Graduation Afternoon

by Stephen King

From the March 2007 issue of Postscripts

Genres: Short Stories, Horror

8 pages, Unknown Binding

About the author

Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.

Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.

He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.

Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.

Reviews

[Nayra.Hassan · Rating 2 out of 5]

ستيفن كينج يكره نيويورك بجنون 🔥يكرهها لدرجة أنه يتمني لها الدمار الشامل

لن أدعي انني فهمتها للحظة. .و هذه ليست أول مرة مع كينج قد تكون للاصغر سنا..امريكية جدا ..اكثر من اللازم ..فصارت مثل النكتة التي لا يفهمها سوى اهل البلد..قد تكون عن الخطط و الاختيار ..و التحسب لأشياء ستضيع في غمضة عين

هل هي مرعبة؟
اخر صفحتين منها ..نعم
لكن رعب "عبيط" غير منطقي ..غير مبرر
ببساطة عندما يتحول يوم التخرج من الثانوية للتخرج من الدنيا باسرها

[BookHunter M ُH َM َD · Rating 2 out of 5]

قصة قصيرة جدا لا تتجاوز صفحاتها الثمانية من مجموعة بعيد الغروب

نيويورك ليه
ليس هو الجزء الثانى من الفيلم الشهير اسكندريه ليه و انما هو تساؤل مشروع

لماذا كل المصائب الإفتراضية تحل بنيويورك؟
حتى فى القصة التي لم تتعد ثمان صفحات و التى تبدأ رومانسية ثم تصيبها لعنة نيويورك في النهاية
ياللا نصيبها كده بقى

[Calista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oooh, this one is short and sweet and creepy to boot. Janice is a senior teenage girl in high school spending the day at her boyfriend Bruce’s home far off from NYC so that you can see the city in the distance.

We are introduced to Bruce’s family and home. The story seems to be going in one direction and then it switches to a shocking end.


Spoilers:




Janice is looking at NYC when she sees a bomb drop on the city and vaporize it. It’s all red and then gone. That’s the story. It worked really well and sent chills up my spine. What a good little story. I didn’t see that coming.

[Karla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story 2.75 stars**
Audio 3.5 stars**
narrator Jill Eikenberry

I really like this despite how super short it was. SK comes up with the most random plots in such everyday life lol! ❤️

[فايز غازي Fayez Ghazi · Rating 1 out of 5]

- هذه القصة القصيرة مسوّدة لشيئ ما! فالقصة التي تبدأ بعلاقة حب بين اثنين من طبقتين مختلفتين تتابع بمونولوج داخلي ل "جانيس" ثم فجأة يبدأ شكل "الفطر العملاق"(القنبلة النووية) بالتشكل في البعيد.. اذن هو الموت الآتي الذي لا يساوي الطبقات ببعضها ويساويها بالأرض!

- الصفعة التي نالتها "جانيس" من والدة "بروس" وما قالته لها "إياك ان تمزحي في هذا الأمر! ليس هناك ما يضحك" قد تكون عائدة للذكرى التي تعيش في لاوعيها والتي هي أحداث 11 آيلول!

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Janice's boyfriend graduates and has a party on that special afternoon. She is a girl from the town with an unspeakable surname, he a boy of better origin. Then some kind of catastrophe appears. What is shaking the afternoon and breaking up their lives? Interesting growing of age story on the incompatibility of high and low life. The story is included in King's anthology Just After Sunset. ILiked that fine story with a touch of horror. Recommended!

[Nadin Doughem · Rating 1 out of 5]

أحيانا التدخل الخارجي يكون مريحا ولو كان بخسائر أكبر، المهم أن يضمن لنا عدم الإختيار

[Benjamin Uke · Rating 2 out of 5]

"A young woman named Janice steps into a world of wealth and privilege, only to find herself teetering on the edge of unimaginable terror. As she gazes over the Manhattan skyline, an eerie sense of doom creeps in—and before she knows it, everything changes in the blink of an eye."
... tennis match closed on account of nuclear war. Huh.

[Mohamed Shoaib · Rating 4 out of 5]

جانيس الفتاة البسيطة و بروس الشاب الثري يحاولان انهاء علاقتهما بأقل الخسائر "كما ترى جانيس" سيذهب بروس في عطلة مع اصدقائه ة هي تتخرج و تبحث عن جامعة لكن قنبلة ذرية تسقط على منهاتن و تنهي لهما الأمر في تدخل رهيب للقدر بإنهاء الأمر بيده لكن بكل الخسائر

[Ruthie Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woah! What just happened? Horror in a heartbeat.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Graduation Afternoon is hard to pick on because it’s so short so as not to really matter. But I suppose I enjoyed this one for what it’s worth. I didn’t like the protagonist – once again – and she uses the phrase “eating pussy” which - (I know it’s prudish) - I really don’t like.
But the story was interesting because there’s no indication about where it was going. And when the climax comes, its satisfying enough. Overall, this one was unremarkable, but it kind of feels like the first decent story in this anthology because most of them are good after this.

[RoseMadder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read but would have liked just a little more to this story.

[James Biser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great story about an afternoon where a group of students have graduated, but the changes they experience are far greater than a simple college graduation. The story is a surprise.

[Victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would say just ok for this story. As it was only 8 pages there wasn't really enough space to flesh out the story or catch my attention. Too bad as I know he has shorter stories I have enjoyed.

[Josh Olds · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very short, eight page story, “Graduation Afternoon” juxtaposes the hope for the future symbolized in graduation with the beginning of an apocalypse. Janice is a senior in high school celebrating her graduation at her boyfriend’s parents’ home. They live a reasonable distance outside New York City. You can see the city, but you’re pretty far away from it.

King drags readers through graduation, something both monumental and monotonous. High school graduation is literally a lifetime in the making. It’s the most-prepared for hinge moment in anyone’s life. It’s a highly-expected and planned-for life-changing event.

And then King blows it up. Literally. In the distance, they see NYC get obliterated. You know it’s going to be life-changing, but it’s totally unexpected. You have no idea what will come next. No idea if all your hoped-for plans will come unraveled because of this. No idea even if society can survive this. All of life has been pushing toward a success in one type of world but now the world has changed in an instant.

It was originally published in the March 2007 issue of Postscripts, a British anthology magazine, but in Just After Sunset, King places it right after “The Things They Left Behind,” a story about a 9/11 survivor with survivor’s guilt. It’s no accident, I think, that King ties these two stories together. This is 9/11 times a million. The whole city is gone. We can envision how life moved on after 9/11 because we’ve done it. But how would we move on from this? Juxtaposing such a tragedy against such a commonplace, stereotypical, everyday success story really makes this story pop. Beautiful in its brevity and jarring conclusion, “Graduation Afternoon,” reminds us that life can change in an instant.

[Rolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the twist at the end of this one, which really comes out of nowhere--but the way the central character is written really feels like an old man trying to write from a young woman’s perspective, in that it feels very forced and unnatural. Good on Steve for trying, but this one doesn’t quite work.

[Jörg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sehr spannend

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Janice attends her wealthy boyfriend's June HS graduation party at his snobbish parents' small estate. The afternoon goes spectacularly badly.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

(Singing) It’s the end of the world as we know it!

[Taja Ofthemarigold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Короткий рассказ о жизни девушки подростка за несколько дней до ядерного взрыва. Вполне интересно и жутко от осознания того, что кто-то действительно через такое прошёл и может даже не выжил

[Edward Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something of a shock ending to this pretty standard story. It almost feels like King got bored and changed tack midway.