Совершенствуйте навыки работы с текстом: готовимся к государственному экзамену. Brush up your text skills: Getting prepared for the state exam [учебно-методическое пособие] 9785704225089

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C. Ю. СТЕПАНОВА

СОВЕРШЕНСТВУЙТЕ НАВЫКИ РАБОТЫ С ТЕКСТОМ: ГОТОВИМСЯ К ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОМУ ЭКЗАМЕНУ BRUSH UP YOUR TEXT SKILLS: GETTING PREPARED FOR THE STATE EXAM Учебно-методическое пособие

Москва 2014

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УДК 811.111 ББК 81.432.1 С794 : доктор филологических наук . . кандидат филологических наук . .

С794 Степанова С. Ю. Совершенствуйте навыки работы с текстом: готовимся к государственному экзамену. Brush up your text skills: Getting prepared for the state exam : .. . – М.: , 2014. – 176 с. Учебно-методическое пособие предназначено для студентов старших курсов факультета иностранных языков и призвано способствовать формированию и развитию у учащихся навыков комплексно лингвостилистического анализа текста на английском языке, а также может быть использовано в качестве справочного материала при подготовке к государственному экзамену. Пособие содержит теоретические и практические сведения по основным аспектам анализа текста и стилистическим приемам. В Приложении представлены отрывки из произведений англоязычных авторов XIX–XXI вв.

ISBN 978-5-7042-2508-9 © Степанова С. Ю., 2014 © Издательство «Прометей», 2014

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Introduction This handbook has developed from the author’s experience as a teacher and an examiner over many years. It offers practical help to the students who are faced with the necessity of brushing up their knowledge before the exam in Text Interpretation, or Stylistics, basically, any exam where students are supposed to demonstrate their text interpretation skills. The specifically utilitarian aim of this book has predetermined its structure. On the one hand, it is aimed to provide students with some hints and tips which may be useful when they are asked to analyze a text, be it fiction or non-fiction. On the other hand, it helps revise (or, if necessary, introduce) some basic terms of text interpretation the students cannot do without if they need to comment on the linguostylistic peculiarities of the text in an informed way. Besides, the materials presented in the handbook may be applicable in any class related to Text Interpretation, or, rather, Text Appreciation. Reference materials combined with text-interpretation activities may be used as a self-study guide for all devotees of English literature. We hope that this handbook will make the process of text analysis enjoyable and will encourage students to demonstrate their text skills to advantage responding in depth to any text offered at the exam.

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Getting Prepared for the Exam Text analysis is rightfully considered one of the most challenging assignments a student is supposed to handle at the exam. As a student of linguistics you should understand that interpretation has nothing to do with text retelling which eventually grows into calculations about the exact number of metaphors or similes used in the text. Ideally, at the exam you should be able to demonstrate that you are not only aware of the meaning and the message of the authentic text, but you are also capable of carrying out the analysis of its linguistic matter. How does the author manipulate language to achieve a desired effect? Is the selection of vocabulary items and syntactical patterns affected by the author’s purpose? How does the language, employed by the author, contribute to the creation of atmosphere, plot development, character drawing, conveying the main idea? You should disclose the laws according to which the text is built, you should be able to bring to light the unity of its form and the content. In a nutshell, try to answer the following three questions: — what is it all about, or what is said in the text? (which will lead you to the analysis of the subject-matter of the text); — how is it said? (which implies the exploration of the language means); — and why is it said like that? (which reveals the author’s attitude to the things described and the representation of his / her world view). Sometimes it is almost impossible to draw a distinct borderline between these three issues, as they are all interrelated and interconnected, but if you have managed to cover at least these three aspects of the text, chances are that you have made it. Unfortunately at the exam you will have to deal not with a complete piece of fiction or non-fiction, but with a fragment taken from 4

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some prosaic work. As a result, you won’t be able to identify the message, or the central idea of the whole work. The good news is that the extract offered still must be complete in form and idea, so it will enable you to identify the subject-matter of the text under analysis without much trouble. Besides, your text is sure to possess some individual characteristic, something unique and outstanding. Try to find this special thrill of the text and build your analysis around it. The following questions will help you out, but do not treat them as a strait-jacket; feel free to deviate from the offered procedure of the assignments. Text appreciation is a creative process, after all. One more piece of advice: try to sincerely enjoy the text you are analyzing (which is easier said than done), and the best of luck!

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A Winning Beginning Finally, you are face to face with a text and you have no idea how to approach it. The safest way is to introduce the text you are going to analyze and specify its status, commenting on its author as well as the source it is taken from, and these set-phrases and clichés are sure to help you out. The text under analysis / under study / under consideration is… | a fragment / a passage / an extract / an excerpt ! The meaning of ‘abstract’ is something different, so avoid it in this context | taken from the short story / the novel / (or, to be on the safe side), the book entitled (give the title) written by (here comes the name of the author). | | It is a good specimen of fiction / emotive prose / belles-lettres. It is a good specimen of nonfiction / political journalism / the publicistic style. Eventually you will formulate the beginning of your analysis which will sound as follows: The text under analysis is an extract taken from the novel by Campbell Nairne “One Stair Up”, which is a nice specimen of emotive prose. In some cases you can go even further and identify the genre of the text, e.g. a romantic story / a realistic story / a humorous story/ a psychological story. 6

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If you have doubts about the proper status of your text in terms of ‘fiction / non-fiction’ parameter, go to Block 1 ‘Fiction vs. Non-fiction’ Your second step is to identify the subject-matter of the fragment under analysis and to present it in two-three well-motivated sentences. Never ever retell the contents of the text! The trick here is not to say either too much or too little. You should be able to demonstrate your ability to drop all the irrelevant and insignificant information and concentrate on the fragment’s theme. In other words, you should display your summarizing skills to advantage. Summarizing is a skill used in almost every major field of study because it shows your ability to understand and express the essence of the text and cover its main points adequately. At this stage of your analysis you are likely to use the following phrases and clichés: The text is concerned with the difficulties a young teacher faces. The focus of the author’s attention is on the personality of Mrs. General. In the text the author exposes the conflicts and problems Rosa and Andrew are experiencing. The author shares his impressions of a short visit to Africa. It deals with … It presents / concerns /describes / depicts / portrays… It is centred on… The text is devoted to (the description of) … The text relates the story of … The scene is laid in / set in … The setting of the story is… / dates back to … The author brings into focus / to light… The author reveals / discloses … The author penetrates into the inner world of … If you are unclear on specifying the subject-matter, have some practice in Block 2 ‘Theme and topic. Meaning and message’ And now it is time to characterize one more parameter of the text, which is its type. Each text is purposeful, in other words, it must serve a definite aim. When we classify texts pragmatically, that is, according to the writer’s main intentions, we should bear in mind that the 7

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communicative intention of the author manifests itself in the choice of language forms, which may logically lead you to the analysis of the linguistic features of the text. The following phrases may come in handy: The text is a piece of narration / wholly narrative. The text is a piece of description / wholly descriptive. The text is a piece of argumentation / wholly argumentative. The text combines narration with description and elements of dialogue. The text is a successful combination of description and narration. If you are not sure how to treat the type of the text, go to Block 3 ‘Text Types’

The Body of Your Analysis At this point you have commented on the basic characteristics of the text and now you should concentrate on such elements of the text as point of view, characterization, plot and structure. When covering these issues you will have to specify how their choice affects the linguistic matter of the text. The study of the linguistic peculiarities of the text will take you to the next phase — the analysis of expressive means and stylistic devices of the language employed by the author for his / her artistic purposes, which is most likely to form the basic part of your analysis. Point of view is a literary technique that an author handles with a specific purpose. For successful interpretation of a piece of fiction it is vitally important to recognize various points of view and understand why a particular point of view is preferred. In other words, you have to identify the angle or perspective from which the story is told. It can be done with the help of the following phrases: The story is told in the first / third person singular. The story is told from the point of view of … The story is narrated by … The events in the story are described / presented through the eyes of … The events in the story are described / presented from the perspective of … 8

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If you do not quite understand this aspect of the literary text, address Block 4 ‘Point of View’ Another peculiarity of the text may be interlinked with the previous parameter and concerns means of characterization of the personages in literary contexts, or people in real-life contexts. If you are working with a piece of non-fiction, chances are that the characters are presented explicitly; but in the art of fiction character is probably the most difficult aspect to be discussed in technical terms, since there are different types of character and different ways of representing them. This can be demonstrated by a great variety of phrases aimed to help you: The character is drawn / depicted / portrayed / shown…. The character is presented explicitly / implicitly. The character is rendered from inside his mind. The character is viewed from outside by others. The character is presented from within / from without. The character is presented against the background of the Second World War. The author examines / explores / observes the character of … The author reveals / unfolds the character of … The author gives a psychological insight into the character. The author employs a direct/ an indirect method of character drawing. The author opposes / juxtaposes his characters. Study the materials in Block 5 ‘Character and Characterization’ if you are confused about some of the terms Even when you deal with an incomplete piece of work, it should be analyzed as a self-contained structural unit. The study of the structure and composition of the text, in other words, its architecture, is an important stage of your analysis. Structure is vital in both fiction and non-fiction because it satisfies our need for order, balance and proportion. The design, or the form of the text, which the author has chosen to shape his or her ideas, can provide us with a clue to a better understanding of the author’s ideas. Thus, when examining the structure, we should concentrate on the patterns and repeated elements, since repetition signals important connections and relationships in the text. If you are interpreting a literary text based on action, it may be possible to 9

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identify the action elements of the work and even the stages of its plot. You may use the following phrases: The action takes place in pre-war London. The scene is laid in / set in … The setting of the story is … / dates back to … . The action is fast-moving / slow-moving. The events unfold dynamically / fast / slowly. The text / story is coherent; its elements are ordered / presented chronologically. The exposition / opening paragraph introduces the scene/ sets the tone / mood for the whole story. The climax / turning-point occurs / is prepared by / immediately followed by … The story has a surprise ending / a happy end / is open-ended. The author keeps the reader in suspense. The tension is growing... Even if it is impossible to trace the elements of the plot in the analyzed work, which refers to non-fiction in particular, the structure and composition of the text should be identified. Start with the phrase The text falls / can be divided into … parts and see where it will lead you to. You may continue with the specification of the focus of each part. After that try to establish the links and the patterns of thought between the parts, this can result in some interesting observations, for instance, if you reveal that the ideas are presented in contrast. The first paragraph leads into a topic… / outlines the problems of … The second paragraph outlines the possible solutions… The third paragraph summarizes what has been said and makes a final comment For more information about the elements of the plot and rules of text-building, go to Block 6 ‘Architecture of the Text’ The central part of your analysis will be undoubtedly given to the use of expressive means and stylistic devices in the text. It is the particular manner of handling the language means which determines the effect of the whole work on the reader, since the choice and arrangement of all the linguistic elements of the text enables the author to communicate his ideas most successfully and controls the readers’ 10

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response. Avoid the most common mistake — never reduce your analysis to calculations of the exact number of stylistic devices used: two epithets, three metaphors, etc. What is much more significant is your interpretation of the effects achieved by the use of these devices, not their exact number. Thus, start with the phrases The author uses / makes use of / employs / resorts to genuine metaphors. The text is rich in / full of epithets. The text abounds in / contains parallel constructions. The fragment is characterized by the masterly use of imagery. The passage is remarkable for its fine sense of humour. Alliteration is used to advantage / elaborately. The choice of words is very elaborate / noteworthy. Irony can be felt / found in such epithets as … The reader is expected to grasp / become aware of / be sensitive to the irony of the dialogue. The device much favoured by the author is … ! Avoid saying ‘I found a metaphor’, since such a phrase is poor style And by no means neglect the consequences of the stylistic devices employed / detected / examined: The author uses hyperboles to achieve / create the ironical effect. Similes are used for the humorous purpose. Parallel structures maintain / create / generate rhythm. Anaphoric repetition enhances the effect of … To stress / emphasize /develop this idea, the author uses a prolonged metaphor based on … Personification makes the description vivid / dynamic / animated / tense/ dramatic. This simile suggests / implies / illustrates that …. The metaphor is further developed / evolves into a symbol. The epithet helps us get a vivid notion / a clear-cut picture of … These stylistic devices contribute to the creation of the atmosphere of disaster. Speech characterization plays a very important role in the text as it tells us a lot about the character’s background and social status. Represented speech reveals / discloses the character’s emotional state. 11

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The rhythm reinforces the gravity of what is being said and puts great stress / emphasis on the final elements of the sentence. A good tip may be to start your analysis with graphical and phonetic devices, then to pass on to lexical devices and conclude with the means of expressive syntax — this logical order will help you structure your observations. Brush up your knowledge of the expressive resources of the language in Block 7 ‘Stylistic Devices’

A Clever Conclusion After analyzing all the elements of the text mentioned above, its linguistic and stylistic properties in particular, it is only natural to approach such an important parameter as the author’s individual choice and arrangement of words — his or her diction. Consider words and phrases which you find especially well-chosen and effective, explain what they add to the text and how this very choice of words contributes to the tone and atmosphere of the text. Ideally, here you should be able to define the author’s attitude towards the issues brought out in the text and draw conclusions about the author’s individual style. This cannot be separated from the analysis of the impact of the text on the reader, therefore, in the concluding part of your interpretation you can pass on to your own emotional response to the text. It will definitely play into your hands if the text you are analyzing has produced a long and lasting impression on you, you have really enjoyed the writer’s mastery and unique style and would genuinely like to share your observations and impressions with the examiners. But if the text has left you unimpressed, you have all the rights to confess this, just make sure to give well-grounded reasons for your dislike of this particular kind of text and remain objective and unbiased. Some phrases which can help you tackle this issue are the following: The text is very emotional, which is due to … Emotionally coloured words and the use of imagery help the author create the joyful and light-hearted atmosphere. The tense / mysterious atmosphere is created / rendered by / conveyed through the elaborate choice of words. 12

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On the whole, the tone is serious / sad / light / moving/ sympathetic/ solemn/ tragic / pessimistic. The text is a chilling description of … The author’s style can be defined as ironic/ lofty / elaborate. The author does not impose his views on the reader. The story leaves a long and lasting impression which is due to … The author’s manner / method of depicting events / characters is straightforward / categorical. The author is unbiased when presenting …. The author treats the issue of … in a very subtle way. The author has a sharp eye for details. More facts and phrases related to the general evaluation of the author’s diction are presented in Block 8 ‘Atmosphere and Style’ And the finale of your analysis should be given to the interrelation between the subject-matter, or central idea of the text — its content, and the chosen linguistic, stylistic and compositional means — the form of the text. Ideally, your final step is to explain the author’s choice of the language and reveal the harmonious unity and balance between the selected forms and the effects achieved. The key words here are appropriateness (of the chosen means on all the levels of the text) and balance (between the form and its content). Hopefully, the text you are dealing with will really appeal to you and you will find the process of its interpretation rewarding and enjoyable, which, in its turn, will be appreciated by the examiners. The best of luck!

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Block 1 ‘Fiction vs. Non-fiction’ As scholars have not worked out an all-embracing definition of text yet, sure enough, when it comes to the classification and typology of texts, there are no universal approaches. (If you feel interested in the definition of the unique phenomenon of ‘text’, address ‘Supplement: Part 3’). At the same time most linguists agree on at least one fundamental division of texts which is based on their communicative and pragmatic factors. According to these parameters, all texts are subdivided into fiction and non-fiction, or imaginative vs. informative. Roughly speaking, it means that all texts can be divided into two groups — those written for utilitarian purposes and those written for aesthetic purposes. Informative or intellectual texts (non-fiction) are characterized by their appeal to the intellect, their content is expressed clearly and directly, the personality of the author is not strongly felt. To this group belong scientific texts and news reports, legal documents and business correspondence. They are contrasted with poetry and emotive prose — fiction — which appeals not only to our mind, but to our soul as well, as imaginative writing does not only provide us with food for thought, it is aimed to stir feelings, arouse emotions and stretch imagination. Compare and contrast the following contexts: Example 1. “Typical sharks are generally bluish or greyish in colour; the body is of the normal fish shape, the snout pointed, the crescentic mouth placed on the underside of the head”. (Encyclopedia Britannica) Example 2. “His back was as blue as a swordfish’s, and his belly was silver and his side was smooth and handsome”. (E. Hemingway “The Old Man and the Sea”) 14

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Although the subject-matter of these two fragments is the same — the description of the shark — the difference in presenting the material is obvious. The basic function of Fragment 1 is the informative function, or the function of the message (функция сообщения), while Fragment 2 is based on the function of the aesthetic impact (функция воздействия). Consequently, we can characterize the text of Fragment 1 as a piece of objective writing that is predetermined by the very essence of the encyclopedia entry, which is to inform the readers and provide them with objective information. The context sounds precise and matter-of-fact; its language is unemotional and devoid of individuality, or impersonal. The main communicative aim of this short text affects the choice of the language means: the fragment represents a lengthy complex sentence where all the words are used in their logical meanings. The pragmatic essence of Fragment 1 is clearly contrasted with the artistic appeal of Fragment 2, which represents the subjective description of the shark. The context produces a powerful emotional effect thanks to the elaborate choice of stylistic devices including alliteration of the sounds [b] and [s] and syntactical parallelism, which generates a strong rhythmical effect. Personification coupled with epithets (silver, smooth, handsome) and a comparison conveys the individual attitude of the author to the shark evoking the feelings of awe and admiration. This context illustrates the indispensable features of emotive prose — a literary work invented by the imagination, fictional by definition. Depicting imaginary reality, it represents the artistic model of the world; as a result, a literary text creates new artistic impressions and offers a plurality of interpretations.

Follow-Up I. Compare and contrast the following extracts. Which fragment represents a piece of fiction? Which one is a piece of non-fiction? Prove your point and characterize each fragment with at least three adjectives in terms of their tone and diction.

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Fragment 1 “What’s them plants, ma’am?” The irritation and resistance melted from Elisa’s face. “Oh, those are chrysanthemums, giant whites and yellows. I raise them every year, bigger than anybody around here.” “Kind of a long-stemmed flower? Looks like a quick puff of colored smoke?” he asked. “That’s it. What a nice way to describe them.” “They smell kind of nasty till you get used to them,” he said. “It’s a good bitter smell,” she retorted, “not nasty at all.” He changed his tone quickly. “I like the smell myself.” “I had ten-inch blooms this year,” she said. (J. Steinbeck “The Chrysanthemums”) Fragment 2 Any of the ornamental plants that make up the genus Chrysanthemum in the composite family. The genus includes about 100 species native primarily to subtropical and temperate areas of the Old World. Cultivated species, often called mums, have large flower heads; those of wild species are much smaller. Most species have aromatic, alternate leaves. Some have both disk and ray flowers in the heads; others lack ray flowers. (Encyclopedia Britannica) Fragment 1 sounds

_____________ _____________ ______________

On the contrary, Fragment 2 produces an impression of being ________________ ________________ ________________ II. Check yourself and insert the necessary words: ….. and ….. are broad categories used mainly by writers, publishers, literary critics and librarians. ….. corresponds to «художественная проза» and is used to describe literary works invented by the imagination; whereas ….. stands for «документальная, научная литература» and denotes books based on factual material. 16

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III. Place the following types of books under the appropriate heading: war novel, adventure novel, crime story, biography, travel book, manual, fairy tale, thriller, book on the arts history, English textbook. Add at least two examples of your own. FICTION

NON-FICTION

Language Focus imagery vs. imaginary imaginary vs. imaginative Guess the definition: 1. not real, fictional 2. the use of words or pictures to describe ideas or actions in poems, books, films 3. creative, containing new and interesting ideas Fill in the gaps: 1. The novel is set in the …. Russian town of Zavolzhsk. 2. Advertisers use … to appeal to our emotions. 3. He offered an …solution to a long-standing problem.

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Block 2 ‘Theme and Topic. Meaning and Message’ Since at the exam you will never have to deal with a complete piece of fiction, it means that you won’t be able to identify its message which the author communicates to us, readers. The message of the text is usually understood as its central idea, or supporting ideas, representing generalization about life implied or stated in the text. Basically, when you try to single out the meaning of some work, you have to answer the question ‘What made the author put his pen to paper?’; which consequently can lead us to such questions as ‘What food for thought does he / she give? What ideas does he / she try to convey? What facts does he / she share with us?’ At the same time it is safe to remember that the purpose of some stories is simply to produce a certain emotional response. Their authors try to communicate the ‘feel’ of particular experience and elicit an emotional, rather than intellectual understanding of their prose. A good example is a typical adventure story, which is highly unlikely to teach us a lesson and moralize, as we are supposed simply to enjoy the action when we read it. It is more or less easy to single out the theme of a work of nonfiction, but when it comes to fiction the notion of theme becomes elusive. It is more abstract and general than the subject-matter of some fragment which can be roughly defined as the substance of the text, the examples of which you can find in the Follow-up. The theme is a vitally important element because it gives works meaning, making them relevant. The theme of a fable is its moral; the theme of a parable is its teaching, and the theme of a piece of fiction is its view about life and human experience. This idea may be a general truth about life or an exploration of a special way of look18

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ing at life. The theme of a work is a complete idea, thus, it should be expressed in a complete sentence. The theme lies at the very centre of writing and ties all its aspects together to express the author’s insight. A story has a stated theme when its author expresses the work’s main idea directly. For example, Dorothy’s statement in The Wizard of Oz that “there’s no place like home” plainly tells us the theme of the book: Everything we might want can be found “at home” — within ourselves. But we rarely find a direct statement of theme in a story, thus, it is up to the reader to collect and combine all his / her observations and finally try to formulate the central idea illustrated by the story. What is important is not the formulation of some brief idea like “love makes blind” or “crime doesn’t pay”, although the latter can be very tempting, especially when you are discussing the story where bad guys lose and good guys win. An interesting example of theme recognition process is presented in the book “Writing Essays about Literature” by Kelley Griffith, where the author claims that a work’s theme must be applicable to people outside the work. She illustrates her idea on the material of the short story Rip Van Winkle declaring that to say that the theme of “Rip Van Winkle” is “Rapid change in his environment threatens Rip’s identity” is incorrect since in this form this statement includes only the characters in the story, but not people in general. Thus, a correctly stated theme for Rip Van Winkle may sound as follows: “Rapid change in environment causes many people to feel their identity is threatened.” Readers, when identifying it, move from concrete situations within a literary text to generalizations about people outside the work, and only in this case literature becomes a form of philosophy, offering universal wisdom about the nature of reality. For Text Appreciation the process of collecting and combining all the impressions, reflecting on them and finally incorporating the reading experience into one’s own experience of life is much more important than just dissecting the story into its elements. Again it must be stressed that the consideration of theme, meaning and message can be relevant only with reference to a complete piece of literary work. Only in this case the idea which dominates the whole work and recurs at certain intervals turns into its theme, becoming the main insight about human experience which an author expresses in his / her work. 19

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If you find it difficult to formulate a theme, consider the following questions: — What ideas about life does the title of a literary work suggest? — Has the protagonist learned anything? Has he or she acquired a greater knowledge or insight or reached a new awareness? — Were there any striking repetitions of actions, words, thoughts or symbols? — What do particular events and conflicts reveal about life in general? — What might these particular characters with these personality traits tell us about people in general? — Did the author probably want to say something about life in general or to present a certain kind of person and view of life? — What view of the world does the author offer us?

