The Beach

Brief recap of what I'm doing here: compiling a self-made resource of short stories to teach in my school, which is a high school in Alberta. That means I'll be making references to the courses (10-1, 10-2, 10AP, etc) as well as to the final standardized exit exam, hereafter referred to as the Diploma, which is made up of a Personal Response task and a Critical Essay task and here is the end of the sentence.

On to the first story!

The Beach by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Translated by Barbara Wright

So, an inauspicious start to this little project, to be honest, because this story was... uh... written.

To be clear, it was written in French, because this is from an anthology called Parallel Texts, where the left page has the story printed in the original French and the right page has the corresponding translated English page.

The story itself has some interesting things in terms of structure, I suppose, but as far as finding short stories to use in the classroom, this one is a little sparse. The entirety of the story simply describes three blond children walking on a beach for a few minutes. I'm not sure why it's important that they are blond, but much is made of the blondness. As they walk to an unnamed destination, one of them hears a bell and then a seagull trots around and then it's over.

I mean, the most likely scenario is that this story is simply beyond my grasp.

Possible Uses: If a teacher were trying to have a model text of making the most of a small moment, this may be a useful study. Or if they really liked stories about anonymous possibly sea-faring blond children.
Would I use it: um, no.
What Grade: If I had to, grade 10? Or very early on in a personal response unit on writing narratives in 30? But does anyone do that? Does anyone have time? But I'd never do this in a -2 class, ever.

Wait, never mind: Ok, on second thought, I actually am going to photocopy this story and give it to a student of mine tomorrow. Not for the glory of the writing or the insights this particular story provides, but because it may prove useful to her to see direct English translations across the page from French. So yeah, forget everything I say, ever.