Rating the short stories I had to read for English class

If you didn’t know already, I’m Dutch. We have English classes at school, but we don’t have any English-Lit lessons until we’re in junior year (which I am in now).

But my English teacher from sophomore year, God bless her (Miss Dirks, if you read this, thank you so much, for everything!) thought it would be cool to introduce some short stories. Which I was fricking happy about, but the rest of the class really was not.

Anyway, the point is that we had to answer some questions about a certain short story every week.

It seemed fun to me to rate those short stories and tell you whether I would or would not recommend them!

So here we go:

The Sniper

First up is The sniper, by Liam O'Flaherty. I personally didn’t really like this story.

It’s about a sniper from one of the two armies in the Irish Civil War. I won’t go in detail about the plot, but it comes down to the fact that there’s a hostile sniper on the building across of him and the ‘good’ sniper has to escape without getting shot.

The big pro in this story is the description of the area and the scenery. What I also liked the way the emotions of the sniper are described, it is a whole rollercoaster.

I kind of liked (?) the suspense in this story, which is a major point in this type of story, but it didn’t have the X-Factor for me, as it was constantly interrupted by oddly comedic things like the sniper randomly eating a sandwich (?).

What I didn’t like that much was the plot twist. I mean, the plot twist itself was cool, but it could’ve been worked out better in my opinion. That’s all on The Sniper.

The Lottery

The second story we’ve read was The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson. And, oh boy, this is a masterpiece. I love how Jackson misleads the reader with wholesome talk about families, rituals and the harvest but simultaneously gives this bad feeling in one’s gut.

I have literally no more words about it, but I absolutely fricking recommend this work of art!

The Open Window

The Open Window by Saki is so goddamn good. It’s so short and without much context, but it manages to tell the story so well and gives you so much to think about. Every time I think about it, I become speechless again. I aspire to write like that. So obviously, this is a recommendation!

The Tell-Tale Heart

And last but certainly not least, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. I love this story. I love the genre, the words used and descripiton of mental illness. I love the craziness of this story, it’s so bizarre. I’m not even going to spoil anything, you need to read this yourself and be amazed.

This are my reviews! I hope I peaked your interest in one of the stories.

Lastly, I just want to say that I’m so luckily to be able to read, to experience a book. Others