Category: fiction
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Hamlet’s Moral Philosophy: The Key to Unlocking Shakespeare’s Own Ethics
Little is known about Shakespeare’s personal life or his own beliefs. Most of what we know is derived from his expansive catalog of plays; the consensus is that the character of Hamlet is most similar to the Bard himself. “In recent years, studies of Shakespeare’s plays have concerned themselves with everyday objects and ‘matter’ rather…
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Modern Rhetorical Metacriticism
There are several methodologies available for use in the field of modern rhetorical criticism. Using each form and comparing their insights and conclusions against each other will garner an analysis on which is more applicable to the selected artifact chosen for study. This is a criticism on the utility and necessity of the critical styles…
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A Good Night to Hunt
(The Cliffs of Bamiyan, 2228 A.D.) Musa shielded his eyes from the light of the slowly setting sun, scanning the skies for the falcons that hunted overhead. Two or three still wheeled lazily, high up in the sky, but they would be settling in to roost soon. He adjusted the leather satchel that he carried…
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The Weight of Pine Trees
It doesn’t take long for his brother to die. There’s nothing particularly dramatic about it either- a cough coloured red, a shudder and an endless quiet as pale as the snow that falls on us. I’ve seen it all before. The tang of death doesn’t hold the same metallic heaviness it used to. I suppose…
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Sillage
In the city of lights there lived a blind old man named Didier. In the mornings he cried, in the evenings he drank, and his bones ached always. He had a son, Michel, and a wife, Ana, who both loved him while Ana was alive. Didier enjoyed eating, and he typically visited different bakeries around…
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Small Stories for Kids: BACK TO THEIR PRIDE
Today’s issue of small stories for kids comes from Dante: One day Dante wakes up. He eats and he drinks. Once he’s done he gets dressed. He then gets in his vehicle: an emergency SUV! He has to check if the animals are hurt or sick. Any hurt or sick animals he has to rush…
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Saturday Mourning
When someone gets cremated, their bodies are burned with dozens of other dead people. Addie told me this three days after her grandmother died. “So that urn sitting on my parent’s mantelpiece in Alabama—the one holding my great aunt—that’s not just my great aunt?” I asked, scraping my fork across my plate to grab…
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Godsong
It is nearly imperceptible, the whisper of the girls. You can almost convince yourself it’s merely the wind, a figment of your imagination, the breeze through chittering corpses of last season’s bamboo. But then you hear the words. It is a melody. You can feel it in your bones, this song of tears on shallow…
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Ten to Sven
It’s not quite 9:00am, and Stacy and John have been arguing back and forth for the last half hour, and the exchange has drawn a crowd. Ashley, Bob, and Gunther from IT watch, as Claudia, Deshaun, Smirha, and Greg rubberneck from sales. No one from HR is there. That’s what Ron and Glenda are doing.…
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Pray Predator Prey
Its nostrils widen, pupils dilate. It caught our scent. Sweat, mud, teenage girl, lavender, wormwood. Poor creature has no idea what’s coming for it. Ivy shoots me a grin, more snarl than smile, and I know she feels it too. Feels the doe’s heartbeat pounding with ours, feels it racing and quivering, stuttering to keep…
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Five out of Five
So, way back when I was in the second grade, they started these commercials on TV during Saturday morning cartoons when kids all over America ruled the TV dial, as you might recall. And this quip came up: “Four out of five dentists recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum” as if most…
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Generational Culture — films, novels, and the rest
My friend Chad wrote a post about generational culture in hopes to pick a film for every generation. As we texted back and forth with our friend Doug, we realized that a single film might not define a generation so much as a bank of films or even a bank of cultural touchstones. So after…