We were all out there this summer, you know, planting zucchini and sunflowers, when it happened, we fell in love. Not with each other, I don't think. I could be confused. There was a helicopter flying overhead, it was loud, I remember, and you looked up with that face you have, the one where you wrinkle your nose. There were eggplants, too, and Brandywine tomatoes. It was a full house, you would say. We didn't wear sunscreen, and that night, and many nights, our shoulders and noses ached from all the strong light. Had any of us ever seen beans sprout from the ground? How they seem so ugly at first, and then they unfold, little green bean cotyledons? Did you see their amazing wings?
The School by Donald Barthelme is a short story about a class of students whom witness an unusually high rate of death. This story focusses on the questions that are brought up around death, and hinges on the very elementary realization by children that all living things eventually come to a very definite end. For the most part, Barthelme uses the cliche of the death of the class pets, however he also pushes beyond this to the death of trees, parents, and even classmates. I believe that he does this in order to bring the same questions of death to entities that are more relatable to the reader, as well as the apply those questions of death to different age groups of people, specifically the innocence of children and the weatheredness of adults. Barthelme also mocks his use of a class of children in his analysis of death by having the class ask questions quite beyond the vocabulary and depth of thought of young students. Towards the end of his story the children ask, "Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn't death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of--" dialogue which is in turn cut off by the narrator. This abrupt end to complex philosophical discussion at first appears to be an unwillingness of the narrator to accept the intelligence of his class, but more likely, it represents the unwillingness of an adult to accept the philosophical explanation of death. The narrator is more content in simply accepting the sadness of this eventuality. Further stretching beyond the likely conversation of a elementary class, the students express desire for the narrator to have sex with his teaching assistant. This request from the class touches on the natural desire of organisms to continue life when faced with the eventuality of death. In a more metaphorical sense, the author fulfills this desire. When the narrator kisses his lab assistant a new class gerbil walks in the door. In all, this story mocks the logical reasoning for death, and focuses instead upon our acceptance of it through emotional means.
ReplyDeleteThe School
ReplyDeleteThere are three parts of this short short that resonated. The first was the overall tone and characterization of the narrator. Edgar, the narrator, seems as perplexed by the situation as the children in the school. Barthelme uses disjointed phrases, implying the narrator is someone of less maturity and understanding. For example the disbelief, “we weren’t even supposed to have a puppy.” Barthelme also presented the teacher as someone who was both unsure and unaware of how to handle most situations. For example, when the puppy died, the teacher handed off the responsibility to the janitor. Second, Barthelme uses the “royal we.” Everything that the teacher does is supported by the “we,” which one can assume is the school. This brings us to the third resonating factor, the phrase, “There is something wrong with the school.”
The story suggests that the world is split into two factions, the school children and the adults. These two voices then create the conflict, ie is there meaning to life…ect. The reason why this conflict works in the in The School, is because the voice of the adult, the character the reader would assume would be in control, or understands the situation, is the opposite. For example, the final scene where the children ask Edgar to have sex with Helen, Edgar actually engages the children’s wish by kissing and embracing her. The children have the upper hand, but aren’t benefiting from it.
Combined, the theme of the short short denotes fault in the way that children are taught in schools, the fault of the education system to place curriculum that ultimately fails to teach or reach the students, will the students have formulated their own understanding of things, which they will try and fail to teach future generations.
Donald Barthelme's "The School" is cut from the same, bizarre cloth as his other stories and not his first story about strange happenings at an elementary school. In this case, lots of death surrounds this one teacher and his class. Death is probably the biggest theme of the story as plants, class pets, parents, even an exchange student die. At the end when the children ask Edgar what the meaning of life is, Barthelme is implying that the children themselves are responsible for all the death, Edgar just assumes the kids overfed the plants or were just careless when they put the class hamster in a plastic bag. They want to know what the relationship between life and death is. But we don’t know anything of this until we hear the children talk to Edgar. We have only Edgar’s perspective on the goings-on of the classroom and it’s a great juxtaposition that little kids would talk like adults with a child’s curiosity about life and death. Doing so puts into perspective how strange it is to think about death and the meaning of life. To make things stranger, or maybe bring some normality, the story ends on the kids cheering when they see a new gerbil walking in the room. It reminds us that they’re still kids, regardless of the fact that they just had a deep, philosophical discussion they shouldn’t have been able to have, a minute ago.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the elements of Barthelme's story The School that most appeal to me speak to the ambiguous nature of reality (which in itself is an ambiguous statement, so I'll explain). Without getting too far into any existential discussion on the nature of what we refer to as "reality," I think it's important to acknowledge the fact that, in this construction of reality, humanity seeks comfort. "This is real, this is true, this is unerring and unchanging." Reality is the basis upon which we rest our conventions of morality, perceptions of time, so on and so forth. However, I feel that we often overlook the roles that perception and personal perspective play in the ways in which we view this "reality" of ours, and I think that on some levels Barthelme is playing with that. As I reread the story, I can't help but notice toward the end how jarring it is to see these children posing questions to the teacher that come from a very adult place, and I'm sure that feeling of uneasiness imparted onto the reader is fully intentional on the author's part. While listening to those children try to make sense of pressing matters such as the nature of life and death, it is almost instinctual to reject Barthelme's intentions, since this view of children does not fit comfortably into our constructed reality. Children are supposed to view life differently - they're far from jaded and lack experience, unlike adults. Naturally, according to this concept of reality, adults are therefore supposed to be the only ones questioning such matters. For me, the piece raises questions such as, "What happens when the tables turn? What would we make of a more even playing field? How much comfort can we really find in 'reality' when it comes down to it?"