Follow-Up I. Since your primary goal right now is to polish your skill of summarizing contents, it makes sense to revise the basic rules of summarymaking. In order to summarize effectively, you should be able to fully understand the text, to know the main points from the minor points or supporting detail, and to express the contents in good English. Now consider the following statements and mark them True or False. 1. Summary is a representation of the contents of written works. 2. A good summary should cover every detail of the text. 3. Avoid using personal pronouns like he, she, they. 4. Introduce your own judgment and comments. 5. Use verbs like tell, ask, answer which are typical of reported speech. 6. Be concise: a summary should not be equal in length to the original text. Add your own rules of summary-writing and discuss them in class. 1. 2. 3. 20

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Needless to say, you cannot write a proper summary if you are dealing with a short fragment that lacks a definite plot. But irrespective of the type of the text, its length and structure, you are supposed to be able to adequately identify its subject-matter and key points, plainly answering the question “What is it all about?” II. Compare the following variants of presenting the subject-matter of the mini-context. What makes them different? Choose the most appropriate one or create a variant of your own. Fragment 1 Sitting on that sofa while the rain slid out of the sky, the three women seemed to weave a conversation out of individually-coloured wool. They had nothing in common and yet there were no silences, no awkwardnesses — random words threaded together, taking surprising turns, followed by revealing turns. (J. Éclair “Having a lovely time”) 1. The fragment deals with the description of a talk between the three women. 2. The fragment deals with the description of an easy-flowing talk between the three women, into which each of them is offering her contribution. 3. The fragment represents a metaphoric description of a talk between the women, which they seem to be enjoying immensely as each of them is eager to participate in the conversation and share her memories and impressions with the others. 4. ? III. Identify the subject-matter of the following fragments and formulate it in 1-2 sentences. Fragment 2 At the Point Break snooker hall, the bus emptied, and a river of black blazers poured along the pavement towards the gates of Abalene Grove Comprehensive. (L.Evans “Spencer’s List”)

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Fragment 3 Cactus. The saguaro, pronounced ‘sa-uaro’, is the iconic, tall, comically limbed giant beloved of cartoonists. They often have holes in them where dedicated woodpeckers, finches and a bird called the Golden Flicker make their homes. Their stunning blossom is the state flower of Arizona and produces millions and millions of seeds, one of which, if it is lucky, will sprout in the summer rain and, over fifty to eighty years, grow a side arm and be tall enough to hit a ceiling. They have been known to live for a hundred and seventy-five years and achieve heights above forty feet. They are funny and noble and beautiful and silly and grand all at the same time. Rather like America, come to think of it. (S. Fry “Stephen Fry in America”)

IV. Are you familiar with the works of literature mentioned in this chapter? Who wrote them? Add the names of at least three writers representing the literary heritage of this nation. Can you formulate the themes of some of their works?

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Block 3 ‘Text Types’ Any piece of writing can be classified according to the writer’s communicative intention. To describe the kinds of texts according to their pragmatic aspect various terms can be used: textualization strategies, discourse modes, compositional speech forms, etc. All of them concern the writer’s purpose in writing and refer to the following text types: description, narration, argumentation, explanation, instruction. It is not uncommon for a single text to incorporate parts which fall under different headings, for instance, a novel may consist of descriptive, narrative and argumentative episodes; a newspaper editorial is likely to contain narrative and argumentative parts; advertisements combine the elements of description, argumentation and instruction. Explanation (explanatory writing) is the most common mode of discourse to be encountered in college / university reading. It is essentially factual writing with a straightforward purpose: to explain, to make clear, etc. The writer analyses and explains some relatively complex matter, mostly in an objective and precise way. Explanation is based on facts, not opinions. Dictionary definitions, entries in reference books and materials of textbooks are common text forms belonging to this text type. Example 1 The word-stock of any given language can be roughly divided into three uneven groups, differing from each other by the sphere of its possible use. The biggest division is made up of neutral words, possessing no stylistic connotation and suitable for any communicative situation; two smaller ones are literary and colloquial strata, respectively. (V. A. Kukharenko “Seminars in Stylistics”) 23

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In instructive texts such as rules and regulations, the writer or speaker tries to teach people something. Characteristic of instruction is the use of imperative sentences and the present tense group of verbs. Example 2 Install the SIM Card: 1. Insert the end of the SIM eject tool into the hole on the SIM tray. Press firmly and push it straight in until the tray pops out. If you don’t have a SIM eject tool, you can use the end of a paper clip. 2. Pull out the SIM tray and place the SIM card in the tray. The angled corner of the SIM ensures that the card fits only the correct way in the tray. 3. With the tray aligned as shown, carefully replace the SIM tray containing the SIM card in iPhone. Narration is the most easily recognized mode of discourse, which is simply telling a story. A writer employs narrative because his / her purpose is to relate events, either real or imagined, in a kind of temporal order (not necessarily chronological). The shortest narrative in world literature is Caesar’s story ‘Veni, vidi, vici’. Narration answers the questions “What happened? How? When? Where? With or by whom?” It varies in length from extremely short (news stories, jokes, anecdotes) to extremely long materials (novels). One of the simplest forms of narration is a fable, a short tale written or told to illustrate a moral truth. Example 3 In the early 1970s Mrs. Helen Ireland of Auburn in California failed her driving test almost before she started. She got into the car, said ‘Good morning’ to the tester and started the car. Then she got confused, put the wrong foot down and drove straight through the wall of the Driving Test Centre. (S. Pile “The Book of Heroic Failures”) Descriptive texts present the physical characteristics of objects, people, animals, places, etc. The presentation can be either based on exact observation and objective information, or it can give a suggestive mental picture based on the writer’s or speaker’s subjective impressions. This kind of writing refers to how something or somebody looks 24

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like; thus, the writer’s purpose is to paint a picture in words. Needless to say, descriptive texts abound in adjectives. Description always relies on concrete details that appeal to the reader’s senses. Descriptions can be either static or dynamic; a good example of the dynamic description of a thunderstorm is presented in the following text. Example 4 Directly it began to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blueblack outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they were just wild; the next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest — fst! (M. Twain “Huckleberry Finn”) A special type of description in fiction is landscape, or scene description, which does not only serve as the background for the events described; it also helps to create a special mood and arouse certain feelings and emotions. Example 5 It’s an enormous pub, the Lauder, with ceilings so high that the cigarette smoke gathers above your head like a cartoon cloud. It’s tatty, and draughty, and the benches have had the stuffing slashed out of them, and the staff are surly, and the regular clientele are either terrifying or unconscious, and the toilets are wet and smelly, and there’s nothing to eat in the evening, and the wine is hilariously bad, and the bitter is fizzy and much too cold; in other words, it’s a run-of-the-mill north London pub. (N.Hornby “High Fidelity”) Scene description, weather description in particular, is relevant to the story since sometimes it helps to reveal the inner state of the character, which is either in harmony with the environment, or vice versa. 25

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Example 6 It was a sunny day, a bright, heartless, all-seeing sunny day and the light was coming down clearly between her own building and the one opposite and showing up the thick layer of dust on the windowsill outside. Merrion sighed and drummed a little rhythm on the double glazing with her fingers. It would have suited her mood better if it had been raining. (J. Trollope “Marrying the Mistress”) One more type of description — portrait — serves as a very important means of characters’ individualization, providing readers with information not only about the looks of personages, but also defining their status and background. Portraits in fiction are always evaluative since they convey the author’s attitude towards his / her character; in some cases the humorous effect can be achieved thanks to the exaggerated form of the description. Example 7 It was a warm day, almost the end of March, and I stood outside the barber shop looking at the jutting neon sign of a second floor dine and dice emporium called Florian’s. A man was looking at the sign too. He was looking up at the dusty windows with a sort of ecstatic fixity of expression, like a hunky immigrant catching his first sight of the Statue of Liberty. He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck. He was about ten feet away from me. His arms hung loose at his sides and a forgotten cigar smoked behind his enormous fingers. Slim quiet Negroes passed up and down the street and stared at him with darting side glances. He was worth looking at. He wore a shaggy borsalino hat, a rough gray sports coat with white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie, pleated gray flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white explosions on the toes. From his outer breast pocket cascaded a show handkerchief of the same brilliant yellow as his tie. There were a couple of colored feathers tucked into the band of his hat, but he didn’t really need them. Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food. (R. Chandler “Farewell, My Lovely”) 26

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Argumentative texts deal with controversial matter and express a clear opinion on the topic. Comments, interviews, leading articles and letters to the editor are common text forms belonging to the text type of argumentation. In fiction argumentation is realized in the form of a lyrical digression, where the writer explicitly states his or her position. It offers causes and effects of the characters’ behavior, or the author’s considerations about moral, social, historical and other issues. Argumentative texts are often called persuasive, thus, the basic intention of the author in this kind of writing is to convince the reader that a particular idea or opinion is worth holding, to win the reader over a certain point of view, or to make the reader change his / her mind. By its very nature, argumentative writing relies more on opinion that on fact, since, by definition, it represents a subjective or personal point of view. The two essential components of this text type are appeals to reason and appeals to emotions, either alone or in combination. The aim to persuade by appealing to our emotions is evident in the following example where the author relies on the emotionally charged language — words that have a strong (in this case, negative) emotional impact. Example 8 I would like to make an admission up front: I have a thing about drunken drivers. I hate them. I really hate them. Every time I read about another innocent person slaughtered by a drunken driver, I become enraged. So when I saw the nationally broadcast PBS special on drunken driving last week, I did not react as many did. I did not think it was sensitive and forthright. I did not react as Phil Donahue, the host, did when he came on at the end and said: “I was enormously moved by this documentary, as I’m sure you were.” Not me, Phil. I wanted to kick in the set. I was plenty moved for the victims. I was plenty moved for the people who were crippled, paralyzed, reduced to vegetables or killed. But the drunken drivers themselves did not move me. I thought most got off real easy. 27

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First, let me tell you about the magnitude of the problem. Someone is killed by a drunken driver every 20 minutes in this country. On any given weekend night, on any road in America, 1 out of every 10 drivers is drunk. Which is why drunken drivers will continue to get off easy. Because so many of the lawmakers, so many of the jurors, so many of the judges have driven drunk themselves. They have a certain amount of sympathy for those who get caught. (R. Simon “No Compassion for Drunk Drivers”)

Follow-Up I. Check yourself and insert the necessary words: a) … texts basically deal with factual phenomena, e.g. objects and people. Therefore you find many verbs of ‘non-change’ (to be, to stand, to lie, to sit) and adverbs of place. Technical … tends to be neutral, exact and impersonal, while artistic … also expresses the writer’s moods and feelings. b) …texts deal mainly with changes in time, i.e. with actions and events. Typical text type markers are verbs that denote ‘change’ as well as expressions of time (time-sequence signals); and adverbs of time are not excluded. … is to be found in short stories, novels, biographies, anecdotes, news and reports. c) … texts tend to be explanatory: they explain objects and ideas in their interrelations. Typical verbs for the identification and explanation are: to refer to, to be defined, to be called, to consist of, etc. Typical of this text type are the definition, the summary, the …essay. d) … texts deal with problems and controversial ideas. The ultimate aim is to win over the reader or the listener. It has a dominantly dialectical text structure, and words like but, by contrast, however, etc are its linguistic signals. The basis of any … text has to be provided by expository passages, by the explanation of facts, concepts, developments or processes. e) …texts are usually ‘tenseless’ and have an instructive aim. They are said to be directive: the writer’s aim is for the reader to be able to do something. 28

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II. Identify the types of the following texts. Give your reasons: a) Languages are like towns: they must grow organically and for good reason. Esperanto is like a new town, Telford or Milton Keynes; it has, linguistically speaking, ample walkways, spacious parking, rational traffic flow and all the modern amenities: but there are no historic sites, no great towering landmarks: there is no feeling that mankind has grown and lived and worked here, shaping the architecture according to necessity, power or worship. The English language, however, is like York or Chester or Norwich or London — absurd narrow twisting streets that strangers are so lost in, no parking, no velodrome: but there are churches, castles, cathedrals, customs houses, the remnants of old slums, and old palaces. Our past is there. But not just our past, these cities are not museums, they contain the present too: estates, office blocks, contraflow cycle paths. They are living things, towns and languages. When we speak English, the old of the King James Bible, Shakespeare, Johnson, Tennyson, and Dickens is uttered in the same breath as the new of advertising and Blankety Blank and Any Questions. In our language the Barbican Centre stands near St Paul’s. (S. Fry “Paperweight”)

b) One of the most familiar of all [images] is a landscape by Bruegel, sometimes known as The Return of the Hunters, more usually as The Hunters in the Snow. There they go again, those weary men with their gaunt dogs on the walls of hospital waiting-rooms and students’ lodgings, on your mantelpiece Christmas after Christmas, trudging away from us off the winter hills behind our backs, down into the snowbound valley beneath. Their heads are lowered, their spoils are meagre. Three hunters, with thirteen dogs to feed and nothing but a single fox to show for their labours. There’s no great rejoicing at their return; the women making a fire, outside the inn with the sign that’s hanging half off its hooks, don’t give them a glance, any more than the ploughman looks up to see Icarus vanishing into the sea in that earlier painting of Bruegel’s that Auden made almost as famous as the Hunters. What takes the eye is the landscape that opens away at the foot of the hill we are on: the village turned in upon itself by the cold, 29

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the tiny figures on the unfamiliar ice, the sky leaden above the white flood plain around the frozen river, a planning magpie black against the whiteness, leading the eye on to the broken teeth of the mountains on the other side of the valley, and the distant town at the end of it beside the winter sea. (M. Frayn “Headlong”)

c) Did you hear about the teacher who was helping one of her kindergarten students put on his boots? He asked for help and she could see why. With her pulling and him pushing, the boots still didn't want to go on. When the second boot was on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost whimpered when the little boy said, «Teacher, they're on the wrong feet.» She looked and sure enough, they were. It wasn't any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on -- this time on the right feet. He then announced, «These aren't my boots.» She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream,» Why didn't you say so?» like she wanted to. Once again she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off. He then said, «They're my brother's boots. My Mom made me wear them». She didn't know if she should laugh or cry. She mustered up the grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots on his feet again. She said, «Now, where are your mittens?» He said, «I stuffed them in the toes of my boots...»

III. Find in the book you are reading now (Home Reading, Extensive Reading, or any work of fiction you are reading for fun) fragments illustrating the text types mentioned above. IV. Creative Writing. Choose any of the five text types and make up your own fragment (150-200 words) within the framework of the chosen type. Do not mix the text types! Make your groupmates guess the text type which your fragment represents. 30

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Block 4 ‘Point of View’ Don’t mix up! Author vs. narrator The author is the person who wrote the story; the narrator is the person or voice telling the story. The narrator like all fictional characters is a product of the author’s imagination. The narrator is not always the author’s mouthpiece. “The choice of the point(s) of view from which the story is told is arguably the most important single decision that the novelist has to make, for it fundamentally affects the way readers will respond, emotionally and morally, to the fictional characters and their actions,” — writes the famous British novelist David Lodge in his book “The Art of Fiction”. He illustrates this idea with the story of an adultery, which is sure to affect us in different ways depending on the perspective from which it is presented: either from the point of view of the unfaithful person, or the injured spouse, or the lover, or as observed by some fourth party. The writer has to decide between the “I” point of view (first-person narration) and the “he” point of view (third-person narration). A story told from the first-person point of view is presented by one of the characters, who refers to himself or herself as “I”. Thus, this character (=the narrator) speaks directly to the reader. We have the advantage of an immediate report by someone actually involved in the events of the story. If the writer decides on the “I” point of view, he / she has another decision to make — will the “I” be the main character, the protagonist, or will he be an observer, the one who is on the scene but is not the main character? The “I” as main character may seem most natural 31

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if the author can write with the tone of autobiography and convey a sense of immediacy and intimacy. The second possibility, the “I” incidental point of view, gives the same impressions, but does not enable the author to relate the private thoughts of the main character. You are limited to the thoughts of an incidental character and can only guess at the thoughts of the main character. This type of a narrator can be represented by Nick Carraway from the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. S. Fitzgerald. One possible disadvantage of the first-person narration is that he / she provides only a partial view of the story as the narrator cannot disclose thoughts and feelings of other characters. If the writer wants to relate the thoughts of all the characters, he adopts the “he”, or third-person point of view. He can become the omniscient (omnipotent, or ‘all-knowing’) author — one who sees and can reveal the thoughts of any character. He moves freely in and out of people’s thoughts and wherever else he wishes to go and can interrupt his narrative to comment on the behaviour of the characters, or to present his opinion on moral or social issues. He is a conscious narrator, and the narrator’s personality does not interfere with the storytelling. The author is able to use a tone of objectivity, because this point of view is ‘outside’ the characters. At the same time, the very fact that the author can reveal the thoughts of characters other than the main character reduces a sense of intimacy. If the author wishes to maintain a certain amount of objectivity and still give the sense of special identification with the main character, which is characteristic of the first-person point of view, the author may write in the third person but limit himself to the main character’s thoughts, this would be the limited third-person point of view. For example, in “Alice in Wonderland” we fall with Alice through the rabbit hole and eventually land in a strange new world the peculiarities of which we discover only as Alice discovers them. Whatever point of view is chosen, the author can reveal the thoughts of at least one character. Or the author may wish to disregard the thoughts of any character and thus obtain greater distance and objectivity. The author is a reporter, relating only what an outside observer can see. The author does not identify himself with any character and does not reveal thoughts; this is the objective third-person point of view, where the narrator functions as a camera and microphone. A good example of this kind of writing is Ernest Hemingway’s short stories. 32

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One more technique, which is becoming more and more popular in modern fiction, is the mixed (shifting) point of view. It enables the author to cover all the possibilities and is an effective way of handling a large cast of characters. In the mixed point of view the narrator shifts from one point of view to another, as a result, the story is told in different voices. Many of such stories are experimental, concerned with ‘re-inventing the narrator’. A classical example of this kind of narration may be found in the story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” written by Ambrose Bierce. Types of Point of View First Person Narration

Third Person Narration Shifting Point of View

– Protagonist: thoughts of “I” only – Incidental Character: thoughts of ‘I’ only

– Omniscient: thoughts of everybody – Limited: thoughts of the protagonist only – Objective: thoughts of no one

Follow-Up I. What does the author gain and what does the author lose out when choosing a particular point of view? Consider advantages and disadvantages of each type and complete the table. First Person Narration

Third Person Narration

Advantages Disadvantages

II. Write down the titles of the books (with the names of the authors!) which a) are told from the point of view of the main character (protagonist) of the story 1) 2) 3) b) are told by the omniscient narrator 1) 2) 33

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3) *c) are told in different voices 1) 2) *d) are told by an ‘unreliable’ narrator 1) 2) III. Consider the texts in the Supplement with regard to their ‘point of view’ aspect. How does the choice of the particular perspective from which a story is narrated influence the choice of the lexical and syntactical material? IV. Think of a literary work you have recently read. Identify the point of view of the story answering the preliminary questions: Who tells the story? Can you trust the narrator? Consider the following questions: Why has the author chosen this particular point of view? How would the story change if it were told from each of the other points of view? What effect does the point of view have on the other elements of the story — theme, characterization, language? What perspective of the world does the author want us to have? If the point of view is first person, is the narrator telling the story to someone? If so, to whom and how do they react?

Notes on the Epistolary Novel The epistolary novel — a novel written in the form of letters — is a peculiar type of first-person narrative. Unlike the story of an autobiography, which is known to the narrator before he starts, letters describe an ongoing process, providing a lively and animated style of writing. If a novel has more than one correspondent, the benefits become obvious since the same event can be shown from different points of view, with different interpretations. Besides, since a letter is always addressed to a specific addressee, it makes the process of interpretation of the epistolary text even more challenging as in some cases the reader can speculate on the anticipated emotional response of the receiver. 34

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Food for Thought 1. In his book “The Art of Fiction”, David Lodge claims that a fictional letter is undistinguishable from a real letter. Do you agree with this statement? Support your idea with arguments. 2. The epistolary novels were very popular in the 18th century. As David Lodge puts it, “The pseudo-documentary realism of the epistolary method gave the early novelists an unprecedented power over their audiences, comparable to the spell exerted on modern television audiences by certain soap operas.” How can you account for the decline of the popularity of the genre? Do you think it likely that the interest in this form of writing will revive? If yes, in what form?

