The Story of the Good Little Boy

by Mark Twain

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Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, Audiobook, Humor, Satire

8 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 31, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Jess the Shelf-Declared Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clever and witty story, full of his trademark irony.

[Vaishali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would never have guessed that the great Mark Twain had such a dark, twisted humor... or anyone from the 1800’s, for that matter, since we’ve ascribed violent black comedies to modern urbanism. Wrong! It’s been a part of the American mind for at least 2 centuries.

A very, very funny short story whose ending... well...
Move over, Tarantino. Twain beat you to it long ago.



.

[Cerenela (Cherry Books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leído para el club Clásico es leerte

Cuando leí el título de esta lectura pensé que lo que me esperaba era una lectura bonita, quizá tierna, con algún tipo de enseñanza al final de la historia, me encantó encontrar algo diferente.

La historia de un niñito bueno nos muestra a este niño encaprichado con hacer lo correcto y con la misión de ir demostrando a los demás cómo se debería comportar realmente un niño bueno. El asunto es que nada nunca le sale como él quiere.

Es difícil generar empatía con este niño bueno sobre todo porque en todo momento se siente que "su buen comportamiento" no es por convicción sino más bien por alcanzar un tipo de reconocimiento, por eso es bastante cómico cuando las cosas no salen como él quiere, más aun cuando esta misión de hacer siempre lo que un niño bueno haría lo lleva a juzgar y recriminar a los demás.

El final fue una gran sorpresa.

Recomiendo leer también La historia de un niñito malo de Twain para que puedan observar el contraste.

[Sonia (huellasdelibros) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contada con un humor singular, Twain nos narra los hechos de un pequeño que desea que en la vida solo le pasen cosas buenas, por eso todo el tiempo busca hacer solo lo correcto (aunque sus intenciones en el fondo no son precisamente buenas), pero como en la vida nada es perfecto, las cosas no sucederán cómo las espera, aun así es perseverante hasta el final XD

Un relato para quitarse la venda de los ojos, y ver que no todo es como se pinta. Corto, pero extenso en los temas que hay detrás de esta historia, una lectura estupenda leída con el club @clasicoesleerte.

[Mike Lisanke · Rating 5 out of 5]

It sound like Twain doesn't like the morals to the stories writers tell. But the moral of Twain's Good Little Boy story is, it's difficult to remain good and moral when seeing that bad people are not punished for the amoral/evil behaviors which many notice are often very advantageous. It's only knowing Twain's sarcasm which prevents us from seeing Twain paint the moral of his story in the context of the same... As Vonnegut would write, so it goes!

[Ketevan Kanchashvili · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time
his humor
KILLS me!
:D

[McKenna R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Twain is a pretty funny guy, and it says a lot that his writing is still humorous today, over a hundred years after he wrote it. This story is short, but funny.

[Alger Smythe-Hopkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh sir!

In a vein with other Twain satires of posturing morality, this one takes aim at a particular variety of moralizing children's literature that has largely disappeared. I collect the stuff, so I can tell you that every absurd episode in this short tale has its origin in the Sunday School Tracts and boy's novels of the time.
While not as fully developed as The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, or as pointed as Was It Heaven or Hell?, this short piece does the job of demonstrating the shallow morality and unrealistic expectations of the genre. It's funny too, especially if you know the source material.

[Ixcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for school and it’s a good short story. It’s about a boy who tries to do good things because of his religious beliefs. He goes to a religious school and he read a book about a good boy who did good deeds for people and was rewarded for it. When the boy reacts the boys deeds in the book by being a helper to those around him, he doesn’t get any gratitude or reward like he was expecting. The boys deeds gets insulted, hit and other things. The boy never really understood why he wasn’t getting anything in return. However the last feed the boy try to do ended up costing him his life. This portrays the idea of how bad things happen to good people. But is he really a good person if he was only helping people to get a reward out of it?