ReplyDeleteI found Donald Barthelme's short story "The School" to have a cacophony of symbolism and themes throughout its few pages. During the school year, the narrator, Edgar's, class is faced with the subject of death more than a few times. From the death of class pets, trees, parents and grandparents, to the death of two classmates, the innocent children of Edgar's class are forced to experience the mature topic of death; a topic that should be far from their minds at their age. The teacher, Edgar, on the other hand, is an adult that has matured throughout his experiences during life and should have a better understanding on the subject of death, however, he seems to have just as little of an understanding as the children. He seems to not be able to understand the complexity of death and is unable to accurately describe to the students so he attempts to make a rational explanation or excuse (such as most people who do not understand the complexity of the subject they are faced with). He can be seen doing this by getting more class pets. It even seems as if, through explaining it all away, Edgar is just trying to escape death. The death of the puppy named Edgar also symbolizes the narrator's fear of death and inability to escape it through the line " We weren't even supposed to have a puppy." I also took away from the reading the symbol of the school being death. Death seems to follow the class as well as Edgar, so much so that even Edgar and the inexperienced and innocent children question it: "There is something wrong with this school." By the end of the story, the supposedly innocent children are speaking intelligently and are questioning the topics of life and death that even Edgar can't explain, as if this experience of life and death matured them. They even question and go so far as to ask Edgar to make love with Helen so that they can observe it, as if they were made more adult, in turn, bringing themselves closer to death.
ReplyDeleteDonald Barthelme's The School is a short story that serves as commentary on just how limited we are as adults in explaining to children how the world works. As an adult, the teacher, Edgar, is just trying to teach his students about responsibility and growing up and how the world is supposed to go. If his students take care of the trees, the fish, the gerbils, the puppy, etc., these things will grow older and be healthy. Then, when the kids do the best they can (which isn't perfect, because everything is a learning experience) and everything dies -- then what? How does a teacher explain that what is supposed to happen so often just doesn't happen? Edgar tries to justify all of these deaths -- the minor and the very tragic. He expected this to happen because he doesn't have the unfailing optimism of these kids who just expect the best outcome. Eventually, he runs out of reasons why these things happen, and I felt like that transition from the acceptance of death as a totally reasonable part of life to the admittance that even adults like Edgar don't know why the universe works this way was the best part of this story because if juggles so much symbolic meaning, but also functions as a narrative gesture. Then, once Edgar just admits that it's all a part of being alive, the kids ask about making love -- an implication life is characterized by so much more than simply not being dead or experiencing the dying of those around us.
ReplyDeleteWhat struck me the most about this story is how it explores such a cliche idea in a way that is authentic and optimistic and grounded in truth.
In some ways, I think that the idea behind Donald Barthelme's "The School" is that of questioning our idea of what death is and the way we think about it. From the beginning, the nonchalance of the speaker seems jarring as he talks about one bizarre death after another. The progression of tragedies from minor to severe becomes unsettling and culminates in a dialogue between the teacher and his students. This conversation is odd, because the roles and language of teacher and student seem to have reversed, the students asking the ridiculous scholarly questions, while the teacher's answers are unsure and incomplete. I think in some ways this makes us aware of the different ways we talk about what death is and what it represents and how a lot of the time that involves unanswerable questions and the examination of an idea that can't be quantified. The almost mocking tone of this dialogue is I think what makes the whole story come together as a questioning of the ways things are usually done in dealing with and conceptualizing death. There's usually a strict formula for grief which this story completely ignores, and I think that's really interesting. Instead of focusing of the effects of death or the messy details of death, the story tries to zero in on what death is on a very basic level without any of the philosophical complications or analysis by the living. In the school, death is nothing but sudden non-existence, with nothing the narrator or the children could do to prevent or cause it. Death is seen in a matter-of-fact way, as something that is just there without any lasting repercussions for the narrator or the students. Death can't be understood or quantified, and trying to do so just leaves everyone perplexed and seeming almost silly. "The School" is very much exploratory and surreal, and I think Barthelme is using this surreality and the medium of the short story to poke fun at a big issue that everyone fears to think about.