Follow-Up I. Write down the titles of the books written in the epistolary genre (this may be a book presented entirely in the form of letters, or a book where some elements of the correspondence between characters is reproduced) 1) 2) 3) II. Find the foundation of the simile in the following context: Lined with lindens of medium size, the street rose at a barely perceptible angle, beginning with a post office and ending with a church, like an epistolary novel. (V. Nabokov) III. Read texts 5 and 6 in the Supplement (part 2) and prove that they are specimens of the epistolary genre. IV. Write down the titles of the books concerned with school life and teaching. Can you recall at least one book (except “Up the Down Stair Case” by Bel Kaufman), where the protagonist is a teacher? 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 35

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Block 5 ‘Character and Characterization’ Lead-in Make up your own list of most memorable literary characters (no less than ten). What may this list reveal about your personality? You may share these lists with your groupmates and discuss them in class. In fiction character has been traditionally regarded as its most important component. We, readers, care about fictional characters — the imaginary people that writers create — and just as in real life, we experience all kinds of emotions towards them, from awe and admiration to indignation and disgust. Literary characters come alive for us, we approach them with the same concerns with which we approach people; we might even say that fictional characters possess their own kind of reality. Sometimes, as in science fiction or fantasy, the characters are not people: they may be robots and aliens, dragons and elves, but the writer endows them with human abilities and characteristics, they really are people in everything but outward form. So be a fictional character an animal or a fairy, we demand that he or she is credible. This does not mean that we want every character to resemble someone we know from the real world, but rather that we consider a character probable in the universe of the story. To be credible, characters must be consistent: their thoughts, feelings and actions must not contradict one another. There are different types of characters and different ways of representing them. Characters in fiction may be classified as main (major) and minor, static and dynamic, round and flat; needless to say, all these characters perform specific functions. 36

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Language Focus “Positive” and “negative” are not applied to literary characters by English people in the sense of “положительный / отрицательный”. There are no exact equivalents for these words as used in literary criticism, so to bring your idea home you will have to use such specific words as: sympathetic strong admirable honest kind-hearted decent respectable impressive wise

unsympathetic weak mean wicked repulsive unscrupulous immoral disagreeable brusque

Characters: major / main and minor. A major character is an important figure at the centre of the story’s action or theme. Usually a character’s status as major or minor is clear. The major character is sometimes called the protagonist, and his or her opposite — the antagonist. Normally it is easy to see who the protagonist is, but sometimes it may be difficult to identify the antagonist because the antagonist may be either a person, something in the environment, or some part of the protagonist’s own personality. Supporting the major character are one or more secondary or minor characters whose function is partly to illuminate the major characters. Minor characters may have no specific function other than peopling the universe of the story (guests at a party, townspeople, etc.). Normally, however, the minor characters will serve one or more functions, for example, there may be a character that acts as a contrast or parallel to the protagonist, thereby clarifying the personality of the protagonist. A minor character may perform the function of a witness, telling us the protagonist’s story, in some cases giving us his or her private version of what happened; the protagonist can also reveal his or her intimate thoughts and feelings to some minor character making them in this way known to the reader. 37

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Characters: static and dynamic. Static characters, as the name suggests, are unchanging, they remain the same throughout the story. Dynamic characters, by contrast, exhibit some kind of change — of attitude, of behaviour, of purpose — as the story progresses. They change and develop, often because of something that happens to them in the course of the story; in fact, this very change can be the most important event in a literary work. Characters: round and flat. Depending on how much information is given to us about them, characters can be either flat or round. Flat characters seem very simple; they do not normally develop or change. They are one dimensional and have no depth or complexity, as if they could be summed up with one or two personal traits. On the contrary, round characters have many sides or many dimensions; they may possess contradictory personality traits. Being complex, round characters are capable of doing and saying surprising things. More effort is required to understand round characters since their various conflicts and motives give them complexity and depth — just as in real life. In life no one tells you what emotion you should feel under certain circumstances, the same happens in good fiction. Certainly, there are stories where the author tells you exactly what you are to think about each character and what emotional response you should have. But in most cases literary works are more challenging to understand. It is not that the authors want to hide their purposes and confuse the reader, just like in real life you must pay attention to what people say and how they say it in order to understand what they really mean, in fiction you must also perceive what the characters say, how they say it and why. The difference between life and fiction is that in fiction everything is purposefully arranged; and the means by which writers present and reveal character are selected very carefully to produce the desired effect. These means or, rather, the art of creating literary characters, is called characterization. Character can be handled in several ways in a literary work. The simplest way to introduce a character, common in classical fiction, is to give a physical description and biographical summary. When the author directly states facts about a character’s personality, the method employed is called direct, or explicit, characterization. 38

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Example 1 The door opens anyway and his colleague, Roberta, enters. Though young, in her thirties, her back is hunched, her chin pressed to her chest as though she is decades older. Her eyes, mostly cast downward, occasionally flicker upwards to meet his before falling again. She is apologetic for everything, as always, constantly saying sorry to the world, as though her very presence offends. She tries to manoeuver her way through the obstacle course that is his cluttered office to reach his desk. This she does the same way as she does through her life, as quietly and invisibly as possible… (C. Ahern “Thanks for the Memories”) One more variant of direct characterization, more complex, represents implicit characterization of a literary personage as seen through the eyes of another character, which, in some cases, should not be trusted unconditionally. After all, the narrator may present his or her highly subjective version of events, and it is up to the reader to decide whether to trust the narrator’s judgement or not. And we should not forget that what Character A says about Character B reveals something about both of them. Example 2 He was impressed. Mr. Goldfinger was one of the most relaxed men Bond had ever met. It showed in the economy of his movement, of his speech, of his expressions. Mr. Goldfinger wasted no effort, yet there was something coiled, compressed, in the immobility of the man. When Goldfinger had stood up, the first thing that had struck Bond was that everything was out of proportion. Goldfinger was short, not more than five feet tall, and on top of the thick body and blunt, peasant legs, was set almost directly into the shoulders, a huge and it seemed exactly round head. It was as if Goldfinger had been put together with bits of other people’s bodies. Nothing seemed to belong. Perhaps, Bond thought, it was to conceal his ugliness that Goldfinger made such a fetish of sunburn. Without the red-brown camouflage the pale body would be grotesque. The face, under the cliff of crew-cut carroty hair, was as startling, without being as ugly, as the body. It was moon-shaped without being moonlike. 39

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The forehead was fine and high and the thin sandy brows were level above the large light blue eyes fringed with pale lashes. The nose was fleshily aquiline between high cheekbones and cheeks that were more muscular than fat. The mouth was thin and dead straight, but beautifully drawn. The chin and jaws were firm and glinted with health. To sum up, thought Bond, it was the face of a thinker, perhaps a scientist, who was ruthless, sensual, stoical and tough. An odd combination. What else could he guess? Bond always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big — bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world. And what about a misshapen short man with red hair and a bizarre face? That might add up to a really formidable misfit. One could certainly feel the repressions. There was a powerhouse of vitality humming in the man that suggested that if one stuck an electric bulb into Goldfinger’s mouth it would light up. Bond smiled at the thought. (I. Fleming “Goldfinger”) Direct statement is the easiest way to reveal the personality of a character since the author tells you exactly what a character is like, but it is often the least interesting technique. Modern novelists usually prefer the facts about their characters emerge gradually, or be conveyed by action and speech, which is called indirect, or implicit, characterization. Here the most frequent methods the author may use to reveal character are: characters’ actions, characters’ speech and characters’ thoughts and feelings. The author can show you what a character is like by reporting the character’s actions, describing what a person does and what happens to him, as a result, we can judge for ourselves what a character is like. Seeing a character act in a cruel way is definitely more interesting and effective than just being told “He is cruel”. Example 3 …way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisting curve through his wings. The 40

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curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one… single… more… inch… of… curve… Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell. Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonor. But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve — slowing, slowing, and stalling once more — was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly. This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make oneself popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of lowlevel glides, experimenting. “Why, Jon, why?” his mother asked. “Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can’t you leave low flying to the pelicans, the albatross? Why don’t you eat? Son, you’re bone and feathers!” “I don’t mind being bone and feathers, mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just want to know.” (R. Bach “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”) Presenting us with a picture of endless efforts undertaken by Jonathan Livingston, the author masterfully reveals the exceptional character of his fable — the character of a seagull, bored with daily squabbles about food, which is aspiring after self-perfection, flight and freedom. The element of a dialogue inserted in the fragment also helps Richard Bach to produce the desired effect: since it is a verbal action we hear what characters say and we form our own opinion about the characters. It is an interesting method of disclosing personality of characters as we should be aware of what a person says as well as 41

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how he says it. Besides, speech characterization is a very important means of individualizing a literary character: judging by the language used by a personage we acquire information about his or her origin, cultural, educational and social status, etc. Needless to say, to endow the heroes with convincing speech characteristics and to make them sound natural and true-to-life is a very challenging task a writer has to accomplish. Example 4 That afternoon Jenny took me to meet the other guys in the band an she tell them I play the harmonica like heaven itsef, an why don’t they let me set in with them at the club tonight. One of the guys axe me what I like to play best, an I say, “Dixie,” and he say he don’t believe he has heard what I say, an Jenny jump in an say, “It don’t matter, he will be fine once he’s got a ear for our stuff.” So that night I be playing with the band an everybody agree I am makin a good contribution an it is very enjoyable, getting to set there an watch Jenny sing an throw herself all over the stage. (W. Groom “Forrest Gump”) The speech of the title character of the novel — a mentally challenged man called Forrest Gump — sounds authentic and plausible thanks to the language forms used. Due to skillful stylization it characterizes him as an uneducated person of a low social status and creates an atmosphere of a relaxed, informal talk. The author can render thoughts and feelings of a character revealing his or her personality by means of the interior monologue, or inner represented speech. This technique allows the writer to depict the character from within, disclosing his or her thoughts and feelings; sometimes the inner speech of the hero is inseparably linked with the author’s comments. Example 5 The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly, at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without a cloth — a distinguishing elegance — and so far had not spoken a word. 42

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Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had been buying, and so long as he talked Irene’s silence did not distress him. This evening he had found it impossible to talk. The decision to build had been weighing on his mind all the week, and he had made up his mind to tell her. His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had no business to make him feel like that — a wife and a husband being one person. She had not looked at him once since they sat down; and he wondered what on earth she had been thinking about all the time. It was hard, when a man worked as he did, making money for her — yes, and with an ache in his heart — that she should sit there, looking — looking as if she saw the walls of the room closing in. It was enough to make a man get up and leave the table. (J. Galsworthy “The Man of Property”) The writer gives us access to his character’s private thoughts, and we can judge that Soames feels annoyed and offended by Irene’s aversion and indifference. His feelings of alarm and distress are revealed by means of the inner monologue, which is skillfully built with the help of lexical and syntactical means. In a literary work all these methods can blend; as fictional discourse constantly alternates between showing us what happened and telling us what happened. It is a successful combination of direct and indirect characterization that enables writers to create memorable and plausible characters.

Follow-Up I. Consider possible ways of adequately translating the terms “flat” and “round” with reference to literary characters into Russian. II. Study the list of literary characters you have made. Try to define the status of these characters. If they serve as protagonists of some literary works, can you identify their antagonists? III. Make up another list of literary characters following the given instructions: 43

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1) a character of classical Russian literature (male)

2) a character of classical Russian literature (female)

3) a character of modern Russian literature

4) a character of classical British literature (male)

5) a character of classical British literature (female)

6) a character of classical American literature (male)

7) a character of classical American literature (female)

8) a character of a fairy-tale

9) a character of a historical novel

10) a character of a humorous story

Literary characters seldom leave us totally unimpressed and indifferent. Using the words in the Language Focus, try to “label” your feelings these characters arouse. 44

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Language Focus Feelings and Emotions to arouse / to cause/ to evoke / to stir / to trigger + Noun admiration … anger… awe … approval …curiosity… concern… compassion delight … disgust … disapproval…bitterness….envy… fury indignation… interest… irritation …respect … resentment… sympathy Add your own nouns: to feel + Adjective sad…sorry…proud…surprised…confused…shocked….suspicious….mistrustful amazed…astonished…puzzled…uneasy….anxious….excited… ecstatic…elated gloomy….depressed… joyful… happy Add your own adjectives: to feel uncertain about … to have mixed feelings about… to be in two minds about … IV. Think of a literary work you have recently read. List the characters of the book and add at least 1-2 traits to each of the character. Ask yourself or your groupmate as many revealing questions about the characters and the way they are portrayed as you possibly can: Are they flat or round, static or dynamic? How and why do they change? What events or moments of self-revelation produce these changes? Does what they learn help or hinder them? Do they have traits that contradict one another and therefore cause internal conflicts? Do the characters have speech characteristics, specific gestures, or modes of dress that reveal their inner selves?

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Block 6 ‘Architecture of the Text’ The famous British novelist and scholar David Lodge compares the structure of a novel to the framework of girders that holds up a modern high-rise building: we cannot see it, but it determines the shape and character of the building. Plot and structure are considered to be indispensable elements of fiction, so the first part of this block is devoted to the brief study of the following closely related aspects of a literary text:

6.1 Action and Conflict, Plot and Setting Action is a general word which, when applied to literature, denotes events represented. Action is not only physical activity, it includes speech and thoughts as well, thus, we can speak about mental action of the story. Action differs from plot as plot means a succession of events, or the artistic arrangement of events in a scheme. To say that plot is a mere listing of events is to oversimplify things: writers of fiction select fictional events very carefully; they arrange them into patterns and establish causal relationships among the events resulting from conflict. E. M. Forster, a noted novelist and critic, makes the distinction between action and plot by using the following illustration: “The King died; two months later the Queen died.” This tells action but it is not a plot. If, however, we show a causal relationship between these two actions (“The Queen died two months later because of a broken heart”), we have a plot. Still we do not have a story until we add an essential ingredient — the element of conflict. “The King died. The Queen, because of the Kings’ death suddenly felt that life was not worth living. 46

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Yet, she knew that the cruel brother of the King would take over the country and ruin all the good the King had accomplished if she did not remain alive and resist the brother’s evil machinations.” Consequently, we have a proper story with two conflicts (the Queen’s internal conflict, duty versus personal grief; and the external conflict between her and the King’s brother).

Notes on Types of Conflict Conflict, or struggle between opposing forces, is an indispensable element of a literary work. All the changes and developments are caused by the conflict: it disturbs the original condition and provokes a change which results in a new condition. There are two general categories of conflict: internal and external. Internal conflicts take place within the minds of characters (man is in conflict with himself; e.g. the good person wrestles inwardly with temptation). External conflicts take place between individuals (man against man), or between individuals and the world (man against the forces of nature, or man against society). The conflict may be physical, psychological, emotional or moral. A verbal disagreement between two people is also an external conflict. The forces in a conflict are usually embodied by characters, the most relevant being the protagonist and the antagonist. The term “protagonist” usually means “the main character”, it might be helpful to think of the protagonist as someone who is fighting for something. The antagonist is the opponent of the protagonist; the antagonist is usually a person, but can also be a nonhuman force or even an aspect of the protagonist. Most literary works contain more than one conflict. The major, or primary conflict is the one about which the entire work is written. When all forces in conflict reach a peak of tension, it becomes clear that one conflict must be resolved. The solution of other conflicts is determined or made possible by solution of the major conflict. The outcome of the major conflict is called the resolution and normally precedes the end of the work.

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Follow-Up Think of a literary work you have recently read. What does its conflict reveal about action? On one side of a piece of paper, list the external conflicts of the work. On the other, list the internal conflicts. Draw a line between the external and internal conflicts that seem related. List the key conflicts and the ways in which the conflicts have been resolved (if they have been). Studying the conflict helps illuminate the characters: List the qualities of the protagonist and the antagonist. Which of them make the situation at the beginning unstable? Identify the turning point(s) and the situations where the new kind of stability was achieved. Ask yourself the question: How does the study of the conflict point to the meaning or theme of the story? Plot denotes the outline of what happens, the scheme of connected events, and it is a story’s plot that keeps us turning pages: we read to find out what will happen next. The action of the story is usually composed of a sequence of causally related events, which does not mean that these events are necessarily presented in a chronological order. Flashbacks — jumps back in time — disrupt the linear movement of the plot to present an earlier action. To appreciate fictional plot with all its reversals and surprises, changes of the tempo of action and shifts in its direction, we must be constantly aware of one arrangement of events over another as this very design and structure of the events help the writer manipulate our emotional and intellectual responses. Certainly, writers of fiction may arrange events into many patterns to suit their purposes best of all, but the plot must always be coherent, which means that the end must be a believable consequence of the rest of the story. The classical scheme of a traditional fictional plot comprises the following elements: exposition, complication, climax, and denouement, which can be graphically presented as follows: Climax Complication Exposition 48

Dénouement

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Exposition is the part of the story containing the background information necessary for understanding what takes place in the story. It usually contains a short presentation of time, place and the characters of the story, and often the conflict is introduced. The exposition is often found at the beginning of the story, but may also be interwoven in the narrative by means of flashbacks, so that the reader gradually comes to know the characters and the events leading up to the present situation. The conflict develops and intensifies at the phase called complication, then a series of causally (not casually!) related events “rises” toward climax — the crucial moment, the culmination, where the conflict reaches its highest point. Then the action falls off as the plot’s complications are sorted out, the conflict is settled and a new condition, a new kind of stability, is reached at the stage called denouement — untying of a knot. Not all works, however, have a dénouement. Some stories end right after the climax, leaving it up to the reader to judge what will be the outcome of the conflict. Such stories are often called “open-ended”. Authors seldom change the order of complication — climax — dénouement, but an author may choose to place more or less emphasis on each one. Quite frequently, short story writers will begin their stories close to the climax, and only reveal small glimpses of background or none at all. In that case the reader will have to use his or her imagination to form a picture of the situation leading up to the events of the story.

Follow-Up I. Check yourself and insert the necessary words: a) … is the catalyst that begins the major conflict. b) …explains the nature of the conflict. c) ….contains events that are much less intense than the … and presents a stable situation at the end. d) … is the moment of the greatest intensity. e) … is a crisis that fixes the outcome. f) …is the information needed to understand a story. g) … is a pattern of causally related events that contains conflict. h) One of the opposing forces involved in … is the central character. 49

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II. Read the fairy-tale “The Elephant’s Child” by R. Kipling (see the Supplement) and identify the elements of the plot in line with their functions. III. Think of at least three open-ended stories. Discuss their possible outcomes with your groupmates. Events unfold at a particular time and place, even in fantasy and science fiction. But setting of a story is much more than just a simple background for action. Providing geographical, historical and cultural context, setting enhances our understanding of the characters, adds an important dimension of the theme and thus illuminates the message of the work. Setting includes several closely related aspects of a work of fiction: – the physical world of the work; – the time in which the action of the work takes place; – the social and cultural environment of the characters; – “atmosphere” of the story. The geographical environment is crucial since it is sure to have an impact on the characters of the story. Besides, concrete and particular details enable you to perceive fiction as reality, conveying a sense of realism. As the American novelist Eudora Welty puts it, “place is what makes fiction seem real, because with place come customs, feelings, and associations…place is the crossroads of circumstance…place answers the questions, “What happened? Who’s here? Who’s coming?” When analyzing the setting of a work of fiction, we should first get the details of the physical setting clear in our mind. The following questions may help explore all the potentialities of the physical setting: Where does the action take place? What sensuous qualities does the author give to the setting? What does it look like, feel like, sound like? What is the dominant impression about the setting? What relationship does place have to characterization and theme? In the following context, the narrator carefully describes the house where one of the characters — Miss Emily — lives. This description does not only help us picture a decaying Mississippi town in the postCivil War South, it also illuminates some features of the character, specifically, Miss Emily’s resistance to change. Later the physical details 50

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of the setting become linked with the values, ideals and attitudes of that place in different times. Example 1 It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps--an eyesore among eyesores. (W. Faulkner “A Rose for Emily”) Questions about time are equally important. First, at what period in history does the action take place? Many stories occur during historical events that affect characters and themes in important ways. Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” and Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” are classical examples. But while Tolstoy and Mitchell give readers a great deal of historical information in their fiction, many authors do not, consequently, you may need to supplement facts in the work with what you find out elsewhere. Another question concerning time in fiction concerns the passage of time, that is — how many hours, days, weeks, years are involved? What clues does the author give to indicate how much time is passing? Is the passage of time relevant to theme and characterization? More than that, we should ask ourselves, How is the passage of time perceived? Time may seem to move very slowly or very quickly, depending on a character’s state of mind. Thus, our recognition of how a character perceives time helps us understand the character’s internal conflicts and attitudes. The interpretation of the social and cultural environment represented in the work could emerge from the following questions: what is the environment portrayed in the work — the manners, values, customs, codes of conduct of a society? What does the author seem to think about them? (Approving? Ambivalent? Disapproving?) How do they affect the characters? Mood, or atmosphere, is quite often established by describing the physical setting. Atmosphere refers to the emotional reaction that we 51

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and — usually — the characters get from the setting of a work. When authors use descriptive setting to create a particular mood, they do not do this simply for the sake of creating a peculiar kind of atmosphere; it is appropriate to, or contributes to the theme of the work. The most fruitful questions about the atmosphere will probably be, What methods does the author use to create the work’s atmosphere? Why does the author create this particular atmosphere? Example 2 Through the bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixtytwo rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass — the rumor, the story, whatever it was. Something about Miss Minnie Cooper and a Negro. Attacked, insulted, frightened: none of them, gathered in the barber shop on that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors, knew exactly what had happened. (W. Faulkner “Dry September”) The atmosphere in the story “Dry September” is its compelling element which is heightened by William Faulkner’s detailed description of the setting. The immediate setting — the barber shop — is filled with an atmosphere of oppression, violence and dangerous excitement emanating from both outside and inside the shop. The writer instantly achieves this in the opening sentence with his reference to bloody September twilight, which describes a sunset, but also possesses a negative connotation which may be related to injury or death. He continues the image of destruction with mentioning of a rumour that has spread like a fire in dry grass. Similarly, inside, the air is so stale and the odors so strong, that we almost feel the suffocation of the characters and their corresponding inability to think clearly.

Follow-Up I. Read the list of functions which the setting may perform in a work of fiction. Bear in mind that these functions do not necessarily exclude one another: they often co-exist and overlap. Provide your own examples of literary works for each item. 52

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1. Setting can form a realistic background to the action, thereby making the characters, the actions and the whole story more credible.