[J9 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mark Twain and I have a love/hate relationship. I either love his stuff, or I don't like it at all. This is an example of a story I just didn't enjoy at all. It's a two part story, this being the first one about a bad little boy. It gives lots of examples of how bad little boys usually get what's coming to them for being bad, however, this little boy never does. Everything always seems to work out for him. The other half of the story is called the Story of the Good Little Boy which is pretty much the opposite of that one. I found them mediocre and not that interesting.

[𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗹𝘆 · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I were to rate this short, I would give it a 3.7 out of 5.

This short story was okay.
The ending was very grotesque, and the rest felt unnatural, so I didn't like it much.
There was a lot I didn't understand, like why someone would spend his whole life trying to get into some Sunday school book.
Lame and unrealistic- two things I hate.
However, the story was very comic and made me feel sorry for him.
Books that affect you enough to make you feel something means that they are good up to a point.

I still didn't enjoy this one bit, so I recommend not wasting your time with it.

[Calalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twain siempre haces reir, un cuento que aparenta inocencia para esconder verdades que mucha gente prefiere evitar. Tranquilamente puede pasar por un guión de South Park con Butters de protagonista hahaha

[Squire Whitney: Hufflepuff Book Reviwer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I very much preferred The Story of the Bad Little Boy. This accompaniment piece to it made me slightly sad—which is not what I want to feel when reading a work of satire. Any mention of dog attacks or cruelty towards canniness is never exactly my jive.

[Alvaro Mendoza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una historia con un sentido del humor algo oscuro. una historia buena junto con la historia del niño malo.

[Kingpin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny little story of a good little boy.

[Dan Greenleaf · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audiobook

[Natalia Huerta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inteligente, sádico y dolorosamente realista. Muy buena forma de comenzar con Twain.

[Gr1972 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 out of 5

[TopBob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Humor didn't quite do it for me... The Story of the Bad Little Boy was incredibly funny though. Also oddly dark, I liked it though!

[ExeDavid · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars

[Gabriela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Club de lectura Clásico es leerte (abril 2021)

[Kristi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Doing good for reward is not the best nature of selflessness. Being good should be its own reward?? Kristi & Abby Tabby

[Lucía Belén · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 en realidad.
Ya capté el humor de Mark Twain, en serio, es muy bueno.

[Marjane Delgado · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un claro ejemplo de Literatura contra literatura, también llamada literatura autodestructiva, donde el autor escribe una pieza literaria cuyo principal objetivo es criticar a algún estilo o temática común de literatura su época. El ejemplo más difundido es El Quijote, donde Cervantes crea una obra como burla de las novelas de caballería, con los resultados que todos conocemos.

Mark Twain, con su ya conocida aversión a las moralejas, plasmada en Huckleberry Finn (imposible olvidar lo de "Las personas que intenten encontrar un motivo en esta narración, serán perseguidas. Aquellas que intenten hallar una moraleja, serán desterradas"), nos presenta un cuento corto donde en pocas páginas plasma su idea de una forma clara y completa. Postulando como el exceso de lectura de libros "de moral" pueden crear un personaje atrofiado, inservible para la sociedad real, que dista mucho de lo que idealizan estos libros. Dándonos un final de tragi comedia donde nos deja también un planteamiento más filosófico, ¿existe realmente la bondad, o siempre existe un interés de lo que se desea conseguir, por ejemplo el reconocimiento de que se es bueno?

Le doy tres estrellas pues si bien es una pieza de análisis y debate literario y filosófico, como mera lectura no es tan disfrutable.

[Scott Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this is somewhat tamer than its sister piece The Story of the the Bad Little Boy , it maintains the same humorous challenge to the wide undercurrents of so many writings that in time everyone gets what's coming to them. It is almost reminiscent biblically of Ecclesiastes in its portraying of the disappointments of when justice does not seem to naturally manifest in life. Twain's humour however keeps it from becoming bleak.

[Ida Aasebøstøl · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5

[Jennifer (JenIsNotaBookSnob) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Story of the good little boy who doesn't really have things go the way they go in the morality tales. Entertaining short story.