24 Jan Short Story Analysis
Analysis of “The School”
The story I read is called “The School” from Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme. It starts by introducing the setting, which is a classroom, and the narrator reveals himself as the teacher. He goes through all the things that have recently died in the classroom, starting with simple things like plants and gerbil pets, to more intense things like the students’ family members and an adopted kid from Korea. He goes through all these deaths as if they were just coincidences, or bad luck, which gives the story a humorous tone. He then proceeds to talk about a deep conversation with the students about life and death, and which gives meaning to which. Then the kids ask the teacher to “make love” to Helen, the teaching assistant, and he says no, but they proceed to embrace and kiss. Then there’s a knock on the door and a new gerbil walks in.
The story moves the reader forward with humor, and doesn’t have a traditional storyline. The climax is the part where they talk about death and life and how “death, considered as a fundamental datum, [is] the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday “. In that part, you can just feel the tension in the conversation between the students and the teacher.
What makes it interesting and special is the fact that the whole story juxtaposes children and death, which are two topics that aren’t usually in the same story, presented in this way. There’s a turning point at which the children move on from the topic of death, and start asking the teacher to make love to Helen (which makes them seem like they want to see some life). In the story, the balance of the conversation of the children between the darkness of death and the darkness of reality of sex, or “making love”, is interesting. It’s almost as if they weren’t scared of either anymore. The ending with the gerbil walking in represents the opportunity for more life to come, even in that dark, depressing school where everything seems to perish.
Here is a link to the story.
