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I made the icon using multiple creative commons svg resources, the banner is this.
A Worn Path, The Test, and a story I haven't been able to find about kids who go into a carnival fun house but it's really set up to kill them (vats of acid, snakes hanging from the ceiling).
This was 6th grade. I seemed like all the short stories in middle school made the Tell Tale Heart seem cheerful.
And Bartleby, the Scrivener.
There was a short story I read by one of the great Russian authors (name escapes me atm). A young man made a bet with a banker that he would spend 10 years in solitary confinement and be provided with any reading material he asked for. If he could endure it the whole 10 years, the banker would reward him with a handsome amount of money.
Tap for spoiler
He sticks it out for nearly the entire period and leaves the night before the time is up.
Fantastic story, thought about it pretty regularly throughout college.
If this rings any bells, I'd love to be reminded of the name!
Edit: Nvm, I found it! The Bet by Anton Chekhov
I remember reading The Sniper by Liam O'Flaherty sometime in late middle school, I wanna say.
teacher let us know after that it was about the Irish civil war, and that things similar to the story had actually happened.
This is the exact story that came to mind when I read the post. This one stuck with me for sure.
An occurrence at owl creek bridge - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/375
And then “The Cold Equations” https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equations/
Both are downers and have stuck with me for 35 years
A separate peace was a book we got in highschool where a kid possibly has homosexual feelings for another and throws him out of a tree which shatters his leg and eventually kills him.
For me that is 'The Dreams in the Witch House', but that was 100% self inflicted.
I liked The Yellow Wallpaper
The short story that sticks with me from junior high, that I have not been able to track down in the last 40 years or so, was if I remember right another lottery style tale. I think it was just the husband and the one chosen was eaten by the rest of the community - the twist was that the eatee got to choose the method of preparation, and in the story, he chose to be served raw. Anyone recall this story? I'd love to track it down.
Earliest short story I can remember is Monsters are Due on Maple Street in middle school. Didn't quite get the historical context at the time. But the theme of rampant senseless paranoia stuck with me.
It wasn't in English class but I will never forget a book we read in another class I can't remember the subject of that class for some reason. The book was "A Child Called It" that just describes horrid child abuse.
Something I read in history class and not English lit: Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland by Jan T. Gross.
Most American students learn extremely little about how truly horrific the Holocaust was outside of the concentration camps and medical experimentation. This is a book about local Jews being brutally murdered by their own neighbors in Poland. Not by Nazis. Just your average person.
It was really upsetting but enlightening. Everyone should know about the atrocities that occurred throughout so much of Europe during that time.
A Child Called It and The Lost Boy by David Pelzer. That did some heavy desensitization in the future.
Touching Spirit Bear
I vividly remember passage describing in great detail of the main character nearly and slowly dying on the island. he was covered with mosquitos and the book dives headfirst into describing in great detail of this guy chewing into a live mouse/rat and then swallowing it.
I was behind in my literature class in like, 7th grade. The books were boring as hell and I couldn't make myself read the chapters at night.
Our teacher gave us a list of bonus titles to catch up for like, 1.5x the points of a normal book, so I jumped on the first one on the list.
I don't remember the title of the book unfortunately, but about one or two chapters or so, the either the main character or their neighbor or something...
Gruesome
...snaps the head of their cat off while petting it
Proceeded to put the book down and hand it back into the teacher and ask for a different one. I don't think she was aware of the content of the book
Is no one going to say they don’t have this experience? I can’t remember a single short story I read in any English or literature class ever. I can barely remember any of the books I was forced to read. On the contrary I can remember numerous books I was not forced to read, like Hitchhikers guide.
i wasn't assigned it but i would read all the stories in my english book instead of whatever i was supposed to be doing and 'The Red Pony' burned its way into my brain forever. I probably read it in junior high? i dunno. That poor pony.
"A Country Doctor" by Franz Kafka. The whole thing is just one disturbing nightmare.
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
7th or 8th grade English class.
"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.’’
A Rose for Emily.
It was about some old lady hermit. She had some relationship with the town and after she died they went into her house. >!Emily had been sleeping next to the corpse of her dead husband for probably decades!<.
There Will Come Soft Rains
Someone already said it, but The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas