Short Story Summaries

The short story describes the series of emotions Louise Mallard endures after hearing of the death of her husband Brantley, who was believed to have died in a railroad disaster. Mrs. Mallard suffers from heart problems; therefore, her sister attempts to inform her of the horrific news in a gentle way. Mrs.

Mallard locks herself in her room to immediately mourn the loss of her husband. However, she begins to feel an unexpected sense of exhilaration. "Free! Body and soul free!" is what she believes is a benefit of his death, until she discovers her husband standing in the doorway of their house, alive. The shock of seeing her living husband proves too much for her heart and kills her.

American and Girl sit in train station, symbolism for abortion

The story is set in a nameless Italian city in an unspecified year and is about a man taking fatal revenge on a friend who, he believes, has insulted him.

Bailey intends to take his family from Georgia to Florida for a summer vacation, but his mother, (referred to as "the grandmother" in the story) wants him to drive to Tennessee. She argues that his children, June Star and John Wesley, have never been to Tennessee and shows him a news article about an escaped murderer called The Misfit last seen heading to Florida.

The story begins at dusk in Salem Village, Massachusetts as young Goodman Brown leaves Faith, his wife of three months, for some unknown errand in the forest. Faith pleads with her husband to stay with her, but he insists that the journey must be completed that night. In the forest he meets an older man, dressed in a similar manner and bearing a physical resemblance to himself.

The man carries a black serpent-shaped staff.

The main character of Oates' story is Connie, a beautiful, self-absorbed 15-year-old girl, who is at odds with her mother—once a beauty herself-and with her dutiful, "steady", and homely older sister. Without her parents' knowledge, she spends most of her evenings picking up boys at a Big Boy restaurant, and one evening captures the attention of a stranger in a gold convertible covered with cryptic writing. While her parents are away at her aunt's barbecue, two men pull up in front of Connie's house and call her out.

She recognizes the driver, Arnold Friend, as the man from the drive-in restaurant, and is initially charmed by the smooth-talking, charismatic stranger. He tells Connie he is 18 and has come to take her for a ride in his car with his sidekick Ellie. Connie slowly realizes that he is actually much older,[2] and grows afraid. When she refuses to go with them, Friend becomes more forceful and threatening, saying that he will harm her family, while at the same time appealing to her vanity, saying that she is too good for them. Connie is compelled to leave with him and do what he demands of her. The story ends as Connie leaves her front porch; her eventual fate is left ambiguous.

Sammy, a teenage clerk in an A & P grocery, is working the cash register on a hot summer day when three young women (leader he dubbed "Queen") about his age enter barefoot and clad only in swimsuits, to purchase herring snacks.

Revolves around a man named Leroy who lives in rural Kentucky and is forced to quit his job as a truck driver after an accident. The plot centers around his attempt to adjust to life after the accident, while at the same time facing problems with his marriage and attempting to cope with the urbanization of his neighborhood, which was once a community of farmers.The story ends with Leroy and his wife Norma Jean visiting the battlefield of Shiloh, where Norma Jean tells Leroy that she is leaving him because she no longer loves him. Norma Jean then walks to the edge of the bluff and looks over, Leroy pursues her, and the story ends.

The story opens with the narrator, who reads about his younger brother named Sonny who has been caught in a heroin bust.

The narrator then goes about his day; he is a teacher at a school in Harlem. However, he cannot get his mind off Sonny. He thinks about all the boys in his class, who don't have bright futures and are most likely doing drugs, just like Sonny. After school, he meets a friend of Sonny's, who tells him that they will lock him up and make him detox, but eventually he will be let out and be all alone.

Narrated by a man whose wife is old friends with a blind man, the story shows the husband/narrator's distaste for the blind man who is coming to visit him and his wife for a few days.

At times it seems that the man is jealous of the blind man for being so close to his wife; at other times it seems that the husband is disgusted by the man's blindness. In the end they bond in a way through the communication they share about what a cathedral looks like.

The narrator's recollections of Emily's archaic and increasingly insane behavior throughout the years. Emily is a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times. She and her father, the last two of the clan, continue to live as if in the past; neither will consent to a marriage for Emily to a man below their perceived status. Her father dies when Emily is about thirty; she refuses to accept that he has been dead for three days, behavior written off by the community as part of her grieving process.

The story is told in first person by the "Mama", an African American woman living in the Deep South with one of her two daughters. The story humorously illustrates the differences between Mrs. Johnson and her shy younger daughter Maggie, who both still adhere to traditional black culture in the rural South, and her educated, successful daughter Dee, or "Wangero" as she prefers to be called, who scorns her immediate roots in favor of a pretentious "native African" identity.

Portraying the execution of two Englishmen held captive by the Irish Republican Army during the War for Independence.

The story is split into four sections, each section taking a different tone. The first reveals a real sense of camaraderie between the English prisoners, with the two Englishmen being killed, and the final lines of the story describe the nauseating effect this betrayal has on the Irishmen. The very last sentence, often praised by critics, is reminiscent of Gogol's "and from that day forward, everything appeared to me as if in a different light."