Response to “The School by Donald Barthelme”

Response to “The School by Donald Barthelme”

The writer tells a story happened at school. In the story, Mr. Edgar is assumed to be a teacher. As an adult, he experiences a lot and he knows how the world works. Compared to his innocent students, Mr. Edgar is supposed to answer students’ questions and teach them. However, when facing question, Mr. Edgar cannot give a certain answer. He uses words “maybe” and “might”. He doesn’t know why the tree dies and why the fish leaves. He cannot explain a lot of things.

Just as he says in the first paragraph: “I don’t know why they died, they just died.” There are so many things happened in the world, and we cannot find a correct explain to it. Why the things died and where they go. Why the leaf turns yellow and brown. Why the people we love leave us and never come back. We cannot find a certain answer to it, and we cannot do nothing but see their leaving. Many times, life gives us no choice. Life is hard and helpless, Mr. Edgar does not know how to explain this to his lovely and innocent students.

When you are a child, you think the world is colorful and nice. However, as you grow up gradually, you would be sad to find the world is not so lovely. There are a lot of bad things happened, and you could do nothing. Life is boring and hard. As the growing of age, people experience the helpless life and understand it. However, it is hard to tell this kind of sadness to the little children. Only when they grow up, they would understand this slowly. At the end of the story, students are cheering wildly but Mr. Edgar says nothing. By this contrast, the writer shapes a good image of Mr. Edgar.