2. Setting can help describe the characters indirectly. The way a person reacts to this environment will often tell us something about this person. An author may also use setting symbolically, comparing certain aspects of a character with parts of the environment. For this purpose writers may use descriptions of the seasons of the year, the weather or the colours of the scenery. Spring and morning are often associated with birth and youth, whereas autumn and winter, evening and night are related to old age and death. Light colours will often be characteristic of optimism and happiness, while dark colours represent a gloomier mood. Red may be the colour of love, black the colour of death, and so on.

3. Setting may contribute to the creation of a certain atmosphere appropriate to the general intention of the story. Descriptions of setting may thus serve to intensify the general mood of the story.

4. Setting may be the antagonist. As mentioned earlier, the protagonist may be in conflict with nature or other external forces. As such the setting becomes part of the conflict and we may see setting personified.

II. Characterize the setting of the short story, specifying its place, time, and atmosphere. Fragment I (Note: The narrator returns with his sister to the place where he spent his childhood) 53

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It was a grey and breezy morning, two days before Good Friday. The wind, blowing in wild, unpredictable gusts, carried the noise of traffic from the distant M54, and had already tipped our freshly laid wreath to one side. I knelt and straightened it. … We had arrived in the village only half an hour ago, and had found it empty and somnolent. Apart from a cluster of new houses where my uncle’s potato fields used to be, and the arrival of a small video library in the corner of the general stores, it seemed to have remained untouched by the passing of the last thirty years. After stopping at the shop to buy a newspaper, we had driven directly to the churchyard and had seen no one on our way. (J. Coe “Ivy and Her Nonsense”) III. Characterize the fragment with reference to the following aspects: elements of the plot, functions of the setting, types of conflict. Fragment 2 (Note: After his friend’s death, Spencer inherited a list of London tourist sights to be visited by the end of the year. ‘Feeding Pigeons’ is the first item on the London list) It was a thin afternoon for tourists in Trafalgar Square, and the birdseed man, who was wearing thermal gloves and a baseball cap with ‘I love New York’ on it, sold Spencer two bags of yellow grit for the price of one. He said, ‘It’s your lucky day,’ as he handed them over, and Spencer asked, ‘Starting from when?’ but received no reply. The Square looked rather fine in the low sunlight that streamed along Pall Mall, turning the windows of South Africa House crimson and jewelling the KFC boxes that blew between the fountains. Spencer positioned himself just under Nelson’s Column, filled both hands with birdseed and held them out at arm’s length, feeling like a combination of the crucified Christ and the Scarecrow in “Wizard of Oz”. For a moment nothing happened, and there was a mild commotion in his immediate vicinity and two smartish buffcoloured pigeons landed on his right hand and started devouring the seeds with cartoon-like velocity. Next a hideously 54

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diseased, possibly leprous, one-legged grey pigeon landed on his left hand, balanced precariousy on its warty remaining foot and quite deliberately pecked Spencer on the wrist. He shook his hand violently to dislodge it, dropping most of the seed as he did so, and suddenly every pigeon in Greater London was in the air, heading towards him like a bomber squadron, wheels down, flaps set, tails flattened for landing. The sky was black with bodies, and the world only fitfully visible behind a screen of wings. He cringed as pigeons banked and swooped and landed and took off again; the ground was hidden beneath a shifting carpet of feathery backs and the air vibrated with the throaty calls that he had always found pleasantly soothing, and which now sounded like the rallying cries of an army crazed with bloodlust. Covering his head with his arms, he ducked and ran. The carpet exploded into a wall of wings and when he was through, and safe, and all at once aware that he was being videoed by a party of Japanese pensioners. He counterfeited a casual wave and walked away, trying to look like someone who was really enjoying himself. (L. Evans “Spencer’s List”)

6.2 Successfully structured essays The rules and requirements mentioned above are applied to literary texts, and they may not work in non-fiction. At the same time, the principles of building a text are equally or even more important to non-fictional texts, since their authors communicate ideas and opinions and reveal their personalities largely by means of particular patterns of organizing the material. Needless to say, the structural and compositional principles of non-fictional texts are different; for utilitarian purposes they are considered separately in the second part of this block, where special emphasis is laid on the form and organization of essays. Essay is a short prose composition that focuses on a single subject. Essays belong to non-fiction, or factual prose writing, which means that this kind of writing — unlike fiction — is rooted in fact, observing 55

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and commenting on real-life people end events. At the same time an essay — unlike scientific prose or ‘officialese’ — expresses the observations and opinions of the author in a personal, highly individual way. This dual nature of a personal essay manifests itself in the combination of logical reasoning and emotional appeal; the former is ensured by skillful structuring of the text and is predicted by the focus and purpose of the author. The essay-writer does not merely relate facts; the particular choice of words and their arrangement helps the author communicate his ideas most successfully and reveal his intentions. Therefore, in fulfilling their various purposes, authors of essays employ and often combine different kinds of writing: narration, description, and argumentation (see Block 3 ‘Text Types’). Irrespective of its type, a good essay should have coherence (which means that all its structural parts are logically connected) and continuity (which means that the connection of the parts should be smooth); it should be adequately developed and well-proportioned, which will make it clear and easy to read. Since from time to time you are required to write an essay on this or that topic yourself, it seems advisable to bear in mind the basic rules of essay-writing. It is a truth universally acknowledged that an essay has three basic parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. These parts are often called the introduction, the main body, and the conclusion. Logically enough, the introduction states the issue of writing, the thesis sentence, or topic sentence, which makes clear what the essay is going to be about and states the purpose of the essay. The introduction should be interesting enough to make the reader want to keep on reading; besides, it should be relatively short — one to three paragraphs. The second part of the essay, which is sometimes called discussion, or body, is the place where the line of reasoning is developed. It presents facts, details, or reasons to develop the idea or support the opinion; the order and the balance of this part are predetermined by the purpose of the essay-writer; so this will vary from topic to topic. The conclusion signals that the essay has come to an end. It summarizes the subject or main aim of the essay and gives emphasis to it with a final statement of special impact or importance. It should remind the reader of the problem posed at the beginning of the essay (the topic). The essay should not end abruptly, its conclusion should come naturally, the main purpose completed, the final statement made. 56

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Notes on Types of Essays A narrative essay tells a true story, presenting actual events in a chronological order. The chronological organization of a narrative essay is similar to the plot of a literary story. Like novelists, essay-writers stimulate readers’ interest using skillfully chosen details to draw their readers into the experience being narrated. Narrative essays relate facts, but they go beyond the objective reporting of these facts, since their authors offer their personal comments and reflections on these events. Just as a short story is focused on a theme, a narrative essay is cantered on an experience, the presentation of which illuminates some observation about life in general. A descriptive essay makes its point by creating a picture of a person, place, object, or a scene in the mind’s eye of the reader. Normally writers of descriptive essays use description to convey attitude, thus, completely objective descriptions — descriptions without any judgement related to the point considered — are very rare indeed. Good descriptive writing creates a strong impression of its subject for a particular purpose: to illustrate vividly a general idea about life, making a direct appeal to the reader’s emotions. An argumentative essay tries to convince the reader of the author’s opinion and sometimes to move the reader to action. In order to persuade their readers, writers of argumentative essays skillfully interpret objective evidence to support their statements. Sometimes writers mention alternative opinions and explain why they find these ideas unsatisfactory. By recognizing alternative views, a writer can convince readers that the opinion stated in the essay has been formed only after elaborate consideration. This kind of writing relies on the techniques of formal logic masterfully combined with the emotional appeal. An explanatory (expository) essay seeks to explain an idea, term, process or phenomenon. The explanation is presented in a logical, straightforward manner. Most explanatory essays follow a strict pattern: the author states the central idea, then presents 57

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support in the form of examples, statistics, etc, and in the conclusion may restate the thesis in different words. In some cases, however, the thesis is not stated at the beginning. The author may create a sense of suspense placing the thesis at the end of the essay, intriguing the reader and leading him to the answer — at the very end of the work. Another very effective technique is to leave the thesis implicit, in this case the essayist invites the reader to participate in the process of discovery and infer it from the author’s arguments and examples.

Follow-Up I. Identify the most appropriate type(s) of an essay for each of the suggested topics and prove your opinion: 1. Amusements parks 2. Animals in the zoo 3. Capital punishment 4. Single-sex schools are evil 5. Your most unsuccessful date 6. Your favourite childhood toy 7. A minor invention (electric toothbrushes, parking meters) 8. Ambition 9. The worst job 10. Pessimists and optimists 11. Earthquakes 12. The longest traffic jam 13. Frustration 14. Cats make better pets than dogs 15. The greatest holiday of all is Christmas 16. Married couples should not be allowed to have more than two children 17. The ideal college 18. Fear 19. Homework is harmful 20. Haunted houses 58

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Add five topics of your own and ask your groupmates for their opinions: 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. II. Read Texts 3, 4 (Part 1) and Texts 10, 12 (part 2) in the Supplement and identify the type of each essay. Formulate the thesis, or the point of the work, in one complete sentence. Is it stated directly (if yes, where exactly — at the beginning or at the end of the essay?) or is it implied? Certain patterns of structuring and organizing material are helpful tools for examining subjects and developing ideas about them. Several types of patterns of thought and logical links may be especially useful in the process of creative writing, on the one hand, and creative reading, or text appreciating, on the other hand. Try to identify the following patterns when analyzing non-fiction and organizing your own essays: comparison and contrast, cause and effect, division and classification. Comparison and contrast. A comparison-and-contrast paper is one of the most common kinds of writing assignments. It reflects one of the most common kinds of thinking, the kind of thinking on which most practical decisions are based — this very kind of thought dominates in choosing a university, a career, a job. Comparison means indicating both similarities and differences between two or more subjects. Very often writers develop comparison and contrast by using parallel structures; they discuss the same points in the same order for each subject. As a result, various similarities and differences between the subjects stand out more sharply. Without a thesis, comparison-andcontrast writing is pointless, since its outcome is an elaborate list of “similarities and differences” or “advantages and disadvantages”. Comparison-and-contrast essays can use one of two patterns, both highly structured: block pattern and alternating pattern. In the first pattern, the writer discusses one unit in its entirety before going on to 59

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the other. For instance, in your essay you are analyzing the use of imagery in two different pieces of poetry. In this case the outline for your work will look like this: I. Poem 1 A. Metaphor B. Epithet C. Simile II. Poem 2 A. Metaphor B. Epithet C. Simile Alternating pattern presents another method of organization; it may be easier to follow if you are comparing more than two things: I. A. B. C. II. A. B. C. III. A. B. C.

Metaphor Poem 1 Poem 2 Poem 3 Epithet Poem 1 Poem 2 Poem 3 Simile Poem 1 Poem 2 Poem 3

Follow-Up Read the beginning of the essay “The Paradox of Our Time” erroneously ascribed to the famous American stand-up comedian George Carlin and identify the pattern of its organization. You can find the whole of the essay in the Supplement (Part 2). Fragment 3 The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy 60

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less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees, but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. (Dr. Bob Moorehead, the pastor of Overlake Christian Church in Redmond, Washington) Cause and effect. Cause-and-effect essays help authors investigate the causes and effects of events. In other words, they explore how and why things happen. While exploring causes and effects of things you ought to define their order very clearly. When you investigate causes, you always deal with events in the past. When you investigate effects, you may deal with events in the past or the future. You may not always be faced with a set of separate causes for a particular effect or separate effects from a particular cause. One cause leads to another, the second to a third, and so on. When writing, you need to set limits on how many of them you can deal with, or nearly every cause-and-effect essay will turn into a history of the world.

Follow-Up Add more topics to the list of the following suggestions for cause-and-effect essays. 1. Why friendship ends 2. What are the causes and effects of the computer revolution? 3. Why is fast food so popular? 4. How is mood affected by weather? 5. Violence on television programmes 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Division and classification. Studying a complex subject is often best approached by breaking it down into smaller units. In division a subject commonly thought as a single unit is reduced to its separate parts. Do you happen to know into how many federal districts Russia is 61

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divided? Division is a natural, logical, and necessary form of thought, which is inseparable from classification. In classification we analyze the subject by arranging it into groups or categories rather than separate parts. Without classification certain kinds of systematic thought would be impossible. The pattern of a classification — or division — paper is straightforward and self-evident since each class or division generally represents a major section of the essay; each is defined and described, with as many examples as necessary for clarity. The basic principle to keep in mind here is logical, as only one principle of classification can be used at a time.

Follow-Up What are the errors in the following classifications outlines? Students I. Bright II. Average III. Hardworking IV. Dull Teachers I. Strict II. Friendly III. Lenient IV. Tolerant The Belles-Lettres Style I. Prose II. Poetry III. Tragedy IV. Comedy

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Block 7 ‘Stylistic Devices’ This block is devoted to expressive resources of the language; the list of terms of stylistic devices with illustrations is presented in line with their functions and effects achieved.

Language Focus to use to make use of to employ to resort to Graphics Changes of the type / font: Capitalization We went out for dinner one night and he BORED us into the ground, loudly monologuing about other writers and what overpaid, meretricious bastards they were. (M. Keyes) Italics Lara stepped closer and said thoughtfully, ‘You know what? Your hair is so great.’ Already I’d started to pick up on LA intonation. Telling someone that something is ‘so great’ is actually a criticism. ‘Your script is so great,’ — but we are not buying it. ‘Your friend that I went on the blind date with is so great,’ — but she bored me to death and I hope I never see her again. So when Lara told me that my hair was so great, I was pleased for a second, then I wasn’t. (M. Keyes) 63

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Zero spacing But even Garv agreed that Elaine was terrifying. Shespokerealfast. Firingquestionsfromamachinemouth. How’swork? Whenareyougettinglisted? Her dynamic glamour reduced me to stammering inadequacy, and by the time I’d cobbled together an answer, she’d have lost interest and moved on. (M. Keyes) ‘IgottaincarstereoanerwalkmansixpairsofCalvinKleinpantsaner RolextypewatchthanksforaskinMissisUnwin,’ as Tom’s friend, the fast-talking but always impeccably polite Leon, had informed her recently. (L. Evans) Multiplication of graphemes ‘Oh Godddd.’ Eyes half closed, hair randomly flattened, Tom shuffled into the kitchen. ‘Have we got any aspirin?’ (L. Evans) Hyphenation ‘Architecture-is-the-transformation-of-ideas-into-a-physical-reality. The-complex-and-carefully-designed-structure-of-something-especially-with-regard-to-a-specific-period. To-understand-architecturewe-must-examine-the-relationship-between-technology-science-andsociety.’ ‘Sir, can you –‘ ‘No.’ But he slows slightly. ‘We examine how architecture through the centuries has been shaped by society, how it continues to be shaped, but also how it, in turn, shapes society.’ (C. Ahern) Functions and effects achieved: – to draw the reader’s attention to the stressed elements – to add to the logical or emotive significance of the foregrounded elements – to convey the intensity of the stress – to reflect the peculiarities of individual pronunciation

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Language Focus to highlight to stress to point out to emphasize to foreground Graphon intentional violation of the spelling of the word 1) Beanz Meanz Heinz 2) g2g c u l8er 3) ‘Oh, Mus’ Reynolds, Mus’ Reynolds!’ said Hobden, under his breath. ‘If I knowed all was inside your head, I’d know something wuth knowing. Mus’ Dan an’ Miss Una, come along o’me while I lock up my liddle hen-house.’ (R. Kipling) 4) ‘I’m back. Feeling better by the minute.’ There was a loud crunching noise. ‘Toasht,’ she explained, her mouth full. (L. Evans) Functions and effects achieved: – to make slogans catchy and memorable (1) – to perform a space-saving function: to save money and to facilitate communication in text messaging (2) – to individualize the character’s speech and make it plausible in fiction (3) – to supply additional information about the speaker’s origin, his social status, cultural and educational background – to signal an uneducated speaker – to characterize the speaker’s emotional state – to show the physical defects of the speaker – to convey the atmosphere of live communication (4)

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Follow-Up I. Comment on the use of graphics in the following letter-exchange. Dear Dad, $chool i$ really great. I am making lot$ of friend$ and $tudying very hard. With all my $tuff, I $imply can’t think of anything I need, $o if you would like, you can ju$t $end me a card, a$ I would love to hear from you. Love, Your $on. Dear Son, I kNOw that astroNOmy, ecoNOmics, and oceaNOgraphy are eNOugh to keep even an hoNOr student busy. Do NOt forget that the pursuit of kNOwledge is a NOble task, and you can never study eNOugh. Love, Dad II. Comment on the use of punctuation marks in the following contexts. A strand of her sulphur orange hair swerved into a ? on her left shoulder. (M. Pessl) I’d never been inside a household full of ! and even more !!!I wasn’t even aware these nests of goodwill, these bubble baths of clasps and cuddles actually existed… (M. Pessl) III. Identify the graphical devices in the following contexts in line with their functions. The family wisdom runs strongly against this decision. My mother has said “Ridiculous”, with her certain and forceful stress on the second syllable, “RiDICulous”…(F. Mayes) 66

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“Oh, pu-leese,” said Jade, rolling her eyes, turning to stare at the freshmen and sophomores standing in line to buy their twodollar hot chocolates. (M. Pessl) ..the haircut drew attention to her smile, did to her smile what Coke-bottle lenses did to eyes, made it huge (pronounced, “HYOOOGE”). (M. Pessl) IV. What speech defects do you know? Illustrate them using graphics for ‘printing pronunciation’. Phonetic stylistic devices Alliteration Repetition of initial consonant sounds 1) 2) 3) 4)

Pride and Prejudice, What Women Want Pink pills for pale people! Taste the tang in tango! As busy as a bee, now or never Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, Salazar Slytherin

Consonance (half-rhyme) Repetition of middle or final consonant sounds 1) The beast climbed fast to the crest 2) strength-earth-birth

Follow-Up Underline the alliterative sounds where necessary. the weary, way-worn wanderer as cool as a cucumber last but not least fantastic philosophy honoured and humbled a neat knot needn’t be re-knotted a Canadian child 67

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Assonance Repetition of vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds 1) And the moon rose over an open field 2) on a proud round cloud in white high night Functions and effects achieved: – to create euphony: to please the ear – to link words together – to emphasize the words – to make the utterance memorable and catchy – to create an acoustic image Onomatopoeia (sound-imitation) Use of words whose sound fits the meaning 1) Bang, cock-a-doodle-do, cuckoo, rustle 2) Shweppps, Zippo, Kit-Kat 3) Emily marched to the door, all snappy little sounds. The tap-tap of her heels, the crack of her handbag clasp, the click of her lighter, the clack-clack of her nails. I loved it. (M. Keyes) 4) The mosquitoes (zanzare they’re called, just like they sound) invade the hotel with the desert wind. (F. Mayes) Functions and effects achieved: – to create a vivid and bright description – to demonstrate by phonetic means the acoustic picture of reality – to create an acoustic image Teaching Tip: Onomatopoeia = Sound-imitation When analyzing onomatopoeia, answer the following questions: What sound is being imitated? What specific acoustic image is created? What emotional effect might this achieve? Rhyme Repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combinations of words 68

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1) dreams — streams, duty — beauty, tenderly — slenderly Functions and effects achieved: – to bind lines together – to establish and emphasize the stanza pattern – to predetermine the appearance of the next line Rhythm Regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables Metrical feet: Iamb: enjoy, again, before Trochee: honey, Sunday, kitten Dactyl: beautiful, Saturday, gentlemen Amphibrach: umbrella, continue, revealing Anapaest: interrupt, understand, disagree Functions and effects achieved: – to give balance and structure – to emphasize the meaning

Follow-Up I.

Match the names of animals with the noises they make. cats quack snakes croak sheep hoot elephants neigh pigs purr horses howl wolves hiss owls bleat frogs trumpet ducks grunt

II. Read this piece of poetry by Walter R. Brooks and recognize the cases of alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme and rhythm. 69

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Ants, although admirable, are awfully aggravating The busy ant works hard all day And never stops to rest or play. He carries things ten times his size, And never grumbles, whines or cries. And even climbing flower stalks, He always runs, he never walks. He loves his work, he never tires, And never puffs, pants or perspires. Yet though I praise his boundless vim I am not really fond of him. III. Comment on the use of the phonetic devices in the following sentences. What image is created by each of the sentences? What emotional effect is achieved in each case? 1) 2)

The sea snored and gurgled. The Mediterranean muttered and mumbled.

IV. Choose one insect out of these five and add alliterating verbs and adjectives associated with this insect (no less than 3). You don’t have to be too literal about it! mosquito grasshopper bumble-bee ladybird dragon-fly Lexical stylistic devices Metaphor Transference of name based on similarity or likeness of two objects Expressive renaming on the basis of similarity Structurally elementary, or simple 70

metaphors prolonged, or extended, or sustained

can be

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Semantically hackneyed, or dead, or trite

metaphors

can be

original, or genuine, or fresh

1) a star (about a celebrity), a flight of fancy 2) His words were coming so fast; they were leap-frogging themselves. (R. Chandler) 3) Now I’ve moved from accusation to defensiveness. The conversation’s come off the rails before it’s even left the station. (M. Frayn) 4) Through the open door could be heard the autumn soundtrack of coughs and throat-clearings. (L. Evans) Personification Attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects and animals 1) The flowers nodded their heads as if greeting us. 2) The little old house was sighing and muttering to itself, full of memories and mice. (J. Updike) Functions and effects achieved: – to create imagery – to carry out the aesthetic function – to reveal the author’s emotional attitude – to make the author’s description more vivid, bright, expressive and original

Follow-Up I. Make up sentences with the following words where they are used 1) literally; 2) metaphorically. sun flood mirror to fly to smile to melt carpet to sigh II. For each of the following put the words in column with the most suitable words so that an image is formed. Then explain the 71

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point of the image and characterize the metaphor (elementary or extended, trite or original). Rain Anger Poverty A traitor Life A crowd

is is is is is is

a snake a many-headed beast a firework a journey a prison sadness

III. Make up your own images, using each of the following words. river star teacher Moscow fire Metonymy Transference of name based on contiguity or nearness of two objects Expressive renaming on the basis of association 1) The kettle is boiling (=the water in the kettle) 2) The hall applauded (= the people in the hall) 3) From the cradle (the object associated with birth) to the grave (the object associated with death) 4) Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. (N. Peale) 5) The suits on Wall Street walked off with most of our savings. Synecdoche The type of metonymy where the part stands for the whole or the whole stand for the part 1) Two heads are better than none; hands wanted Functions and effects achieved: – to build up imagery – to create a new unexpected association between two objects – to specify the description, making it more concrete 72

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–

to draw the reader’s attention to a small detail to make him visualize the object

Teaching Tip: Metaphor or Metonymy? Metonymy is characterized by the widening of the lexical meaning, whereas metaphor is characterized by the narrowing of the lexical meaning. There is no actual link between the objects in the case of the metaphor (a star in the sky is in not really connected with a celebrity), but there is a direct connection between the objects in the case of metonymy (a whole Shakespeare stands for the collection of works written by Shakespeare). In the sentence “Kate is a fox” the noun ‘fox’ is used metaphorically, characterizing Kate as a sly and cunning creature. In the sentence “Kate’s fox looks gorgeous!” the noun ‘fox’ is used metonymically, denoting the name of the fur Kate’s coat is made of.

