Short stories
The 2 short stories that I read was
- A piece of string by Guy de Maupassant
- The speckled band by Arthur conan doyle
For the first story, I had never read quite a story set in that time before, for me, I believe that the story was about society and also the jealousy that is exhibited in a peasant’s world. I think it is quite a sad story because Hauchecome never really deserved it, despite being without a doubt innocent of anything, the false accusations that Malandain thrown at him worked because society always tends to like bad news and stick on to rumors. In my opinion, the story explores themes of jealousy with Malandain and his false accusations and also maybe society’s blindness to the real evil in the community. I think it’s a relatively fun read, but is a bit too old and I don’t think it has much relevance in this day and age.
However, I really loved the speckled band. From a young age I really liked Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing, and I had actually already read the speckled band but it was a long time ago. After this read I picked up a few more things, I think something that is common in most sherlock holmes stories is that jealous perpetrator who wishes to gain something for himself and will kill/steal to do it. In this case, Dr.Roylott is that person. I liked the story because it’s interesting, has a good pace and also creates scary situations for the characters to be in that a reader can visualize very well. As usual, I was late to the party when coming to discovering the culprit which was the snake. But I guess that is the beauty of sherlock holmes stories, no matter how hard you try, it’s very hard to really guess the culprit and even then its a big twist. I really loved the speckled band, and it actually got me into reading more detective/crime novels. Although for some of them I watched the film adaptation instead