that class

    • shuzuko@midwest.socialEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      This was the one. Every once in a while my brain just says “hey, remember that fucked up story where the kids had a smart room that became whatever they wanted and it spoiled them to the point they murdered their parents with lions? Wasn’t that fucked up? Let’s think about how fucked up it was for a while!”

      It was 7th grade for me, but still, I can’t believe we read that as kids.

      • kvasir476@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        It’s been near 15 years since I read it, but it’s kind of a cautionary tale about tradition, superstition, and how easily humans succumb to their base impulses and can commit insane violence.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Hmm, for short stories, it’s probably “The Most Dangerous Game.”

    Plot with massive spoilers

    MC is a big game hunter traveling by boat to the Amazon to hunt jaguar. He is warned by locals about a local island called Ship-Trap island. He falls overboard and swims to Ship-Trap island, where there’s a big mansion inhabited by General Zaroff, another big game hunter. Zaroff explains that he got bored of hunting animals and set up the island to attract ships, and when a ship wrecks on the island, he gives the sailors a knife and a head start, and if they can survive 3 days, they are set free. Zaroff then sets off to hunt them with a small caliber pistol.

    Plot happens, and at the end the MC makes it look like he committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. Zaroff returns home, and the MC is waiting for him in his bedroom. Zaroff congratulates him, but the MC says the hunt isn’t over, and we see the MC sleeping in Zaroffs bed at the end of the story.

    The themes are pretty disturbing if you stop to think about it, and even if you don’t, there’s a fair amount of violence.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        If I hadn’t been really into Tom Clancy novels, it probably would’ve scarred me for life. But I was already reading about terrorists trying to mass-genocide most of the planet (Rainbow Six) and assassins shooting people in the eyes at near-point blank (forget the specific book), so a little gore didn’t phase me.

  • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    We had to read a story in 10th grade about this family that’s out on a road trip when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. A car pulls up and the driver steps out to assist the family. However, the grandmother (who up to this point was doing nothing but bitch and whine about everything) recognizes the stranger as a wanted criminal she saw on TV and stupidly points this out to everybody. Which naturally results in the entire family being executed one-by-one because they’re now witnesses.

    A whole family erased, just because granny couldn’t keep her fat mouth shut for 5 minutes.

    • IzzyScissor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Hadn’t read it before, so I just did. (It’s only 13 pages)

      !Not only did Grandma call out the misfit to everyone, she caused the car accident in multiple ways: Bringing a cat on the trip, directing the family down a dirt road to a place she misremembered from a different state, scaring the cat enough that it clawed her son, the driver, in the shoulder, causing the car to flip and THEN was willing to sell out her entire family to survive.!<

      Fuck grandma.

  • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.ukEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    “The Darkness Out There” by Penelope Lively.

    In short, a “nice old lady” tells a couple of young kids about what they did to a young German who survived a plane crash over Britain during WW2.

    I think it was there for the “the nice old lady was actually nasty and cruel and the evil nazi was actually just a scared, fairly innocent boy”.

  • MehBlah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    A retiring teacher at our school had his class read a story that lit a fire under a bunch of parents. It was The Star by Arthur C. Clarke