Follow-Up I. Identify the cases of metaphor and metonymy in the following sentences. 1) All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. (W. Shakespeare) 2) I can’t figure out why so many people are crazy about Hollywood, I prefer European films. 3) What is biting you? 4) He has never wanted to become a white collar. 5) The lilacs have unfolded their pale hearts. 6) The pen is mightier than the sword. 7) The boat was sliding on the mirror of the lake. 8) It was a red-letter day for Vic. 9) Ann’s voice was ice. 10) He is not a man, he is a machine. II. Little Red Riding Hood is a literary character whose name is based on metonymy. Can you think of other literary personages who owe their names to this trope?

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III. Make up sentences with the same words where they are used 1) metaphorically; 2) metonymically. IV. Comment on the use of metonymy in the following context. The same professor Anuchin who in 1922, not long before his deportation from Russia, when some revolvered leather jackets had come to arrest him but became interested in his collection of ancient coins and were slow in taking him away, had calmly said, pointing to his watch: ‘Gentlemen, history does not wait’. (V. Nabokov) Simile Artistic (imaginative) comparison of two unlike objects belonging to two different classes Partial identification of two objects belonging to two different classes or spheres Teaching Tip: Simile or Comparison? ‘Ann is as pretty as her sister’ is a good example of logical comparison since both Ann and her sister belong to one and the same class — the class of human beings. The sentence ‘Ann is as pretty as a picture’ illustrates the use of simile as the notion ‘picture’ obviously belongs to an entirely different class of things. Structurally

similes

elementary, or simple Semantically trite, or fixed

can be prolonged, or extended, or sustained

similes

can be genuine, or original

1) as busy as a bee, as sly as a fox, as good as gold 2) ….her CV is probably as long as War and Peace. (M. Keyes) 74

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3) Abruptly all hope departed, like air from a burst beachball. For the past two days I’d been pumping myself with faith, warding off doubt — and suddenly I had no defence. (M. Keyes) 4) He is staring at the envelope, lying on the deal table, as if it is an unexploded bomb. (D. Lodge) 5) People were speaking again, voices swirling like snow in the wind, talking about what to do. (K. Edwards) 6) I was dead, or at least dead tired as I awoke. I felt like a battery that had spent the night in a recharging device that no one had remembered to plug in. (R. Holmes) Functions and effects achieved: - to create imagery - to emphasize a partial identity of two objects - to give new characteristics to the referent — the object compared - to achieve a humorous effect - to create a colourful description

Language Focus to compare (smth / smb) to (smth / smb) = to liken (smth / smb) to (smth / smb)

Follow-Up I. Identify the cases of simile and logical comparison in the following sentences. 1) I wandered lonely as a cloud. 2) Alex speaks English like a born Englishman. 3) Mary dances like a professional ballet-dancer. 4) You look like a clown! 5) She sings like a nightingale. II. Create your own similes. Make your groupmates guess what qualities you are trying to convey — positive or negative. e. g. He had eyes like … stones ( cold and hard) / velvet (soft and warm) 75

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1) 2) 3) 4)

She has hair like … She moves like … Her car made a noise like … The ocean was as … as … .

III. Comment on the use of simile in the following context. Do you find it effective and artistic or clumsy and badly-built? Prove your point of view. Her eyes sagged like lazy window shades and she was trying too hard to herd her words together so they jostled, bumped, stepped all over each other. (M. Pessl) Epithet An expressive attribute A stylistic device which emphasizes some quality of a thing or person Teaching Tip: Epithet or Logical Attribute? Epithets are markedly subjective and emotional; they give an individual assessment to the object described; whereas logical attributes are objective and non-evaluative: iron bed vs. iron lady, wooden table vs. wooden face, grey sky vs. steel sky. Semantically fixed

epithets

can be

original, or genuine

Structurally

epithets

simple

two-step

compound

can be

phrase inverted, or reversed (expressed by an “of-phrase”)

1) true love, merry old England, sweet dreams 2) I nodded weakly and slammed the door (ignoring the Fantahaired woman who’d stopped on the steps…) (M. Pessl) 3) a patiently waiting suitcase, a killed outright stocking, ruthlessly homogenized milk (V. Nabokov) 76

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4) There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-howI-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen. (Jerome K. Jerome) 5) Write to me when you have a ghost of a chance. 6) She takes out three ruby grapefruits from a cavernous refrigerator, halves them, then feeds the snow-cold dripping hemispheres into a juicer. The machine buzzes like trapped wasps and a jug fills with pulpy, pearly, candy-colored juice. (D. Mitchell) Functions and effects achieved: - to characterize the object - to stress the peculiar features of the object described - to convey the subjective attitude of the author — individual and emotional

Follow-Up: Make up suitable epithets characterizing the following nouns. sky hair eyes hotel winter Hyperbole (overstatement) Deliberate exaggeration Semantically

hyperboles

trite

can be genuine

1) scared to death, a thousand pardons, haven’t seen you for ages 2) a Cadillac-sized smile (M. Pessl) 3) He wore an ascot tie that looked as if it had been tied about the year 1880. The green stone in his stickpin was not quite as large as an apple. (R. Chandler) Functions and effects achieved: – to intensify one of the features of an object – to express the intensity of strong feelings – to show an overflow of emotions – to create a humorous effect 77

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Understatement ( meiosis) A deliberate underestimating or diminishing of the features of an object in order to emphasize its insignificance 1) I’ll be back in a minute, I kind of liked it 2) He was a skinny little guy with wrists as big as pencils. (J. Salinger) Litotes A type of understatement presenting affirmation in the form of negation 1) he is not uncultured, she is not a coward 2) Cramer and I regarded him not without pity. (R. Stout) Functions and effects achieved: – to weaken positive characteristics of an object – to express doubt and uncertainty as to the value of the object described – to demonstrate the ironic attitude Irony The use of words which have a positive dictionary meaning to express a negative one in the context Renaming based on the opposition of two meanings: the notion named and the notion meant 1) What could he say? That his emotional life currently felt as rich and vivid as an empty cardboard box? (L. Evans) 2) The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather grey for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building. (R. Chandler) 3) In the distance he could hear Mrs. Spelko talking on the phone, the volume of her voice rising with every sentence until the words ‘it’s absolutely confidential’ ricocheted around the department. (L. Evans)

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4) I looked at the First of the barons. He was eating salad — taking a whole lettuce leaf on his fork and absorbing it slowly, rabbit-wise — a fascinating process to watch. (K. Mansfield) Functions and effects achieved: – to show the author’s attitude to something (usually negative) – to express feelings of regret, irritation, displeasure, annoyance – to produce a humorous effect Teaching Tip: Irony Whenever you deal with irony, try to answer the following questions: What is the author after? What does the author make fun of and why?

Language Focus to laugh at/ to make fun of / to ridicule / to mock (at) / to make a laughing stock of an object of irony / mockery / ridicule / laughter Periphrasis A roundabout way of expression instead of a simpler one A substitution of a word with a word combination where an object is named by its property Periphrases

can be

traditional, or conventional, or dictionary, or language

stylistic

Periphrases

can be

logical

figurative

1) the fair sex (=women), the Union Jack (= the British flag) 2) Delia was studying under Rosenstock — you know his repute as a disturber of the piano keys (= as a pianist). (O. Henry) 79

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3) fragrant beverage drawn from China’s herb (= tea), the country of the rising sun (= Japan) 4) Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake scuffled down from the bank and said, “My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the large-pattern leather ulster” (and by this he meant the Crocodile) “will jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.” This is the way Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snakes always talk. (R. Kipling) Functions and effects achieved: – to convey an individual perception of an object – to intensify the noticeable property of an object by naming the object by this property – to point to one of the seemingly insignificant features

Follow-Up Can you guess what or who is meant by my better half? the Stars and Stripes? cap and gown? the root of evil? the Iron Lady? boys in blue? the Bard of Avon? black gold? Euphemism A substitution of an offensive or unpleasant word with a more acceptable and milder word or word combination “a whitewashing device” 1) Confession from a poor woman: I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn’t poor, I was needy. Then they said it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy, that I was culturally deprived. Then they told me deprived was a bad image, that I was underprivileged. Then they told me that underprivileged was over80

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used, that I was disadvantaged. I still don’t have a dime, but I have a great vocabulary! 2) Dr. House: I’m busy. Thirteen: We need you to … Dr. House: Actually, as you can see, I’m not busy. It’s just a euphemism for “get the hell out of here.” Functions and effects achieved: – to give a more positive characterization of the object described – to soften the reader’s perception of events – to cover up the real situation – to disguise an offensive phrase so that nobody feels hurt

Follow-Up Can you guess what or who is meant by pre-owned cars? dresses for mature women? incomplete success? tactical withdrawal? a hair disadvantaged man? a man between jobs? freedom fighters? correctional facility? armed intervention? a well-fed boy? Oxymoron A word combination the members of which are incompatible A juxtaposition of contradictory words 1) a cheerful pessimist, low skyscrapers 2) O loving hate! O heavy lightness! (W. Shakespeare) 3) ‘I’d rather be a dull success than a bright failure,’ retorted George. (J. Archer) Functions and effects achieved: – to create a paradox – to draw a contrast 81

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– – –

to reveal the contradictory sides of the same phenomenon to expose unexpected qualities to produce an original, emotionally charged utterance

Follow-Up Would you call the following expressions oxymoronic? Why (not)? a poor millionaire careful carelessness awfully nice dry wine sweet sorrow plastic glass a clever fool first deadline green blackberries a new cliché to snore soundlessly Antonomasia The use of a proper name instead of a common noun and vice versa The use of speaking (talking) names 1) a sandwich, a mackintosh, a Ford 2) Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. (O. Henry) 3) Mr. Know-All (a character of S. Maugham), Miss Sharp (a character of W. Thackeray) 4) You are a real Cicero. He is a real Othello. 5) Luna Lovegood, Draco Malfoy (characters of J. K. Rowling) Functions and effects achieved: – to characterize a literary personage – to point out the most conspicuous features of characters in fiction – to achieve a humorous effect

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Follow-Up Consider the following ways of translating the names of J. K. Rowling’s characters into Russian. What do you like and what do you dislike about them? Severus Snape — Северус Снейп, Северус Снегг, Злодеус Злей Neville Longbottom — Невилл Лонгботтом, Невил Долгопупс, Невилль Длиннопопп Pun ( play on words) The use of a word so as to suggest two or more meanings at the same time Ambiguity actualized in one utterance which has at least two meanings 1) Marriage is not a word, it’s a sentence 2) Nostalgia is like grammar: you find past perfect and present tense 3) The lady of the house (at a party): Are you enjoying yourself, Mr. Wilde? Oscar Wilde: Yes, I am. There is nothing else here to enjoy. 4) Doctor: How is the boy who swallowed the dollar? Nurse: No change yet. Functions and effects achieved: to achieve a humorous effect to cause laughter Zeugma The use of a word in the same grammatical but different semantic relations to two adjacent words in the context The combination of a polysemantic verb with two nouns which are semantically incompatible 1) Time and her aunt moved slowly. (J. Austen) 2) At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humor, put on kimono, airs, and water to boil for coffee. (O. Henry) 83

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3) Dr. Michael Servo Kouropoulos was a severely tanned Greek man of many opinions, tales and chins. (M. Pessl) 4) “Listen, I’ve just been presented with a bottle of ineffably ancient nectar. Why don’t you come up to my office? I have paper cups and a free afternoon.” “A zeugma,” I said. “No. Bourbon. And bottled, I believe, before the fall of the Alamo.” (U. Eco) Functions and effects achieved: to achieve a humorous effect to cause laughter Teaching Tip: Pun or Zeugma? Both devices are based on the simultaneous realization of different meanings of a polysemantic word and are aimed to achieve a humorous effect. The key difference is that pun can be based on homonymy as well. Besides, pun does not depend upon the structure, but zeugma does.

Follow-Up Identify the cases of pun and zeugma in the following contexts. 1) You held your breath and the door for me. 2) If your wife wants to drive, don’t stand in her way. 3) – Waiter! – Yes, sir. – What’s this? – It’s bean soup. – No matter what it’s been. What’s it now? 4) She lowered her standards by raising her glass, Her courage, her eyes and his hopes. 5) My dentist has no windows in his office. That’s why they call him a painless doctor. Allusion An indirect reference to some background knowledge 84

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A brief reference to people, things, events or facts outside the text without mentioning them explicitly 1. Plan ahead. It was not raining when Noah built the Ark. (R. Cushing) 2. Even when I tried to collect myself, pull myself together as Molly Brown had done in that Titanic lifeboat, I failed. (M. Pessl) 3. At last small witches, goblins, hags, And pirates armed with paper bags, Their costumes hinged on safety pins Go haunt a night of pumpkin grins. (J. Updike) 4. There I was thinking that I was working diligently to save Tom and Sara’s marriage, only to discover that I’ve blundered into my own marital Chernobyl. (G. Williams) Functions and effects achieved: - to explain or clarify something without lengthy explanations - to enrich the context

Language Focus an allusion to something to allude to something

Follow-Up I. Can you identify allusions in the following context and comment on their implications? I’m obliged to reveal an old trick: implacable self-possession can be attained by all, not by pretending to look absorbed in what’s clearly a blank spiral notebook; not by trying to convince yourself you’re an undiscovered rock star, movie star, top model, tycoon, Bond, Bond Girl, Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth Bennet or Eliza Doolittle at the Ambassador’s Ball; not by imagining you’re a long-lost member of the Vanderbilt family, not by tilting up your chin fifteen or forty-five degrees and pretending to be Grace Kelly in her prime. These methods work in theory, but 85

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in practice they slip away, so one is left hideously naked with nothing but the stained sheet of self-confidence around one’s feet. (M. Pessl) II. Prepare a list of your own contexts based on allusions (no less than 5), and make your groupmates guess the references. Violation / Modification / Transformation of phraseological units Breaking up of set expressions 1. I don’t mind playing second fiddle to you, Lanny. But this. I’d be fourth fiddle. (R. Holmes) 2. Love is blind, there was no doubt about it. In Tara’s case it was also deaf, dumb, dyslexic, had a bad hip and the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. (M. Keyes) 3. My friend John had to make a typically sarcastic comment, of course, about how long and sappy and emotional my letter had been (“Listen — next time you feel the need to cry about spilled milk, make sure it’s condensed , will ya?”). (E. Gilbert) 4. What have you put away for a rainy day? — An umbrella. 5. Don’t you hate people who talk behind your back? — Oh yes, especially at the movies. Functions and effects achieved: – to disclose the inner form of the phrase for artistic purposes – to revive the independent meanings of the components of which the idiom is made – to refresh the idiom by replacing its element(s) / inserting additional element(s) / understanding the phrase literally – to make the phrase more concrete and vivid – to achieve a humorous effect

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Follow-Up Discuss the history of slogans for Coca-Cola with your groupmates. Which slogan do you find the most effective and why? 1886 1904 1935 1958 1979 1990 1999 2010

Drink Coca-Cola Delicious and Refreshing Friends for Life The Cold, Crisp Taste of Coke Have a Coke and a Smile You Can’t Beat the Real Thing Always Coca-Cola Open Happiness

Syntactical stylistic devices Lexico-syntactical devices Antithesis Contrast of opposing words or ideas in parallel structures Opposition of words in parallel constructions 1. Man proposes, God disposes. 2. The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. (Ch. Bukowski) 3. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. (N. Armstrong) 4. He was a bad winner and a good loser. (W. S. Maugham) Functions and effects achieved: – to stress the contrast – to create the idea of paradox – to demonstrate the contradictory nature of the phenomenon – to rhythmically organize the utterance – to add balance to the structure – to underline incompatibility of the characteristics of the phenomenon 87

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Follow-Up Insert the suitable missing elements into the following quotations based on antithesis and check your guesses. 1. They speak like saints and act like … . (W. Shakespeare) 2. Some people have much to live on, and … to live for. (O. Wilde) 3. Love is an ideal thing, marriage a … thing. (Goethe) 4. Too black for heaven, too … for hell. (J. Dryden) Climax (gradation) An arrangement of words, phrases or clauses in the increasing order of significance and expressiveness A series of lexical units in which every successive element is emotionally stronger and logically more important than the preceding one 1. I am sorry, I am so very sorry, I am so extremely sorry. (G. Chesterton) 2. I gave him all my life. He took it — used it — spoiled it! (O. Wilde) 3. They looked at hundreds of houses; they climbed thousands of stairs; they inspected innumerable kitchens. (W. S. Maugham) Functions and effects achieved: – to create emotional tension – to depict a phenomenon dynamically – to logically intensify the last element of the series Anti-climax (back-gradation) An arrangement of words, phrases or clauses in the decreasing order of significance and expressiveness The ascending order of importance of ideas expressed, the final element being the weakest, or unexpected 1. Every day, every hour, every minute, every second I am thinking of you. 2. “Oh, poor Mr. Jones,” mourned Mrs. Smith, “Did you hear what happened to him? He tripped at the top of the stairs, fell 88

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down the whole flight, banged his head, and died.” “Died?” said Mrs. Robinson, shocked. “Died!” repeated Mrs. Smith with emphasis. “Broke his glasses, too.” (I. Asimov) 3. In moments of crisis I size up the situation in a flash, set my teeth, contract my muscles, take a firm grip on myself and without a tremor, always do the wrong thing. (B. Shaw) Functions and effects achieved: – to show the priority of the elements – to create a paradox – to achieve a humorous effect to defeat the expectancy of readers or listeners Syntactical devices proper Repetition Recurrence of the same element (word or phrase) within a sentence or in neighbouring sentences Anaphoric repetition (anaphora) Identity of initial elements A compositional pattern in which a repeated word or phrase is at the beginning of consecutive syntactical units 1) My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer… (R. Burns) 2) We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. (W. Churchill) Functions and effects achieved: – to emphasize the repeated element – to generate rhythm – to fix the recurring element in the memory Epiphoric repetition (epiphora) Identity of final elements 89

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A compositional pattern in which a repeated word or phrase is at the end of consecutive syntactical units 1) I wake up and I’m alone, and I walk round Warley and I’m alone, and I talk with people and I’m alone. (J. Braine) 2) She’s safe, just like I promised. She’s all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die for her, just like you promised. (Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean) Functions and effects achieved: – to add stress to the final words – to regularize rhythm – to make prose resemble poetry Framing Recurrence of the initial element at the end of the same syntactical unit 1) He ran away from the battle. He was an ordinary human being that didn’t want to kill or be killed. So he ran away from the battle. (St. Heym) 2) Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. (Ch. Dickens) Functions and effects achieved: – to produce emphasis – to clarify and specify the repeated element Catch repetition (anadiplosis) Recurrence of the final element of a syntactical unit at the very beginning of the next syntactical unit 1) Only the brave deserve the fair and the fair deserve Jaeger. (advertising slogan for Jaeger sportswear) 2) What I present here is what I remember of the letter, and what I remember of the letter I remember verbatim (including that awful French). (V. Nabokov) 90

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Functions and effects achieved: – to add emphasis to the repeated element – to create intensity – to generate rhythm Chain repetition A series of anadiploses 1) Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. (M. Thatcher) 2) Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. (Yoda, Star Wars) Functions and effects achieved: – to add balance and rhythm to the utterance – to create intensity – to intensify both the logical and the emotional meanings of the repeated element – to produce the effect of smoothly developing logical reasoning

Follow-Up Make up your own sentences illustrating each type of repetition and let your groupmates state the type. Parallelism (parallel structures / constructions) Repetition of identical or similar syntactical patterns 1. Out of sight, out of mind; speech is silver but silence is gold 2. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. (W. Ward) 3. I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget (W. Phelps) 91

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Functions and effects achieved: – to contribute to rhythmic and melodic unification of neighbouring sentences – to stress the difference or the similarity of the meaning – to emphasize the repeated element – to create a contrast – to underline the semantic connection between the sentences – to make the utterance emphatic and dynamic Chiasmus (reversed parallelism) Repetition of a syntactical pattern with a cross word-order 1. It’s better to kiss a miss than to miss a kiss. 2. All gave some, some gave all. 3. Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle (Michelangelo) 4. They knew that Angela, unmarried, had no right to be in an interesting condition and they would take steps. Steps they took. (F. McCourt) Functions and effects achieved: – to foreground the logical, rhythmic, emotive and expressive aspects of the utterance – to modify the meaning of the second part of the utterance – to give balance to the statement Inversion A deliberate violation of the fixed word order 1. Change we need. (B. Obama) 2. In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. (J. Tolkien) 3. In he got and away they went. (E. Waugh) Functions and effects achieved: – to place a special emphasis on the first element – to elevate the style – to slow down the tempo of the utterance – to make the utterance dynamic and quick-paced 92

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Suspense A deliberate postponement of the completion of the sentence A compositional device which consists in presenting unimportant information at the beginning while the main idea is withheld till the end of the utterance 1. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me. (Ch. Dickens) 2. If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you And make allowance for their doubting too… Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, … And which is more, you’ll be a Man, my son. (R. Kipling) Functions and special effects: – to create psychological tension – to keep the reader in a state of uncertainty and anticipation Detachment (detached construction) A secondary member of a sentence singled out with the help of punctuation and intonation Isolation of a part of a sentence so that it seems independent of the rest of a sentence 1. … Remember — God, I can’t remember who said it — ‘Happiness is a hound dog in the sun. We aren’t on Earth to be happy, but to experience incredible things’. (M. Pessl) 2. It was also evident he was a little bit in love with her. Dad said being in love had nothing to do with words, action or the heart (“the most overrated of all organs”), but with the eyes (“Everything essential concerns the eyes.”) and this man’s eyes couldn’t stop slipping and sliding off every curve of her face. (M. Pessl) 3. Saddened, he had watched music-hall die of TV, entertainment tax and the contempt of the young; shamefaced, he had witnessed the failure of sleazy nude shows, with titles of laboured suggestiveness, to win back the customers; stunned, he 93

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had stood by while his theatre was knocked down to a cinemaowner. (D. Lodge) Functions and stylistic effects: – to give prominence to some word or phrase – to imply additional information – to clarify and specify the meaning of the utterance

Follow-Up Depending on the importance attached to it, additional information presented in the detachment can be enclosed in brackets, commas, or dashes. Which sentence, in your opinion, sounds more emphasized? Less emphasized? Neutral? 1. Connor (Amy’s boyfriend) bought the tickets. 2. Connor, Amy’s boyfriend, bought the tickets. 3. Connor — Amy’s boyfriend — bought the tickets. Ellipsis (elliptical sentence) Deliberate omission of at least one member of a sentence A grammatically incomplete expression 1. ‘Ow,’ said Tigger. He said down and put his paw into his mouth. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Pooh. ‘Hot!’ mumbled Tigger. (A. Milne) 2. ‘Were they interesting books?’ ‘Don’t know. Haven’t read them. Looked pretty hopeless.’ (A. Christie) Functions and stylistic effects: – to impart brevity and a quick tempo – to achieve economy of statement – to add emotional tension – to achieve plausibility and authenticity when reproducing informal speech – to imitate oral colloquial norms – to reflect natural omissions characterizing oral colloquial speech 94

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Break-in-the-narrative (aposiopesis) An intentionally unfinished utterance A stopping short for rhetorical effect 1. You just come home or I’ll — 2. “So ...” said Mr. Carmyle, becoming articulate, and allowed an impressive aposiopesis to take the place of the rest of the speech. (P. G. Wodehouse) Functions and stylistic effects: – to reflect the emotional and the psychological state of the speaker – to imitate spontaneous oral speech – to make dialogues in fiction sound natural, true-to-life, and realistic – to imitate everyday speech Teaching Tip: Rhetorical question or Question-in-the-narrative? Structurally, both devices represent interrogative constructions which are particularly favoured by orators for their emotional power since they effectively emphasize the speaker’s ideas. The basic difference lies in the fact that rhetorical questions do not demand any answer while questions-in-the narrative are almost immediately answered by the speaker or writer himself.

