A Poetics for Bullies (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Stanley Elkin
- First Published: 1965
- Type of Plot: Parody
- Time of Work: The twentieth century
- Setting: Unspecified
- Principal Characters: Push, Eugene Kraft, John Williams, Mimmer, Slud, Clob, Frank
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: Children
The Story
The narrator, a brash schoolboy who calls himself “Push the bully,” reveals whom he hates (“new kids and sissies, dumb kids and smart, rich kids, poor kids, kids who wear glasses, talk funny, show off”) and what he likes, such as the specific ways he torments his victims. One day the obsequious Eugene Kraft, who suffers from a glandular disorder that makes him drool, comes to tell Push about a new boy in the neighborhood. Push has bullied Kraft into continually drinking water, and now forces him to swallow directly from the kitchen faucet. When Kraft meekly...
[The entire page is 1525 words long]
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