ReplyDeleteBarthelme's "The School" was an intriguing yet perplexing short story that discussed the nature of death, life and ultimately, how the two are intertwined. As previously addressed, the story focuses on the rather odd occurrences taking place at a school and how Edgar the schoolteacher grapples with the task of explaining to his students the rhyme and reason of death.
ReplyDeleteSomething that stood out to me, as mentioned by Christine, is the elusive “we” that Edgar continually mentions. Who is we? I assume the school faculty as a whole or perhaps just Edgar and Helen, or a union? It is never addressed leaving the reader wondering just who is Edgar associated with? Barthelme also breaks the wall between the reader and the page as he frequently makes commentary such as “you remember” “some of them probably…you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren’t looking” casually in the middle of paragraphs without further explanation, creating an almost subtle familiarity between reader and writer. I also feel it should be pointed out that this is a story rich with humor. Barthelme somewhat remarkably tackles the ominous topic of death while poking fun at trying to decipher its cause and effect.
Ultimately, the story comes down to this: “Where did they go?” “I don’t know, nobody knows.” The line “life is that which gives meaning to life” ties the story together nicely as it seamlessly explains the continuation of life and death and their synonymous relationship, the cliché “circle of life” comes to mind. Death is the inexplicable, outlying variable. The only solution to death is new life…sometimes in the form of a pet gerbil.
The non-traditional way in which this story is written gives it the same type of flow as a word-of-mouth conversation. In this case on the receiving end the listener would already have some sort of context that would be traditionally given in a written story; however, in the case of this story the reader’s only sense of setting is that it is at a school (possibly in an area with a British vernacular from the use of the word "bloody"), and that there was some sort of strike. The reader doesn't even really need this information to go off to understand the story since a majority of it is spent telling instead of showing the reader what is going on. This somewhat lack of information, along with the uncomplicated language used in the beginning, led me to think that the character ‘Edgar’ was a child especially since he was so informally introduced by his first name. Eventually, in about the middle of paragraph four the reader is given enough info to understand that he was the teacher, but in a way I kind of wish the author left out the context clues so we would never really know who the narrator was.
ReplyDeleteFrom the amount of death in the lives of the children in the classroom, they were bound to ask questions and although, I do agree with Nick when he said in his comment that “this story mocks the logical reasoning for death” what I really liked about the end was that he didn’t give them the things happen for a reason spiel or tell them that they go to heaven or hell or that nothing happens at all; instead, he gives them a real answer: that honestly he doesn’t know and, in fact, no one does. The curiosity of the students is even more blatant in the last few lines when they ask him to “make love” or have sex with the teaching assistant Helen was so unexpected and wrong and weird, but I think the innocence of the children not comprehending what sex is and how adult relationships are ultimately more complicated than liking each other, along with Helen’s act of embracing him first showed that in a way it does not need to be that complicated. That life and death are not so complicated. And that for a brief second the classroom dynamic changed and the students really taught the teacher something.
Donald Barthelme contributes to the timeless theme of life and death by presenting the reader with "The School". The context of the plot is simple enough- a school is plagued with a series of unfortunate deaths which leave the children to ask their teacher Edgar,the narrator, simply "Where did they go?".
ReplyDeleteThe question is innocent, appropriate but also at the same time too direct to be given any sufficient answer. After all, what answer is sufficient enough to give to a child whose mind is still too young and innocent to grasp the concept of death? There is none. For that, Edgar can only answer "I don't know, I don't know." And for that matter, do we as the readers know? It truly makes us wonder exactly how do we as human beings approach the delicate matter of life and death? As the story progressed, the sensitive issues presented to Edgar escalates from a tree not sprouting to being asked to demonstrate sex to his students. The shock value just kept growing and growing to the point where it was almost expected.
That is what I grasped from this piece of work. Barthelme's story wasn't overly complex nor did it follow the traditional set of prose we are used to reading. Instead, his direct approach of narrative brought a sense of familiarity between the reader and the story, allowing for a strong response that reality is harsh and no one is protected from it- not even innocent school children.