Follow-Up Identify rhetorical questions and questions-in-the-narrative in the following contexts. 1. For who has sight so keen and strong that it can follow the flight of a song? (H. Longfellow) 2. Scrouge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? (Ch. Dickens) 3. Aren’t you glad you use Dial? Didn’t you wish everybody did? (TV advertisement for Dial soap) 4. How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man? (B. Dylan) 95

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Asyndeton The absence of connecting elements Deliberate omission of conjunctions between syntactical units 1. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. 2. The world, locked out for years, suddenly flooded in, and now Estha couldn’t hear himself for the noise. Trains. Traffic. Music. The Stock Market. A dam had burst and savage waters swept everything up in a swirling. Comets, violins, parades, loneliness, clouds, beards, bigots, lists, flags, earthquakes, despair were all swept up in a scrambled swirling. (A. Roy) Functions and stylistic effects: – to impart dynamic force to the utterance – to produce a strong rhythmic impact – to create the effect of terse, energetic, active prose – to introduce the norms of colloquial speech into the literary language – to make structural elements independent Polysyndeton Repetition of conjunctions Repeated use of linking elements 1. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon the house; and it fell; and great was the fall of it. (Matthew VII) 2. He asked questions about everything that he saw, or heard, or felt, or smelt, or touched, and all his uncles and aunts spanked him. ( R. Kipling) Functions and stylistic effects: – to underline the simultaneity of action – to achieve the elevated tonality – to strengthen the idea of equal logical or emotive importance of connected elements – to generate rhythm – to make each element stand out conspicuously 96

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Follow-Up Comment on the use of syntactical stylistic devices in the following contexts. 1. Not to be rich, not to be famous, not to be mighty, not even to be happy, but to be civilized — that was the dream of his life. (Ph. Roth) 2. (Note: the Buffalo — a plane) The Buffalo banks, levels out and rushes forward. The airstrip hits it like a rocket. Clouds of flaming red dust envelop the windows. The fuselage sags left, then further left, the cargo howls in its moorings. The engines scream, the plane shudders, scrapes something, moans and bucks. The engines die. The dust subsides. They have arrived. (J. le Carre) 3. Avril was craggy, haggard and pitifully brave. Helen was solid and worthy and could afford to be gracious. Avril had been Helen’s very first client, thirty years before, when she, Helen, had finally finished her apprenticeship. In those days Avril had worn expensive, daring green shoes with satin bows, all the better to flirt in: Helen had worn cheap navy shoes with sensible heels, all the better to work in. Helen envied Avril. Today Avril’s shoes, with their scuffed high heels, were still green, but somehow vulgar and pitiable, and the legs above them were knotted with veins. And Helen’s shoes were still navy, but expensive and comfortable, and had sensible medium heels. And Helen owned the salon, and had a husband, and grown children, and savings, and a dog, a cat and a garden, and Avril had nothing. Nothing. Childless, unmarried, and without property or money in the bank. Now Helen pitied Avril, instead of envying her, but somehow couldn’t get Avril to understand that this switch had occurred. (F. Weldon)

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Block 8 ‘Atmosphere and Style’ The words the author chooses and the way he or she puts them together is crucial for writing; this element of both fiction and non-fiction cannot be separated from all the other basic elements because it is only through words that the author’s ideas can be conveyed to the reader. Although this seems very obvious, an understanding and appreciation of text requires that the reader is sensitive to the words and the way they are combined — the writer’s diction. Needless to say, the writer relies primarily on word choice and exercises great care to select the precise word communicating his or her ideas and creating the mood and atmosphere appropriate to the theme of the work. Atmosphere refers to a dominant feeling in a story, and is often established by describing the physical setting. Still, it should be remembered that atmosphere points to the mental and emotional environment, rather than the physical environment in which characters operate.

Language Focus: Atmosphere to create / to add to / to contribute to / to evoke / to provide to heighten / to lighten atmosphere to maintain / to retain to absorb / to enjoy / to experience / to savour The dominant / prevailing atmosphere (tone) is dry / matter-offact / unemotional / dispassionate / solemn / lofty / lyrical / sad / melancholic / ironical an atmosphere of calm / peace / tranquility/ … an atmosphere of anxiety / fear / tension / … 98

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Example 1 Once upon a time there was a young man — well, if you want to know, it was myself — and I had just proposed to Miss Vanessa Scarlet and been accepted. Grand name, wasn’t it? And it suited her wonderfully, she was like that, all flame, and colour, and fiery life. I proposed to her one spring afternoon in a little street off Leicester Square. These little London streets on a spring afternoon can be magical; hawkers with borrows of flowers, daffodils and hyacinths and white lilac and tulips, magenta coloured, the air that pale soft dusty gold, so peculiarly London’s, and a hush in the little street as though it had its finger on its lip. That is peculiarly London’s, too. You don’t get it in Paris or Berlin, where, if you’re not among the main traffic, the streets are dead, nor in New York nor Chicago, where it’s rattle rattle and scream scream from morning to night. But do what you will in London, pull down all its buildings, fill it with traffic until it doesn’t know where to turn, it keeps its character unflinchingly, and the side streets and squares are pools of active quiet like a lake at evening, when the fish are leaping. Excuse me for being poetical, London always makes me so. (H. Walpole “A Picture”) This descriptive passage of London is very “atmospheric”: the city is presented through the eyes of a young man who is deeply in love. Being poetic by nature and having a sharp eye for detail, he evokes a magic and romantic atmosphere of the city he admires — the city full of love, beauty and charm, where all the sounds and colours are subtle and subdued. The image of the city “with its own character” and unique atmosphere — active and vigorous, but never noisy and annoying — is maintained on different levels of the language: phonetically (with the help of sound imitation) and lexically (by means of personification, epithets, similes and oxymoron). The use of the pronoun “you” contributes to the creation of the lyrical and intimate atmosphere, where the reader can not but identify with the main character and feel his ecstasy and delight.

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The notion of atmosphere is closely interrelated with such a text parameter as its tone system. The tone of the text, in other words, the ring of the narrative, is also closely linked with the pragmatic intention of the text, its theme and message. The author’s tone — his attitude towards his subject — refers to the emotional quality of a piece of writing. In non-fiction the author’s tone is usually objective and impartial, which corresponds to the key purpose of scientific and official texts — conveying factual information, not arousing feelings and emotions. In fiction one of the aims of the author is to evoke certain feelings, as a result, the writer’s tone can reflect any of the emotional attitudes you can think of, so the presented list is far from being exhaustive.

Language Focus: Tone ironic amusing critical cynical optimistic

sympathetic bitter hostile angry pessimistic

serious witty solemn hopeful light

If in everyday communication our emotional attitudes — in addition to the words we speak — can be indicated by gestures, tone of voice, facial expressions, in writing these means are not available. The reader’s task is to re-create for himself the feelings the printed words are meant to arouse, being particularly sensitive not only to the author’s choice of words and manner of expression, but to the choice of artistic details as well. Otherwise it can happen that the reader starts “reading into” a text certain meanings that are not there — they are the meanings and emotions that the reader, but not the author, has put into the story.

Follow-Up How would you define the tone of the text presented in Example 1? Give your reasons. Another aspect of word choice that is the basis for interpreting and appreciating writing is the matter of style. Style is the verbal identity of the writer, which reflects the individuality of the author and is as 100

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unmistakable as his or her voice. Style is not only related to the way the author expresses himself, it conveys his unique way of seeing the world. Thus, the analysis of the text is inseparable from the considerations concerning the style of the author as it expresses the author’s attitude towards the issues raised in his work, and, globally, reveals the writer’s world view.

Language Focus: Style graceful lucid emotional lively obscure wordy dull explicit aphoristic fluent

flowing simple sentimental vigorous crude restrained repetitive precise allusive racy

polished down-to-earth matter-of-fact energetic ornate dispassionate monotonous concise ironical harsh

clear terse vivid clumsy flowery lifeless high-flown eloquent metaphorical verbose

In this list mark the adjectives denoting favourable evaluation (+) and those denoting unfavorauble evaluation (-).

Follow-Up I. Consider the following contexts with respect to their prevailing atmosphere. Fragment 1 It was a cool grey morning and the air was like smoke… The coat collar pressed rough against her neck and her cheeks were softly cold as if they had been washed in ice water. She breathed gently with the air. … Overhead a dove purred. (N. Godimer “Is There Nowhere Else Where We Can Meet?”)

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Fragment 2 Choker woke up. The woman’s wiry hair got into his mouth and tasted of stale brilliantine. The old double-bed sagged and wobbled when he shifted his weight, and there were dark stains made by heads on the crumpled grey-white pillows, and a rubbed smear of lipstick like a half-healed wound. His mouth felt parched from the drinking of the night before, and he had a headache….The unwashed, worn blanket brushed his face and he smelled it with the other smells, and thought vaguely that he had slept under such blankets all his life. He wished he could sleep in a bed in some posh hotel, under fresh-laundered bedding. … (A. la Guma “Blankets”)

Fragment 3 The airport, despite its recent face-lift, was in chaos. Travel-weary groups of scalded tourists made long lines, harangued tour guides and frantically bundled huge rucksacks into X-ray machines. Check-in clerks puzzled over every ticket and murmured interminably into telephones. Incomprehensible loudspeaker announcements spread panic while porters and policemen looked idly on. (J. le Carre “The Constant Gardener”)

Fragment 4 The machines had started full blast. The whirr and the grinding made the building shake, made it impossible to hear conversations. The men and women at the machines talked to each other but looking at them from just a little distance away, they appeared to be simply moving their lips because you couldn’t hear what they were saying. (A. Petry “Like a Winding Sheet”)

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Fragment 5 The room’s single window held stony moonlight. Bald November reigned outside. Lawn chairs had been taken in, the lawns were dead and flat as floors, the outdoors was bare as a house after the movers had come in. The little pear tree bejeweled with fruit had become a set of sticks. A dead geranium stood in a pot on the windowsill. The narrow cupboard beside the cold fireplace held green string. A charm slept beneath the bed. (J. Updike “The Witches of Eastwick”)

Fragment 6 Christmas Day dawned cloudy, dry and without character. As I stood at the window of my flat overlooking the park, I could not help thinking back on this day every year, to the white Christmases of my childhood, when the house would be swathed in my mother’s homemade decorations, my father would spend hours on his hands and knees trying to locate the one faulty bulb which was preventing out tree from lighting up, and on Christmas Eve I would sit by the window all afternoon, awaiting the arrival of my grandparents who invariably drove over from their neighbouring suburb to stay with us until the New Year. For a few days the atmosphere in our house, usually so quiet and contemplative, would be lively, boisterous even, and it’s perhaps because of this memory — and the memory of the fabulous whiteness which could always be relied upon, in those days, to blanket our front lawn — that there was still an air of unreality about the grey, silent Christmasses to which in recent years I had become numbly resigned. (J. Coe “What A Carve Up!”)

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SUPPLEMENT

Part 1 TEXTS FOR GUIDED ANALYSIS TEXT 1 Phil Cushman Warning on Cults Behind the text: Increasing numbers of young people are joining religious and pseudo-religious sects all over the world. Some of them have completely broken off contact with their families in order to follow the cult leaders. Parents, teachers and members of the church have tried to keep them from joining these groups, often without success. The following text was put out as a leaflet by the University Religious Council at the University of California at Berkeley to be distributed to students as a warning. LEARN TO BE A QUESTIONER. When you feel alone, lonely and totally overwhelmed by a decision you need to make and find yourself wishing that someone would jut TELL you what to do, when you feel like the world used to make sense, but now everything is falling apart, you’re vulnerable. When you’re hurting (or even when you’re not): Beware of people with magical answers or solutions who are excessively or inappropriate friendly. THERE ARE NO INSTANT FRIENDSHIPS! Beware of groups that pressure you into joining them. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU EXCEPT YOU. Beware of groups that recruit you through guilt. Guilt produced by others is rarely a productive emotion. Beware of invitations to isolated weekend workshops having vague goals. There is no reason to be vague unless there is something to hide. 104

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You should know that the two basic principles of mind control (“brainwashing”) are: 1. If you can get a person to BEHAVE the way you want, you can get that person to BELIEVE the way you want. 2. Sudden, drastic changes in environment lead to heightened suggestibility and to drastic changes in attitudes and beliefs. Don’t be foolish! Protect yourself! Don’t go away for a weekend or longer with a stranger or group, unless: You know the name of the sponsoring group. You are thoroughly familiar with its beliefs and affiliations and goals. You know what will be expected of you. You know that you will be free and able to leave at any time. So, if you ever feel overwhelmed, lonely, confused or in need of friends or direction, reach out to someone you trust: a friend, a teacher, a parent, a counselor, a crisis hot line, a member of the clergy, a member of the Campus Ministry. Questions and tasks 1. What is the subject-matter of this text? (Formulate your idea in one well-motivated sentence) 2. In what form is the text written? How can you account for the choice of this particular form by the author? Was it, in your opinion, a lucky choice? How could the text have influenced you if it had been presented in a different form (e.g. an article in a newspaper)? 3. Identify the type of the text according to the author’s intention in writing it. Is it narration, description, instruction, argumentation, or explanation? 4. What kind of sentences is typical of such texts? Give examples. What is each of the instructions followed by? 5. One basic way of structuring texts of this text type is enumerating or listing the items. Show where the writer makes use of it in the text. 6. Find the examples of parallelism and anaphoric repetition in the text. What effects may these stylistic devices have on the reader? 7. Comment on the way the syntactical means are used in the text. 8. What is achieved by the graphical changes of writing? 105

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9. Make your general conclusion about the expressive means and stylistic devices employed in the text. How do they help to bring out the author’s ideas? Do you find them effective? TEXT 2 Lissa Evans Spencer’s List (an extract) Behind the text: After his friend’s death, Spencer inherited a list of London tourist sights to be visited by the end of the year. ‘Feeding Pigeons’ is the first item on the London list. It was a thin afternoon for tourists in Trafalgar Square, and the birdseed man, who was wearing thermal gloves and a baseball cap with ‘I love New York’ on it, sold Spencer two bags of yellow grit for the price of one. He said, ‘It’s your lucky day,’ as he handed them over, and Spencer asked, ‘Starting from when?’ but received no reply. The Square looked rather fine in the low sunlight that streamed along Pall Mall, turning the windows of South Africa House crimson and jewelling the KFC boxes that blew between the fountains. Spencer positioned himself just under Nelson’s Column, filled both hands with birdseed and held them out at arm’s length, feeling like a combination of the crucified Christ and the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz. For a moment nothing happened, and there was a mild commotion in his immediate vicinity and two smartish buff-coloured pigeons landed on his right hand and started devouring the seeds with cartoonlike velocity. Next a hideously diseased, possibly leprous, one-legged grey pigeon landed on his left hand, balanced precariousy on its warty remaining foot and quite deliberately pecked Spencer on the wrist. He shook his hand violently to dislodge it, dropping most of the seed as he did so, and suddenly every pigeon in Greater London was in the air, heading towards him like a bomber squadron, wheels down, flaps set, tails flattened for landing. The sky was black with bodies, and the world only fitfully visible behind a screen of wings. He cringed as pigeons banked and swooped and landed and took off again; the ground was hidden beneath a shifting carpet of feathery backs and the air vibrated with the throaty calls that he had always found pleasantly soothing, and which now sounded like the rallying cries of an army crazed with bloodlust. 106

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Covering his head with his arms, he ducked and ran. The carpet exploded into a wall of wings and when he was through, and safe, and all at once aware that he was being videoed by a party of Japanese pensioners. He counterfeited a casual wave and walked away, trying to look like someone who was really enjoying himself. Questions and tasks 1. Summarize the contents of the fragment in one-two sentences. 2. How would you define the type of the text? What are its basic features? 3. In what vein is the fragment written? What atmosphere is sustained? 4. How does the author set the mood for the narration from the very first lines? 5. Identify allusions used in the text in line with the effects produced. What background information are you supposed to have to interpret them? 6. Analyze the simile comparing a flock of pigeons to a bomber squadron. Trace the development of the simile; pick out the words that keep it up. 7. Pick out the cases of polysyndeton, comment on its function. 8. Did Spencer enjoy his activity? What feelings did it arouse in him? Give your reasons. Going beyond the text 1. What other popular activities for tourists visiting London are likely to be found on the list? Make up your own version of “10 Things To Do in London”. 2. Have you ever fed pigeons in popular tourist places? If yes, what feelings did it arouse in you? TEXT 3 Stephen Fry Stephen Fry in America (an extract) (We) discuss the mythical status that the Mississippi has in United States lore, literature and art. The river has exercised a grip on the American imagination from the earliest days of European settlement, finding 107

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its apotheosis in Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick’s only serious contender for the title Great American Novel. Perhaps that is why Americans come to the river itself so rarely, we decide. It functions as such a potent symbol that to encounter the real mud and water might only lead to disillusionment. But a symbol of what? Well, the Mississippi divides east from west, so in the imagination it becomes the frontier that separates civilization, law and authority from free-spirited, maverick pioneering. It is also a symbol of the American obsession with journeying, with moving on. America is a nation composed of people whose ancestors moved on, who had the restless desire to up sticks and leave their European homes. The itchy-footed need for the endless journey is in the American DNA and while it is now most often presented in its twentieth-century fictional form, the road movie, it found its first expression in Huck Finn and legends of Ole Man River. But the Mississippi also stands for a connection between north and south. With Chicago at one end and New Orleans at the other, so much of America’s traffic, cultural as well as commercial, has traveled down or up. Questions and tasks 1. Summarize the contents of the paragraph in one-two sentences. 2. How would you define the type of the text? What are its basic features? 3. Which words and phrases, reflecting the author’s individual style, do you find particularly well chosen? 4. The book represents the so called ‘travelogue’, can you define the main functions and characteristics of this genre? 5. Do you happen to know who Huck Finn and Moby Dick are? Who wrote these books and what do they primarily deal with? Why either of them can be called, according to Stephen Fry, the Great American Novel? Going beyond the text 1. Do you agree with the author that ‘the need for the journey is in the American DNA’? Prove or refute this idea giving your examples. What other ‘needs’, in your opinion, may be found in the American DNA? If you feel like considering the issue, try to compare and contrast them with the traditionally Russian ‘needs’. 108

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2. Why do you think Americans refer to the Mississippi as the Old Man River? Is this the longest river in the USA? Account for its symbolic status as expressed by the author. Can you think of any Russian rivers possessing the same symbolic significance? Give your reasoning. TEXT 4 Stephen Fry Stephen Fry in America (an extract) A phrase that Europeans and Americans alike were fond of using in the early days of the twentieth century was ‘the Can Do spirit’. America’s ability to solve problems of civil engineering by designing bridges, roads and tunnels bigger and better than any seen before, its habit of throwing up enormous skyscrapers, inventing new gadgets, building whole new cities, devising new ways to serve food, to entertain, to sell, to charm…this brand of energy, optimism, drive and ingenuity was something quite new in the world. It is a quality still alive and nowhere more so than in Las Vegas, where they prove every year that they Can Do just about anything. Vegas depends for its survival on the new, on ever more preposterous and eye-popping achievements in resort-building. They have had no compunction, for instance, in pulling down such historic landmarks as the Sands and the Desert Inn: in fact almost all great casinos and hotels of the Rat Pack days of the fifties and sixties are now rubble in the foundations of the new. The craze over a few years ago was for building cities: New York, Paris and Venice — with all the boring bits left out and all the famous attractions conveniently close to each other. We laugh, of course we do, but most of us cannot but suck in a secret whistle of admiration too. If only all this ingenuity, energy, determination, vision and courage were aimed at something a little less screwy, a little less nakedly concupiscent, a little less pervertedly bogus. Questions and tasks 1. Summarize the contents of the fragment in one-two sentences. 2. How would you define the type of the text? What are its basic features? 109

