Reception of the Story «Christmas Eve at the Orphanage» by Lower-Secondary School Students

Abstract

In this paper, we present the results of a probing research investigation, the focus of which was to determine the degree of interpretation of the short story Christmas Eve in the Orphanage by Jaroslav Hašek. The research was conducted in the form of a questionnaire survey among twenty-six ninth grade students of lower-secondary school. The questionnaire contained eight open-ended questions. 1) The story is called Christmas Eve in the Orphanage. What do you think the story will be about? 2) The author of the story is Jaroslav Hašek. What do you know about this Czech writer? 3) What or who is the orphanage? 4) When do you think the story takes place? 5) Who is the catechist? 6) Do you think the story is funny? Why? 7) What consequences befell Pazourek when he did not eat or drink flour in the pantry, but ate prunes and drank milk? 8) Write in one sentence what the story is about. It can be concluded that the results of the research fulfilled our expectations, namely the relatively high level of uninterestingness (and therefore low level of active interpretation) of the given story by the respondents, despite its comicality. On the positive side, the research participants were in most cases able to find information in the text.