The Grasshopper and the Cricket Summary

Summary (Comprehensive Guide to Short Stories, Critical Edition)

Walking along the wall of a university, the narrator hears an insect’s voice from behind the fence of a school playground. The fence gives way to an embankment, at the base of which the narrator sees a cluster of bobbing, multicolored lanterns.

The narrator now imagines that one of the neighborhood children, having heard an insect sing on the slope one night, returns the next night to search for the insect. The next night, another child joins the first one, and so on. When the narrator comes on the insect hunting party, he counts twenty children among its members.

The narrator imagines a scenario in which one child, unable to afford a store-bought red lantern, creates his own from a small carton. Others follow his example. The narrator pictures the children coloring and drawing on paper they then stretch over the various-shaped windows they have cut out of the cartons, each making a singular pattern. Eventually, the child who bought his lantern grows dissatisfied with it and discards it. The narrator supposes that each day the children—whom the narrator likens to artists—create new lanterns. Brought back to the present, the narrator notices on the lanterns the names of the children who made them, cut in letters of the syllabary.

A boy who has been peering into a bush away from the other children suddenly asks if anyone wants a grasshopper. A number of children gather around; he calls again, and more children flock to him. He...

(The entire section is 489 words.)