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3. Is this text impersonal or does it reflect the author’s mood? If the latter is true, what feelings permeate the text? 4. Comment on the expressiveness of syntax in the fragment. 5. What background information should a reader possess to successfully interpret cultural implications? Going beyond the text 1. In what state is Las Vegas situated? What is it famous for? 2. Why does the author claim that ‘the Can Do spirit’ of America finds its vivid expression in Las Vegas? Do you agree with this statement? TEXT 5 Winston Groom Forrest Gump (an extract) That afternoon Jenny took me to meet the other guys in the band an she tell them I play the harmonica like heaven itsef, an why don’t they let me set in with them at the club tonight. One of the guys axe me what I like to play best, an I say, “Dixie,” and he say he don’t believe he has heard what I say, an Jenny jump in an say, “It don’t matter, he will be fine once he’s got a ear for our stuff.” So that night I be playing with the band an everybody agree I am makin a good contribution an it is very enjoyable, getting to set there an watch Jenny sing an thow herself all over the stage. That next Monday I have decided to go ahead an set in on Doctor Quackenbush’s class, “Role of the idiot in World Literature.” The title alone is enough to make me feel sort of important. “Today,” Doctor Quackenbush says to the class, “we has a visitor who is gonna be auditing this course from time to time. Please welcome Mister Forest Gump.” Everybody turn an look at me an I give a little wave, an then the class begin. “The idiot,” Doctor Quackenbush say, “has played an important role in history an literature for many years. I suppose you has all heard of the village idiot, who was usually some retarded individual livin in a village someplace. He was often the object of scorn an mockery. Later, it become the custom of nobility to have in their presence a court jester, a sort of person that would do things to amuse the royalty. In many 110

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instances, this individual was actually an idiot or a moron, in others, he was merely a clown or jokester…” He go on like that for a wile, an it begun to become apparent to me that idiots was not jus useless people, but was put here for a purpose, sort of like Dan had said, an the purpose is to make people laugh. At least that is somethin. “The object of having a fool for most writers,” Doctor Quackenbush say, “is to employ the device of double entendre, permittin them to let the fool make a fool of hissef, an at the same time allow the reader the revelation of the greater meaning of the foolishness. Occasionally, a great writer like Shakespeare would let the fool make an ass out of one of his principal characters, thereby providing a twist for the readers’ enlightenment.” At this point, I am becoming somewhat confused. But that is normal. Anyhow, Mister Quackenbush say that to demonstrate what he has been talking about, we is gonna do a scene from the play, King Lear, where there is a fool an a madman in disguise an the king hissef is crazy. He tells this guy named Elmer Harrington III to play the part of Mad Tom o’Bedlam, an for this girl called Lucille to play The Fool. Another guy called Horace somebody was to be crazy ole King Lear. An then he say, “Forrest, why doesn’t you play the role of the Earl of Gloucester?” Mister Quackenbush say he will get a few stage props from the drama department, but he want us to get up our own costumes, just so the thing would be more ‘realistic.’ How I got into this deal, I do not know, is what I am thinking. Questions and tasks 1. Summarize the contents of the fragment in one-two sentences. 2. How would you define the type of the text? What are its basic features? 3. From whose perspective are the events presented? How does that affect the narration? 4. What stylistic device helps to make Forrest’s speech sound authentic? Give examples and comment on them. 5. How is the humorous effect achieved? What is it based on — the humour of the situation or the humour of the language? Describe the mechanisms of verbal humour in the passage. 111

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Going beyond the text 1. Have you seen “Forrest Gump” — a landmark movie in the history of American cinema? How would you describe its title character? What do you think of Tom Hanks’ portrayal of Forrest Gump? TEXT 6 David Lodge Small World (an extract) The job of check-in clerk at Heathrow, or any other airport, is not a glamorous or particularly satisfying one. The work is mechanical and repetitive: inspect the ticket, check it against the passenger list on the computer terminal, tear out the ticket from its folder, check the baggage weight, tag the baggage, ask Smoking or Non-smoking, allocate a seat, issue a boarding pass. The only variation in this routine occurs when things go wrong — when flights are delayed or cancelled because of bad weather or strikes or technical hitches. Then the checker bears the full brunt of the customers’ fury without being able to do anything to alleviate it. For the most part the job is a dull and monotonous one, processing people who are impatient to conclude their brief business with you, and whom you will probably never see again. Cheryl Summerbee, a checker for British Airways in Terminal One at Heathrow, did not, however, complain of boredom. Though the passengers who passed through her hands took little notice of her, she took a lot of notice of them. She injected interest into her job by making quick assessments of their characters and treating them accordingly. Those who were rude or arrogant or otherwise unpleasant she put in uncomfortable or inconvenient seats, next to toilets, or beside mothers with crying babies. Those who made a favourable impression she rewarded with the best seats, and whenever possible placed them next to some attractive member of the opposite sex. In Cheryl Summerbee’s hands, seat allocation was a fine art, as delicate and complex an operation as arranging blind dates between clients of a lonelyhearts agency. It gave her a glow of satisfaction, a pleasant sense of doing good by stealth, to reflect on how many love affairs, and even marriages, she must have instigated between people who imagined they had met by pure chance. 112

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Cheryl Summerbee was very much in favour of love. She firmly believed that it made the world go round, and did her bit to keep the globe spinning on its axis by her discreet management of the seating on British Airways Tridents. On the shelf under her counter she kept a Bills and Moon romance to read in those slack periods when there were no passengers to deal with. The one she was reading at the moment was called Love Scene. It was about a girl called Sandra who went to work as a nanny for a film director whose wife had died tragically in a car accident, leaving him with two young children to look after. Of course Sandra fell in love with the film director, though unfortunately he was in love with the actress taking the leading role in the film he was making — or was he just pretending to be in love with her to keep her sweet? Of course he was! Cheryl Summerbee had read enough Bills and Moon romances to know that — indeed she hardly needed to read any further to predict exactly how the story would end. With half her mind she despised these love-stories, but she devoured them with greedy haste, like cheap sweets. Her own life was, so far, devoid of romance…So she was still waiting for Mr Right to appear. She had no very clear image of what he would look like except that he would have a hard chest and firm thighs. All the heroes of Bills and Moon romances seemed to have hard chests and firm thighs. Questions and tasks 1. Summarize the contents of the fragment in one-two sentences. 2. How would you define the type of the text? What are its basic features? 3. How would you characterize the job of a check-in clerk? What stylistic device is employed by the author to emphasize its monotony and repetitiveness? 4. What was Cheryl Summerbee’s attitude towards her job? Why did she treat her boring duties as ‘a fine art’? Comment on the imagery the author employs to make the description more vivid. 5. How does the author ‘revive’ the cliché ‘Love makes the world go round’? 6. Comment on the fragment concerning the description of Bills and Moon romances. In what vein is Love Scene presented? What was Cheryl’s attitude towards this kind of books and why? 113

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7. What is the overall impression produced by Cheryl Summerbee? What feelings does the author’s treatment of this character evoke in you? Going beyond the text 1. Why have romantic novels always enjoyed great popularity? What arguments can you give in favour of this genre and against it? 2. Do you feel any difference between the genre of ‘romance novel’ and the so called ‘chick lit’ — the genre which address issues of modern womanhood, often in a humorous and lighthearted way? Can you name the representatives of this literary trend? TEXT 7 Iris Murdoch An Accidental Man (an extract) — Hong Kong must be a very interesting city. Yes, thank you, spinach, no potatoes. — Yes, fascinating. — Why did you decide not to stay in the east? — Oh well, I didn’t really fit in there. I thought I’d better come home. Home is better, after all. — Yes, of course. — One is more at home. — Yes. Perhaps it’s frivolous of me, thought Mavis, but I can’t bear his having got so fat, and he’s become pompous and sort of oriental and old. He could be my uncle. — I’m afraid I’ve put on some weight since we last met. — said Matthew. — Oh no. — You look just the same. — I’ve faded. — Fading suits you. — Like a piece of old chintz. — Yes, there’s no doubt that I’ve put on weight. 114

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She is defeated, he thought, tired out by years of a rather dull life. We are both weary, we have not the energy for real communication, we are cautious and afraid of hurts and entanglements. We are saddening and disappointing each other. — Did you ever try dieting? — No, I’ve rather taken to the fleshpots in my old age. He has become so rotund, she thought, even his head has become fat. And his eyes are a sort of viscous fishy blue but so bloodshot that they look almost purple. He probably drinks too much. — So you’re thinking of selling Valmorana? — Yes. — She supposed she was. The nuns were bankrupt and moving house and the local authority wanted impossible things. And she had been putting everything off until she met Matthew. What a desolation she had now prepared for herself. Why had she been so sure that he would be a source of new life? Had he expected this of her? She read disillusion in his eyes. — It’s quite a good moment for selling house property. — Is it? Good. — They say he made a fortune in Hong Kong, I can believe it. — I’ll get a flat. Much more convenient. — Much more convenient. I’m boring her, he thought. They were having lunch at the Cafe Royal. Matthew had no servants at the Villa yet. He had thought that food and drink would help. Now they had both eaten and drunk too much in desperation. The texture of the face matters so, she thought. That flabby ageing surface invited no touch. She had imagined a great magnetic force drawing them together, she had imagined tears of joy. She had recalled him so clearly, smooth-cheeked, clear-eyed, plump and blond. But that image was already fading. — Will you have cheese or pudding? — Cheese, please. — I’ll have the chocolate mousse. Yes, and cream. No wonder he is so fat, she thought. Why does he stare so as the waiter pours the cream? His eyes are suddenly glistening with interest. — And I think I’ll have some cheese too. Waiter, cheese. And I trust Dorina is well? It was odd how tamely these names now came into their conversation. We should be faint with emotion, thought Mavis, but this is a kind 115

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of game. It is as if we are dealing with everything, making it safe and ordinary, and then setting it aside. Austin had already been perfunctorily dealt with.The whole past was being sadly folded up and put away. Was it for this that they had met? Perhaps it was. Suddenly it occurred to her, I am no longer attractive; and then that was what it all meant. — Dorina’s very well. When Austin gets a job I expect they’ll get together again. — I expect so. It was a mistake to meet like this, he thought. Eating and drinking are so gross. She has got fragments of biscuit all down the front of her dress. We ought to have met at nine o’clock in the morning on a bridge. After all, and though we hoped otherwisе, something is utterly lost to us. How could it not be so? We surrendered each other bloodlessly without a fight. Our love was puny, not powerful enough to live on and be changed into anything which could nourish us now. We deserve this fiasco. — And Tokyo must be a very interesting city too. — Yes, fascinating. Questions and tasks 1. Summarize the contents of the fragment in one-two sentences. 2. How would you define the type of the text? What are its basic features? 3. Give as much background information as you possibly can concerning a) Mavis b) Matthew 4. Has this meeting come up to their expectations? Give your reasons. 5. What do they feel about each other? About their meeting? What devices does the author make use of to describe their emotional state? What enables the author to convey two planes of narration simultaneously? How do the outward and the inward impressions correlate? 6. Why are the details concerning the appearance of the characters so significant? 7. Make your conclusion as to the appropriateness of the literary form employed by the author. Does she succeed in achieving a desired effect on the reader? 116

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PART 2 TEXTS FOR INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS TEXT 1 Richard Bach Jonathan Livingston Seagull (an extract) It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea. A mile from a shore a fishing boat chummed the water, and the word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning. But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one…single…more…inch… of…curve…Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell. Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonor. But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve — slowing, slowing, and stalling once more — was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly. 117

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This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make oneself popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting. “Why, Jon, why?” his mother asked. “Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can’t you leave low flying to the pelicans, the albatross? Why don’t you eat? Son, you’re bone and feathers!” “I don’t mind being bone and feathers, mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just want to know.” TEXT 2 Iain Banks Under Ice Andy runs out across the ice. I am five years old and he is seven. Strathspeld is everywhere white; the sky is still and shining, hiding the sun in a dazzling, brilliant haze, its light somehow distanced by the intervening layer of high cloud overlooking a chill wilderness of snow. The mountain-tops are smothered, black crags violent spattered marks against that blankness; the hills and forests are blanketed too, the trees are frosted and the loch is hard and soft together, iced over then snowed upon. Here, beyond the gardens of the lodge and the woods and ornamental ponds, the loch narrows and becomes a river again, bending and funneling and quickening as it heads towards the rocks and falls and the shallow gorge beyond. Usually from here you can hear the thunder of the falls in the distance but today there is only silence. I watch Andy run out. I shout after him but I don’t follow him. The bank on this side is low, only half a metre above the white plain of the snow-covered river. The grass and reeds around me are flattened under the sudden, overnight fall of snow. On the far side, where Andy is heading, the bank is tall and steep where the water has cut into the hill, removing sand and gravel and stones and leaving an overhang of earth and exposed, dangling tree roots; the dark gravel space under that ragged overhang is the only place I can see where there is no snow. Andy is yelling as he runs, coat-tails flapping out behind him, gloved hands outspread, his head thrown back, the earflaps on his hat snapping and clapping like wings. He’s almost half-way across and suddenly I go from being terrified and annoyed to being exhilarated, 118

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intoxicated, overjoyed. We were told not to do this, told not to come here, told to sledge and throw snowballs and make snowmen all we wanted, but not even to come near the loch and the river, in case we fell through the ice; and yet Andy came here after we’d sledged for a while on the slope near the farm, walked down here through the woods despite my protests, and then when we got here to the river bank I said well, as long as we only looked, but then Andy just whooped and jumped down onto the boulder-lumped white slope of shore and sprinted out across the pure flat snow towards the far bank. At first I’m angry at him, frightened for him, but now suddenly I get this rush of joy, watching him race out there into the cold level space of the stilled river, free and warm and vivacious in that smoothed and frozen silence. *** I think he’s done it, I think he’s across the river and safe and there’s a warm glow of vicarious accomplishment starting to well up within me, but then there’s a crackling noise and he falls; I think he’s tripped and fallen forward but he isn’t lying flat on the snow, he’s sunk up to his waist in it and there’s a pool of darkness spreading on the whiteness around him as he struggles, trying to lever himself out, and I can’t believe this is happening, can’t believe Andy isn’t going to jump free; I’m yelling in fear now, shouting his name, screaming out to him. He struggles, turning round as he sinks deeper, chunks and edges of ice rearing into the air and making little puffs and fountains of snow as he tries to find purchase and push himself out. He’s calling out to me now but I can hardly hear him because I’m screaming so hard, wetting my pants as I squeeze the screams out. He’s holding his hand out to me, yelling at me, but I’m stuck there, terrified, screaming and I don’t know what to do, can’t think what to do, even while he’s yelling at me to help him, come out to him, get a branch, but I’m petrified at the thought of setting foot on that white, treacherous surface and I can’t imagine finding a branch, can’t think what to do as I look one way towards the tall trees above the hidden gorge and the other along the shore of the loch towards the boat-house but there are no branches, there’s only snow everywhere, and then Andy stops struggling and slips under the whiteness. I stand still, quietened and numbed. I wait for him to come back up, but he doesn’t. I step back, then turn and run, the clinging wetness 119

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round my thighs going from warm to cold as I race beneath the snowshrouded trees towards the house. I run into the arms of Andy’s parents walking with the dogs near the ornamental ponds and it seems like an age before I can tell them what’s happened because my voice won’t work and I can see the fear in their eyes and they’re asking, Where is Andrew? Where is Andrew? and eventually I can tell them and Mrs. Gould gives a strange little shuddering cry and Mr. Gould tells her to get the people in the house and phone for an ambulance and runs away down the path towards the river with the four Golden Labradors barking excitedly behind him. I run to the house with Mrs. Gould and we get everybody — my mum and dad and the other guests — to come down to the river. My father carries me in his arms. At the riverside we can see Mr. Gould on his stomach out on the ice, pushing himself back from the hole in the river; people are shouting and running around; we head down the river towards the narrows and the gorge and my father slips and almost drops me and his breath smells of whisky and food. Then somebody calls out and they find Andy, round the bend in the river, down where the water reappears from a crust of ice and snow and swirls, lowered and reduced, round the rocks and wedged tree-trunks before the lip of the falls, which sound muted and distant today, even this close. Andy’s there, caught between a snow-covered tree trunk and an iced-over rock, his face blue-white and quite still. His father splashes deep into the water and pulls him out. I start crying and bury my face in my father’s shoulders. The village doctor was one of the house guests; he and Andy’s father hold the boy up, letting water drain from his mouth, then lay him down on a coat on the snow. The doctor presses on Andy’s chest while his wife breathes into the boy’s mouth. They look more surprised than anybody when his heart restarts and then he makes a gurgling noise in his throat. Andy is wrapped in the coat and rushed to the house, submerged to the neck in a warm bath and given oxygen when the ambulance arrives. *** He’d been under the ice, under the water, for ten minutes or more. The doctor had heard about children, usually younger than Andy, surviving without air in cold water, but never seen anything like it. 120

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Andy recovered quickly, sucking on the oxygen, coughing and spluttering in the warm bath, then being dried and taken to a warmed bed and watched over by his parents. The doctor was worried about brain damage, but Andy seemed just as bright and intelligent afterwards as he’d been before, remembering details from earlier childhood and performing above average in the memory tests the doctor gave him and even doing well in school when that started again after the winter break. It was a miracle, his mother said, and the local newspaper agreed. Andy and I never did get told off for what happened, and he hardly ever mentioned that day to me unless he had to. His father didn’t like talking about it very much either and used to be slightly dismissive and jokey about it all. Mrs. Gould gradually talked less about it. Eventually it seemed it was only I who ever thought about that still, cold morning, recalling in my dreams that cry and that hand held out to me for help I could not, would not give, and the silence that followed Andy disappearing under the ice. And sometimes I felt he was different, and had changed, even though I know people changed all the time and people our age changed faster than most. Even so, I thought on occasion there had been a loss; nothing necessarily to do with oxygen starvation but just as a result of the experience, the shock of his cold journey, slipping away beneath the grey lid of ice (and perhaps, I told myself in later years, it was only a loss of ignorance, a loss of folly and so no bad thing). But I could never again imagine him doing something as spontaneously crazy, as aggressively, contemptuously fate-tempting and unleashed as running out across the frozen ice, arms out, laughing. TEXT 3 Sandra Cisneros Eleven What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven. 121

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Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is. You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is. Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one hundred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I’d have known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk. I would’ve known how to tell her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth. “Whose is this?” Mrs. Price says, and she holds the red sweater up in the air for all the class to see. “Whose? It’s been sitting in the coatroom for a month.” “Not mine,” says everybody, “Not me.” “It has to belong to somebody,” Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember. It’s an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope. It’s maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn’t say so. Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, “I think it belongs to Rachel.” An ugly sweater like that all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out. “That’s not, I don’t, you’re not . . . Not mine.” I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I was four. “Of course it’s yours,” Mrs. Price says. “I remember you wearing it once.” Because she’s older and the teacher, she’s right and I’m not. 122

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Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem number four. I don’t know why but all of a sudden I’m feeling sick inside, like the part of me that’s three wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite down on my teeth real hard and try to remember today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me for tonight, and when Papa comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you. But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain. I move the red sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and books and eraser as far from it as possible. I even move my chair a little to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine. In my head I’m thinking how long till lunchtime, how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it over the schoolyard fence, or leave it hanging on a parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and toss it in the alley. Except when math period ends Mrs. Price says loud and in front of everybody, “Now, Rachel, that’s enough,” because she sees I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-tip corner of my desk and it’s hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don’t care. “Rachel,” Mrs. Price says. She says it like she’s getting mad. “You put that sweater on right now and no more nonsense.” “But it’s not—” “Now!” Mrs. Price says. This is when I wish I wasn’t eleven because all the years inside of me—ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one—are pushing at the back of my eyes when I put one arm through one sleeve of the sweater that smells like cottage cheese, and then the other arm through the other and stand there with my arms apart like if the sweater hurts me and it does, all itchy and full of germs that aren’t even mine. That’s when everything I’ve been holding in since this morning, since when Mrs. Price put the sweater on my desk, finally lets go, and all of a sudden I’m crying in front of everybody. I wish I was invisible but I’m not. I’m eleven and it’s my birthday today and I’m crying like I’m three in front of everybody. I put my head down on the desk and bury my face in my stupid clown-sweater arms. My face all hot and spit coming out of my mouth because I can’t stop the little animal noises from coming out of me until there aren’t any more tears left in 123

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my eyes, and it’s just my body shaking like when you have the hiccups, and my whole head hurts like when you drink milk too fast. But the worst part is right before the bell rings for lunch. That stupid Phyllis Lopez, who is even dumber than Sylvia Saldivar, says she remembers the red sweater is hers! I take it off right away and give it to her, only Mrs. Price pretends like everything’s okay. Today I’m eleven. There’s a cake Mama’s making for tonight and when Papa comes home from work we’ll eat it. There’ll be candles and presents and everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you, Rachel, only it’s too late. I’m eleven today. I’m eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one, but I wish I was one hundred and two. I wish I was anything but eleven, because I want today to be far away already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny tiny you have to close your eyes to see it. TEXT 4 Lydia Davis The Old Dictionary I have an old dictionary, about 120 years old, that I need to use for a particular piece of work I’m doing this year. Its pages are brownish in the margins and brittle, and very large. I risk tearing them when I turn them. When I open the dictionary I also risk tearing the spine, which is already split more than halfway up. I have to decide, each time of consulting it, whether it is worth damaging the book further in order to look up a particular word. Since I need to use it for this work, I know I will damage it, if not today, than tomorrow, and that by the time I am done with this work it will be in poorer condition than it was when I started, if not completely ruined. When I took it off the shelf today, though, I realized that I treat it with a good deal more care than I treat my young son. Each time I handle it, I take the greatest care not to harm it: my primary concern is not to harm it. What struck me today was that even though my son should be more important to me than my old dictionary, I can’t say that each time I deal with my son, my primary concern is not to harm him. My primary concern is almost always something else, for instance to find out what his homework is, or to get supper on the table, or to finish a phone conversation. If he gets harmed in the process, that doesn’t seem to matter to me as much as getting the thing 124

