The Christmas Banquet

"The Christmas Banquet" by Nathaniel Hawthorne unfolds as a tale-within-a-tale: a writer named Roderick reads aloud a story about a peculiar annual feast, funded by a morbid bequest, that gathers the ten most wretched people alive each Christmas. Among the grief-stricken, tormented, and broken guests sits one unsettling outlier — the young Gervayse Hastings, who attends year after year yet appears to feel nothing. His strange, hollow presence raises a disturbing question: is a life lived entirely without feeling the deepest misery of all?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.