Plot Summary

Like the most of the short stories that Donald Barthelme wrote, "The School" is a dark comedic fable that makes the reader not just laugh, but think about contradictions and  the wrong customs of our society. The entire story happens in one small second grade classroom in elementary school. Throughout the school year, students in this classroom encounter multiple different deaths. Their orange trees died and before that snakes which they kept died because the boiler shut off during a school strike. Also herbs died due to being over-watered. Furthermore, the classroom faces the death of gerbils, white mice,salamanders, puppy, and tropical fish. However, the chain of death does not just remain in the pets and plants they grow. The Korean child who class adopted died, a few parents passed away, and grandparents of the members of the classroom died. Finally the chain of death reaches its peak in the tragedy of two classmates, who were killed playing at an excavation site. At this point the story makes the reader think about what death is through the question that one of the student asks the teacher, "Where did they go?" The children start to ask questions about death. Even at the end of the story, students still have uncertainty about death, however, they realize that all living things will eventually come to a very definite end. The story ends when the students ask their teacher to date Hellen so that he could have a baby with her. This circuitously shows that children want to see new life rather than something dying.