The school donald barthelme. Story of the Week: The School 2022-12-24
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Donald Barthelme was a renowned American author and literary critic known for his unconventional and experimental writing style. One of his most famous works is a short story called "The School," which was published in the 1970s. In this essay, I will analyze the themes and techniques used in "The School" and discuss its lasting impact on contemporary literature.
"The School" is a satirical and surreal depiction of a school that is run in a bizarre and nonsensical manner. The story follows the narrator, who is a student at the school, as she tries to navigate the confusing and chaotic environment. The school is filled with strange and absurd rules, such as a ban on the use of proper nouns, and the teachers and administrators are depicted as being tyrannical and oppressive.
One of the main themes in "The School" is the absurdity of bureaucracy and the way in which it can stifle creativity and individuality. The school is run by a group of authoritarian figures who seem more interested in enforcing rules and regulations than in fostering a positive learning environment. The narrator and other students are constantly thwarted in their attempts to think and act independently, and they are forced to conform to the school's rigid and nonsensical rules.
Barthelme uses a range of literary techniques to convey the absurdity of the school and the oppressive nature of its administration. For example, he employs surreal and absurd imagery to create a sense of disorientation and confusion. He also uses irony and satire to highlight the ridiculousness of the school's rules and the absurdity of the characters' actions.
"The School" is a powerful and thought-provoking work that continues to be relevant and influential today. Its portrayal of bureaucracy and conformity is particularly relevant in the current political and social climate, and its experimental and unconventional style has inspired countless other writers to push the boundaries of traditional literary forms. Overall, "The School" is a testament to Barthelme's unique talent as a writer and his ability to shed light on important social and cultural issues through his art.
Short Story Analysis: The School by Donald Barthelme
The beginning and middle of the story present an escalating list of deaths. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the grandparents, or maybe it was heavier this year, it seemed so. Although he continued to take classes until 1957, he never received a degree. One of the other children lost his father, who was killed by a masked intruder in his home. In just a little more than 1,200 words, the tale describes an elementary school beset by a series of escalating disasters. According to some philosophers, the postmodernist movement is characterized by a disconnection from the real. And finally the tragedy.
A Summary and Analysis of Donald Barthelme’s ‘The School’
Typical elements represented in postmodern works include flattened emotions, or a lack of emotional depth; fragmentation, with no attempt to find meaning in chaos; a foregrounding of artifice, in which the artist calls attention to devices that prove the work isn't a real representation; a rejection of authority or objective truth; and self-referentiality, or a reference to the process of creating the work. Then there was a knock on the door, I opened the door, and the new gerbil walked in. Perhaps she loves him, or perhaps she, like Edgar, simply goes along with what other people want. Instead, he presents a few collective questions, as if all the children have the same thoughts on the subject. Then, when the children stopped talking like children, I started wondering if this was some kind of school for aliens, or something. However, it does reflect real people's behavior. Want it on your Kindle? We don't know why they died, they just died.
Then children start to ask questions about death, the narrator tells them he does not know the answers. I was not clever or sophisticated enough, not free enough in spirit and imagination, insufficiently steeped in world literature and music and, especially, in the visual arts, even to approach the kind of arch and high-gloss and often brilliant literary maneuvers of which Barthelme was master. When the children pressure Edgar and Helen to make love, they do not mention that sex can create new life. And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life. The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? I said, it is.
It is fairly short. Schools are also places of learning; in this case, the school is where children learn the inevitable lesson that life ends in death. This tiny little story has a lovely, optimistic theme, and the laid-back writing style really works in small doses, reading like a transcribed excerpt from a casual conversation. Like Edgar, Helen shows no outrage at the students' demand. Helen looked out the window. What also bothered me is how the kids suddenly became almost like philosophers.
“The School” by Donald Barthelme, Sample of Essays
If you're familiar with Margaret Atwood's short story " The request from the now-surreal children for the teacher to make love with the teaching assistant seems to be a quest for the opposite of death—an attempt to find "that which gives meaning to life. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing. But the lesson plan called for a tropical-fish input at that point, there was nothing we could do, it happens every year, you just have to hurry past it. I don't like to think about sabotage, although it did occur to us. Distemper is a serious, highly fatal disease that often affects dogs. They do not seem to show concern that a replacement child might be fated to die too.
. Once back, he continued his studies at the University of Houston studying philosophy. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the grandparents, or maybe it was heavier this year, it seemed so. Barthelme's stories typically avoid traditional plot structures, relying instead on a steady accumulation of seemingly unrelated detail. The entrance of the gerbil at the end of the story is bizarre and inscrutable. It was something you could explain to the kids because of the strike. Of course we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise.
The contemporary writer George Saunders suggests that Barthelme is asking these questions himself, essentially writing out the questions his story has driven him to ask. But I think that the snakes — well, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that… you remember, the boiler was shut off for four days because of the strike, and that was explicable. Well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags. And they said, who knows? Despite the grim subject matter, the horror in the book is casually dismissed in order to focus on the positives. So, I have no idea why the kids' pets and adopted Korean children keep dying, and I sure as heck don't know why the kids asked their teachers to make love to each other in front of them, so they know how it's done.
I suspect the absence of such tenderness and affection is a major reason why people turn to heavy drinking and other numbing remedies. The children in "The School" reach for sexual pleasure as an antidote to their fear of death. What started as a sad yet intriguing story ended up becoming something quite disturbing. The children are excited by this demonstration, and cheer when the next class pet — another gerbil — arrives. And finally the tragedy. And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life. We were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the white mice had died, and the salamander … well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags.
A series of failed classroom experiments from trees, reptiles, a puppy, fish, a gerbil all ending in death, escalates to the dying of humans. They don't argue that sexual pleasure can provide a distraction from the inevitability of death. The tone of this paragraph becomes more solemn. Just as Edgar is unable to explain the mysteries or complexities of death to the children likewise religion too may not necessarily be able to explain or reassure an individual when it comes to understanding death. And the trees all died. French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard 1929—2007 claimed that in postmodernity, artists have completely lost contact with the real; consumerism and mediatization have made people so reliant on virtual representations that those representations of reality have replaced reality itself. Maybe this gerbil is fated to die immediately, just like all the others, or maybe the discussions and kisses of the last few paragraphs have ended the string of bad luck, so that this gerbil will live a happy and fulfilled life.
In analyzing "The School," readers must be aware that a typical story shows a positive change in the main characters as they rise to the challenges presented in the story. In this respect their response seems more in line with nihilism, a school of thought that suggests there are no moral truths and that life is ultimately without meaning or purpose. Barthelme also wrote the non-fiction book Guilty Pleasures 1974. The story, set on a normal day in a school, begins with the narrator who is a teacher telling us about the children planting orange trees. By focusing on the mundane lesson about the plastic bag, the teacher misses the bigger point that the students are learning about the inevitability and finality of death. It would be reasonable to doubt whether any adults in the world of this story can help the children answer their questions about mortality.
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