The story opens with the presentation of Mother and Father Wolf and the family’s necessity for food. Father Wolf is readying himself to begin hunting to feed his mate and cubs when the jackal, Tabaqui, enters their den looking for scraps. Tabaqui finds a bone and is satisfied. After eating the bone, the devious jackal…
Tag: Summary
Islands by Aleksandar Hemon – Summary
Scenes 1–5 “Islands” begins with the young unnamed narrator driving with his family from Sarajevo to the coast, where they take a ship to the island of Mljet, which is part of the neighboring state of Croatia. On the ship, the narrator loses his hat in the wind and, realizing he will never see it…
Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases – Summary
“Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases” begins in the 1930s, when the mentally retarded boy is living with his family on a small farm by the woods. He has a brother and sister, older by two and three years respectively. They practice with their tools in the woodshed, making wood cars and boats, but the retarded…
The Good Shopkeeper – Summary
The story opens with Pramod announcing that he has lost his job. His wife, Radhika, cries when he tells her. Then Pramod scolds her; he does not like to tell her things because she does not think “with a cool mind.” But Radhika is not passive. She responds that she has a right to be…
Fleur by Louise Erdrich – Summary
“Fleur” begins by stating that Fleur Pillager was only a girl when she drowned in Lake Turcot, which is located in Native American reservation in North Dakota. Two men dive in and save her and, not long afterward, both disappear. Fleur falls in the lake again when she is twenty, but no one is willing…
An End to Dreams – Summary
Benét was a great advocate of America’s entry into World War II as evidenced by a speech he wrote for President Roosevelt. He also worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and wrote a series of radio scripts, including Listen to the People (1941) They Burned the Books (1942). Benét was plagued with bad vision throughout…
The End of Old Horse – Summary
“The End of Old Horse” begins with the narrator, an unnamed Native American boy, leaving home with his younger brother to go to the nearby creek to cool off on a hot summer day. They pass by Old Horse, a dog who is tied up with a rope, in front of the home of a…
A Day in the Dark – Story – Summary
“A Day in the Dark” is set in Moher, a town on the west coast of Ireland. The story is narrated by Barbie, who looks back on herself as a fifteen year-oldgirl and begins this story with a description of a row of houses under the bridge and the center of her town—its intermingling of…
Aftermath by Mary Yukari Waters – Summary
“Aftermath” begins with the protagonist Makiko watching her seven-year-old son Toshi playing dodge-ball in Imamiya Park. As she watches Toshi play the “new American” game, Makiko thinks about how fast Toshi is growing and worries about how quickly Japan is becoming Americanized in the years after Japan’s defeat in World War II. She particularly worries…
The Thrill of the Grass – Summary
The story opens in 1981, about a month into the baseball strike that truncated the season. The first-person narrator, who remains unnamed, finds the absence of baseball ‘‘a disruption to the psyche.’’ The narrator is an older man who considers himself a ‘‘failed shortstop’’ and who once had aspirations of playing professionally. On his way…