What struck me the most about this story is the voice Barthelme used. Edgar speaks as the mouthpiece of the adult world observing children's experience of life and death. He relays the facts of what happened, why he thought it happened, and what he thought about it without acknowledging or including the children's feelings and reactions to the deaths. This is Barthelme displaying the way adults sometimes view children as tiny humans with less intense feelings. When The children's voice does manage to get through, it becomes apparent that they are affected by all of this death and they have questions about the world that adults never seem to want to answer fully. They don't speak the way children normally do though, so Edgar can't edge around it they way adult often do. Barthelme uses him as the voice of adulthood who knows no more about death than the children do and very little more about love. The next gerbil that walks into the classroom only functions as a distraction from the deeper questions the children have. They will grow up to have no better answers to give their children than Edgar could give them.
ReplyDeleteMany stories touch (even vaguely) to the concept of life and death, but Barthelme does so in a way that is both obvious and in a way cliche, yet makes it completely new and interesting. We all have learned in school the general idea of life and death, and we have also seen in other forms of entertainment (television, plays, etc) how it is this mysterious thing that nobody knows much about. Barthelme combines these two common places for the discussion in an interesting way, as a teacher who is questioning why this is happening, if there is some sort of otherworldly force that is causing these. He also shows how this concept isn't something that we actually pay too much attention to, almost like we are attempting to keep our focus away from it. As soon as the children were presented with something new their attention went toward that. The gerbil also can represent birth, the joy surrounding it and how it can be unexpected.
ReplyDeleteIt is a wonder that anything or anyone is still alive in this school, you know. “The School” teaches the awareness that labeling absurdity is not always the event itself but rather its extent of repetition. The piling of farcical situations in the story results in a mirrored of piling absurdity. Upon first introduction to death, that of the orange trees, the reader matches the tone of the speaker, Edgar, in his small sadness for the trivial loss. As examples of snakes, herb gardens, gerbils, mice, and salamanders are added on, the rising ridiculous nature is only slightly lessened by an attempt at justifying their death, be it plastic bags or overwatering. However, once the puppy is brought up in a short blunt one-liner, the reader turns a corner. No more logical reasoning seems capable of validating the growing appearance of death. Therefore, little is given. In a depressive state, death is no longer a shocking surprise as it encroaches closer to home, taking orphans, parents, and even the school’s children. Barthelme successfully connects the reader to the speaker so much that the reader is pulled down with Edgar. The reader finishes listening to Edgar’s list, emotionally beaten, in hopeless disposition. Such depressive oddity finally provokes one’s mind to bellow, “Ok, now wait. This is a bit much, don’t you think?” And certainly it is; for that is the nature of the beast, or rather the piece. And to speak for the reader, the children inquire. Children’s perspectives are often noted by naive, straightforward curiosity but here they are philosophers, marked by inflated diction beyond their simple nature. Barthelme uses “The School” to also teach that at times, we will lack the omniscient answer we want for justification. At times, “I don’t know, I don’t know” is as much as we will know; we have to accept that mystery. I wanted the story to end on this point of actualization that brought some comfort but then the gerbil walked in. Absurdity doesn’t stop just because the interpreter thinks they solved it. Hail to the survivors, good luck making sense.
ReplyDeleteWhat struck me in Barthelme's "The School," is how after being exposed to such a great amount of death the children are shown as if they are miniature adults with their speech patterns and the obvious adult subject matter. I really admire Barthelme's almost simplistic way of 'building' the layers of death. Trees, snakes, herbs, building up animals until it reaches the puppy. It was the first thing with a given name to die, showing the increased level of attachment. The deaths continue with parents and grandparents, thus more attachment. But the kids can be invincible, right? No, classmates, two of their own are gone now and the reality that life is finite touches the kids. Their instinct is to explore this new found aspect of life and living to the fullest as children do in such a unique and undeterred fashion. But because they are still children, they do not realize that death, or rather the consequences and meaning of death, is something people try not to think about, often distracting themselves from it with 'physical pleasures' as the children became so fascinated with. Even though the children become distracted with the new gerbil's arrival, the questions still hang in the air, just paused or put on mute, because without a doubt this gerbil will also die, but they will enjoy the time they have with it.
ReplyDelete"The School" was definitely an interesting story. Out of all of it, the one thing that struck me the most wasn't really the constant death that surrounded the class but how the class seemed to react. The students asked Edgar if he could make love with the woman he had a crush on, I believe her name was Helen, in front of them because they'd never seen it be done before. I suppose it could be the circle of life concept that they have seen so much death in this past year that they just want to see the other end of the spectrum for once. What ever their reason was, the students did not get to witness love making first hand, but they did have a new pet gerbil walk into the room. The circle of death that they keep seeing is going to continue, but why? Why is there so much death around them? It seems like every single thing they become attached to dies. They're learning at a young age that attachment just leads to pain. They're learning that love isn't invincible and that life is temporary. Love can not defeat everything, such as death. Life is not everlasting, it is a temporary thing that will end.
ReplyDeleteAre the characters in this story, "The School flat, round, or dynamic?
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