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done, whatever it is. Why don’t I treat my son at least as well as the old dictionary? Maybe it is because the dictionary is obviously fragile. When a corner of a page snaps off, it is unmistakable. My son does not look fragile, bending over a game or manhandling the dog. Certainly his body is strong and flexible, and is not easily harmed by me. I have bruised his body and then it has healed. Sometimes it is obvious when I have hurt his feelings, but it is harder to see how badly they have been hurt, and they seem to mend. It is hard to see if they mend completely or are forever slightly damaged. When the dictionary is hurt, it can’t be mended. Maybe I treat the dictionary better because it makes no demands on me, and doesn’t fight back. Maybe I am kinder to things that don’t seem to react to me. But in fact my houseplants do not seem to react much and yet I don’t treat them very well. The plants make one or two demands. Their demand for light has already been satisfied by where I put them. Their second demand is for water. I water them but not regularly. Some of them don’t grow very well because of that and some of them die. Most of them are strange-looking rather than nice-looking. Some of them were nice-looking when I bought them but are strange-looking now because I haven’t taken very good care of them. Most of them are in pots that are the same ugly plastic pots they came in. I don’t actually like them very much. Is there any other reason to like a houseplant, if it not nice-looking? Am I kinder to something that is nice-looking? But I could treat a plant well even if I didn’t like its looks. I should be able to treat my son well when he is not looking good and even when he is not acting very nice. I treat the dog better than the plants, even though he is more active and more demanding. It is simple to give him food and water. I take him for walks, though not often enough. I have also sometimes slapped his nose, though the vet told me never to hit him anywhere near the head, or maybe he said anywhere at all. I am only sure I am not neglecting the dog when he is asleep. Maybe I am kinder to things that are not alive. Or rather if they are not alive there is no question of kindness. It does not hurt them if I don’t pay attention to them, and that is a great relief. It is such a relief it is even a pleasure. The only change they show is that they gather dust. The dust won’t really hurt them. I can even get someone to dust them. My son gets dirty, and I can’t clean him, and I can’t pay someone to clean him. It is hard to keep him clean, and even complicated trying to feed him. He doesn’t sleep enough, partly because I try so hard to 125

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get him to sleep. The plants need two things, or maybe three. The dog needs five or six things. It is very clear how many things I am giving him and how many I am not, therefore how well I’m taking care of him. My son needs many other things besides what he needs for his physical care, and these things multiply or change constantly. They can change right in the middle of a sentence. Though I often know, I do not always know just what he needs. Even when I know, I am not always able to give it to him. Many times each day I do not give him what he needs. Some of what I do for the old dictionary, though not at all, I could do for my son. For instance, I handle it slowly, deliberately, and gently. I consider its age. I treat it with respect. I stop and think before I use it. I know its limitations. I do not encourage it to go further than it can go (for instance to lie open flat on the table). I leave it alone a good deal of the time. TEXT 5 Bel Kaufman Up the Down Staircase (an extract) Dear Ellen, Just got home from Open School session — and I must talk to someone! It was a fiasco, though I did everything I was told to do. I got fresh book jackets from the library to festoon the walls with and had my wardrobe cleaned out. (Why is it only one sneaker is always left on the closet floor? And the ubiquitous, tattered notebook? I found one belonging to one of my homeroom girls, Alice Blake, full of scribbles, doodles, and chaos.) I even made sure that the little flag stuck in the radiator, which we salute each morning before singing the Calvin Coolidge Alma Mater (“Ye loyal sons and daughters” — a substitute for the unlawful hymns) was tilted at the correct angle. (The other day Admiral Ass found it drooping disrespectfully.) I see 243 kids daily: 201 in English (after dropouts and new registers) and 42 in homeroom — but only a few parents showed up; a few wrote cards; and the rest ignored the whole thing. The ones I had particularly hoped to see never came. I don’t know why they hold Open School so soon after the beginning of the term, before we’ve had time to get to know all our students. 126

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The Delaney Book wasn’t much help to me; it showed days absent, times late, and some checks, crosses and zeros — I’d forgotten for what. Unprepared homework? An insolent whistle? A four-letter word? One father came, in work overalls, hands patiently clasped on the desk, out of some dim memory of his own school days. The mothers — patient, used to waiting, careworn, timid, bewildered or just curious — sat clutching their pocketbooks, waiting to plead, appease, complain or hear a kind word. A few were hostile and belligerent; they had come to avenge themselves on their own teachers of long ago, or demand special privileges, or ask the teacher to do the job they had failed to do. And I — who was I to tell these grown-ups anything about their children? What did I know? A few clichés from the directives: “Works to capacity, doesn’t work to capacity, fine boy, fine girl.” A few euphemisms: “Seems to enjoy school” (the guffawer); “Is quite active” (the window-smasher)… For a moment the notion occurred to me to try to match the parent to the child; but they were strangers, looking at me with opaque eyes. MOTHER: How’s my boy doing? I: What’s his name? MOTHER: Jim. I: Jim what? MOTHER: Stobart. I: Oh, yes. (Now, which one was he?) Well, let’s see now. (Open the Delaney Book with an air of authority: a quick glance — no help. Stobart? Was he the boy who kept drumming with a pencil on his desk? Or the short, rosy one who reclined in his tilted chair combing his hair all the time? Or the one who never removed his jacket? I couldn’t find his Delaney card; perhaps his mother would give me a clue.) MOTHER: About that F you gave him. I: Oh, yes. Well, he’s obviously not working to capacity. (He must be the boy who got an F on his composition, on which he had written only one sentence: “I was too absent to do it”.) He must work harder. MOTHER: Pass him, and he won’t do it again. I: I’m afraid that’s no solution. He simply isn’t using his potential. MOTHER: You mean he’s dumb? I: Oh, no! MOTHER: He’s afraid to open his mouth. Smack him, just smack him once. 127

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I: He should volunteer more. MOTHER: I tried my best. (Helplessness, shame in her voice — and were there tears in her eyes?) Do me a favor — pass him. I: Why do you think he is doing so poorly? MOTHER: You’re the teacher! I: He seems to be just coasting along. MOTHER: He can’t help it, he was born premature. He won’t do it again. I: Well, it’s a good thing that we are both concerned, perhaps, with more encouragement at home? Can his father — MOTHER: That son of a bitch bastard I hope he rots in hell I haven’t seen him in six years (said in the same apologetic, soft pleading tone). I: Well (five minutes are up, by my watch), it’s been a pleasure to meet you. (But she doesn’t go.) Is there something else? MOTHER: (Those weren’t tears; anger is filming her eyes.) What does it cost you to pass him? No skin off your head! I: I’m afraid his work doesn’t warrant — MOTHER: Do me a favor, at least keep him in after school. I can’t take it no more. I: I’m afraid that’s impossible; you see — MOTHER: But you’re the teacher! He’ll listen to a teacher! I: We can both try to make him work harder, but he has so many absences — MOTHER: Maybe if you made Physics more understandable to him he would come more. I: Physics? I teach English! MOTHER: How come? I: What room were you supposed to be in? MOTHER: 306. Mrs. Manheim. I: I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. Mr. Manheim is the man you want to see. I’m Miss Barrett, Room 304. MOTHER: Well, why didn’t you say so? Still, I learned a few things. I learned that the reason a student failed to bring his father’s signature is that the father is in jail; that the Federal Lunch the kids are always griping about is often the only meal they have; that the boy who falls asleep in class works all night in a garage in order to buy a sports car; that the girl who had neglected to do her homework had no place to do it in. 128

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I have a long way to go. In the meantime, write, write soon. You too bring me a glimpse of “real life.” One can get as ingrown as a toenail here. Love, Syl P.S. Did you know that due to the “high mobility” of families unable to pay rent, some schools have a turnover of 100% between September and June? TO: ALL TEACHERS NOVEMBER 13 YOU ARE TO BE CONGRATULATED AND COMMENDED ON THE COMPLETE AND UNQUALIFIED SUCCESS OF OPENSCHOOL YESTERDAY. IT IS THROUGH PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES SUCH AS THESE THAT CLOSER COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME CAN BE EFFECTUATED AND ACHIEVED. MAXWELL E. CLARKE, Principal TEXT 6 Bel Kaufman Up the Down Staircase (an extract) Dear Ellen, It’s a far cry from our dorm in Lyons Hall (Was it only four years ago?); a far cry from the sheltered Graduate School Library stacks; a far cry from Chaucer; and a far and desperate cry from Education 114 and Prof. Winters’ lectures on “The Psychology of the Adolescent.” I have met the Adolescent face to face; obviously, Prof. Winters had not. You seem to have done better with your education than I: while you are strolling through your suburban supermarket with your baby in the cart, or taking a shower in the middle of the third period, I am automatically erasing from the blackboard. 129

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What I really had in mind was to do a little teaching. “And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche”* — like Chaucer’s Clerke of Oxenford, I had come eager to share all I know and feel; to imbue the young with a love for their language and literature; to instruct and to inspire. What happened in real life (when I had asked why they were taking English, a boy said: “To help us in real life”) was something else again, and even if I could describe it, you would think I am exaggerating. But I’m not. In homeroom (that’s the official class, where the kids report in the morning and in the afternoon for attendance and vital statistics) they went after me with all their ammunition: whistling, shouting, drumming on desks, clacking inkwell lids, playing catch with the board eraser, sprawling in their seats to trip each other in the aisles — all this with an air of vacant innocence, while I stood there, pleading for attention, wary as a lion-tamer, my eyes on all 46 at once. By the time I got to my subject classes, I began to stagger under an inundation of papers — memos, directives, circulars, letters, notices, forms, blanks, records. The staggering was especially difficult because I am what’s known as a “floater” — I float from room to room. There’s a whole glossary to be learned. My 3rd termers are “specialslows”; my 5th terms are “low-normal” and “average-normal”. So far, it’s hard to tell which is which, or who I am, for that matter. I made one friend — Bea Schachter, and one enemy — JJ McH, who signs himself Adm. Asst., and I saw hate and contempt on the face of a boy — because I am a teacher. The building itself is hostile: cracked plaster, broken windows, splintered doors and carved up desks, gloomy corridors, metal stairways, dingy cafeteria (they can eat sitting down only in 20 minute shifts) and an auditorium which has no windows. It does have murals, however, depicting mute, muscular harvesters, faded and immobile under a mustard sun. That’s where we had assembly this morning. Picture it: the air heavy with hundreds of bodies, the principal’s blurred face poised like a pale balloon over the lectern, his microphone-voice crackling with sudden static: “ … a new leaf, for here at Calvin Coolidge we are all free and equal, with the same golden opportunity …” The students are silent in their seats. The silence has nothing to do with attention; it’s a glazed silence, ready to be shattered at a mo130

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ment. The girl next to me examines her teeth in her pocket mirror. I sit straight on the wooden seat, smoothed by the restless bottoms of how many children, grown now, or dead, or where? On the back of the seat directly in front of me, carefully chiseled with some sharp instrument, is the legend: Balls. “… knocks but once, and your attitude …” Tude booms, unexpectedly amplified by the erratic microphone, “towards your work and your teachers, who so selflessly …” The teachers dot the aisles: a hen-like little woman with a worried profile; a tall young man with amused eyebrows; a round lady with a pepper-and-salt pompadour — my colleagues, as yet unknown. “… precious than rubies. Education means …” — he’s obviously winding up for a finish — “not only preparation for citizenship and life plus a sound academic foundation. Don’t forget to have your teacher sign your program cards, and if you have any problems, remember my door is always open.” Eloquent pause. “And so, with this thought in mind, I hope you will show the proper school spirit, one and all.” Released at last, they burst, clang-banging the folding seats, as they spill out on a wave of forbidden voices, and I with them, into the hall. “Wherezya pass?” says the elevator man gloomily. “Gotcher elevator pass?” “I’m a teacher,” I say sheepishly, as if caught in a lie. For only teachers, and students with proof of a serious disability, may ride in the elevators. Looking young has certain disadvantages here; if I were a man, I would grow a moustache. This morning, the students swarming on the street in front of the entrance parted to let me pass — the girls, their faces either pale or masked with makeup; the boys eyeing me exaggeratedly: “Hey eeah — howzabadis! Gedaloadadis — whee-uh!” the two-note whistle of insolent admiration following me inside. (Or better still — a beard.) It seems to me that kids were different when I was in high school. But the smell in the lobby was the same unmistakable school smell — chalk dust? Paper filings? Musty metal? Rotting wood? I joined the other teachers on line at the time clock, and gratefully found my card. I was expected: Someone had put my number on it — # 91. I punched the time on my card and stuck it into the IN rack. I was in. 131

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But when I had written my name on the blackboard in my room, for a moment I had the strange feeling that it wasn’t spelled right. It looked unfamiliar — white and drowning in that hard black sea … I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping. We have to punch — TEXT 7 David Lodge Author, Author (an extract) Behind the text: Minnie is a maid, serving in the household of Henry James, the word-famous man of letters, who has never read any books by her distinguished master and is determined to catch up on his writing. The author’s secretary — Theodora Bosanquet — has recommended her to start with the story “The Beast in the Jungle”. That night Minnie goes to bed early, taking the book with her. Instead of switching on the electric light she lights a candle on her bedside table, so that the other members of the household won’t be able to tell from the illuminated slit under her door that she is awake. She opens the book and turns its pages reverently until she finds the story called ‘The Beast in the Jungle.’ She reads the first sentence. What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by himself quite without intention — spoken as they lingered and slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance. Minnie blinks and reads the sentence again. She still doesn’t understand it. She knows the meaning of all the individual words but she can’t make any sense of the way they are joined together. Can this really be the beginning of the story? She turns back a page to confirm that indeed it is. She holds the book closer to the candle flame and reads the sentence again. Again she is completely baffled. Minnie is used to stories where you are told at the outset who is who — what the names of the heroine and the hero are, and where they live, and what they look like — before the story proper gets going. This sentence seems as if it 132

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comes from the middle of something. It doesn’t tell you who ‘him’ is or who the other person is, or what was going on between them except to say, strangely, that it doesn’t matter anyway. Minnie thinks perhaps everything will become clearer in due course, so she reads on, but the deeper she gets into the story the thicker is the fog of her incomprehension. After a while the two main characters are given names, and there seems to be some possibility of their falling in love, but John Marcher is a cold stick and May Bartram an irritatingly reserved heroine. There is nothing about whether she is pretty or beautiful or what clothes she wears, and there are pages and pages of dense print in long intimidating paragraphs, about some meeting they had in the past, before they start speaking to each other in the story, and then it is hard to know what they are talking about because they keep interrupting each other and answering questions with more questions. Most puzzling of all is that there is no jungle, and no beast, except for one sentence: ‘Something or other lay in wait for him, amid the twists and turns of the months and the years, like a crouching beast in the jungle.’ But what it is Minnie can’t work out. She almost groans aloud at the frustrated effort to understand. The lines of print blur and waver in the candlelight. She yawns and rubs her eyes and pinches herself to stay awake. Then she peeps at the end of the story to see if it is a happy one. It is not. In the last sentence John Marcher flings himself on a tomb that is probably May Bartram’s. That is enough for Minnie. She closes the book, blows out the candle and falls instantly asleep. The next day Minnie returns the book to Theorora Bosanquet. ‘Did you enjoy it?’ Theodora asks. ‘Well, Miss, it’s fine writing, I could tell that, but …’ ‘But?’ Theodora’s big brown eyes almost twinkle. ‘Well, to be honest, it’s a bit above me.’ ‘Yes, Mr James is a difficult writer on first acquaintance. He demands a lot of his readers. But the rewards are great.’ ‘Oh yes, I’m sure, Miss. But you need the education for it.’ ‘What did you find especially difficult to understand?’ Theodora opens the book and leafs through it. Minnie hesitates, tempted to reply: ‘Everything!’ Instead she says: ‘Well, I thought it was going to be about jungle…’ ‘Ah. The beast in the jungle is just a metaphor. A symbol.’ ‘Oh.’ Minnie looks blank. 133

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‘All his life Marcher has had a presentiment — a feeling — that something extraordinary and terrible is going to happen to him, which he compares to a wild animal waiting to spring on its prey.’ ‘Oh, I see.’ And Minnie does begin to see. ‘And he discusses with May what it might be — endlessly, obsessively, self-centredly, in meeting after meeting, year after year. Until she dies. And only then does he realize, too late, that she loved him. He realizes that nothing ever is going to happen to him because he is incapable of love.’ ‘Ah, so that’s what it means,’ Minnie murmurs, almost dreamily, her eyes unfocused. Theodora finds the last page of the story and reads aloud: ‘“She had lived — who could say now with what passion? — since she had loved him for himself; whereas he never had thought of her (ah, how it hugely glared at him) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use.” You understand?’ ‘Yes. Thank you, Miss.’ TEXT 8 Lissa Evans Spencer’s List (an extract) Behind the text: Iris, a single mother of eighteen-year old twins, is going to the parents’ evening at college. ‘Hang on,’ said Iris, ‘I want to finish this list.’ ‘Done it,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’ ‘You haven’t. Who’s your Geography teacher? I’m seeing him first.’ He slackened his jaw and pushed his tongue into his lower lip, so that he looked like one of the unluckier recipients of the Hapsburg gene. ‘Mithuth Lomakth,’ he said, thickly. Robin snorted. ‘Say it properly.’ ‘Mr. Lomax. That’s how he speaks. I’m just helping you to identify him.’ He resumed the impression. ‘Thuh Nile ith uh thlathic exthampul of uh delthuh thormathion. You’re starting to laugh, Mum, I can see you.’ He held out his hand. ‘Goodth evthing, Mith Unwin, ith fabbuluth to thee you.’ 134

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Iris fought down a grin. ‘That poor man.’ ‘You’re laugh-ing,’ he taunted. ‘No I’m not. Anything else I should know about him?’ ‘He fancies the French exchange teacher and she’s only twenty.’ ‘Dirty old man,’ added Robin. ‘Anything relevant, I meant.’ Tom shrugged. ‘He said I could get an A if I put some work in.’ ‘You didn’t tell me that!’ He shrugged again. ‘Boffin,’ said Robin. ‘When did he say that?’ ‘Last year.’ ‘And you didn’t tell me?’ ‘I forgot.’ ‘Oh Tom,’ she said, exasperated. He grinned and wandered away with his hands in his pockets. ‘Come back. Is that everything?’ ‘Thath all folkh,’ he said, disappearing into the bedroom. She made a note on the rough timetable and turned to Robin. ‘What about you? Anything more I should know?’ He looked glumly at the floor, scratched his stubble and said something inaudible. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’ ‘I said “not that I can think of”.’ ‘Haven’t been expelled or anything?’ ‘Nah.’ ‘And just in case I bump into Stephanie’s mum, are you still going out with her?’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘Not really.’ ‘Not really?’ ‘Nah.’ He stood and stretched hugely, drumming the ceiling with his fingertips in the annoying way that both boys had adopted. She’d made them repaint it last year, but the grubby prints were beginning to build up again. ‘I’m gonna have a bath.’ ‘All right. I’ll see you later.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘How are you getting back?’ ‘Alison Steiner’s giving me a lift.’ He nodded, apparently relieved, and padded off to the bathroom. Within a few seconds the antiquated water heater had started with a 135

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thud and a roar, to be immediately drowned by a pounding bass line. The luminous yellow splashproof radio which now stood on the cistern, and which had instantly become the boys’ favourite possession, had been a birthday present from the fast-talking Leon. ‘Why’s there red paint all over the handle?’ Iris had enquired when the boys brought it home. ‘We don’t ask questions like that,’ Tom had said. Mr. Lomax, the speech-impaired Geography teacher, turned out to be a handsome man in his forties, with a slightly prognathous jaw and a minimal lisp. Iris introduced herself. ‘Ah, Tom’s mother.’ He assumed the look of smiling indulgence that she had become used to over the years, from the various authority figures on whom Tom had exerted his indolent charm. It always amazed her, the ease with which he strolled through life. He had none of the qualities that she had been brought up to associate with success — he wasn’t brilliant or conscientious or passionate or concerned or single-minded or dynamic or even punctual, in fact he expended very little effort in any direction; if he had a skill, it was that of benign flippancy. Mr. Lomax steepled his fingers. ‘Well, I expect you know what I’m going to say.’ ‘Lazy.’ ‘Yup, he really doesn’t put the hours in. It’s a shame, because he’s quite capable of original work. When he can be bothered.’ She nodded resignedly. ‘I’ve heard this so many times.’ Tom usually completed his homework over breakfast, spooning in Weetabix with one hand while writing an essay with the other, at a speed which indicated that he was putting down the first thing that came into his head. Any criticism of this habit, indeed any attempted discussion of exams, revision, timetables, course content, homework requirements or even his handwriting — which was atrocious — was greeted with an indulgent smile and the phrase ‘stop worrying, Mum’, as if her concerns were a sort of trivial tic, on a par with cushion-straightening. ‘But I enjoy having him in class,’ continued Mr. Lomax, ‘he always contributes, he’s very articulate. Do you know what he sees himself doing — any future plans?’ Iris grimaced. The end of her conversation with Tom had been as unsatisfactory as the beginning and she was shame-faced about reveal136

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ing the outcome. ‘He wants to be a millionaire by the time he’s thirty, I’m afraid. Nothing more specific.’ The correct response to this admission, she felt, would be for Mr. Lomax to slam his hand onto the desk and shout, ‘Oh for God’s sake, that’s exactly the problem with this generation, they want the world on a bloody plate.’ Instead, he shook his head with an almost fatherly chuckle. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’ Robin’s form teacher, Mr. Clark, was a youngish man with a pale, severe face, who looked at her without interest. ‘Ah, Mrs. Unwin.’ She couldn’t face correcting him. In any case, she’d never really solved the Miss/ Mrs. dilemma; asking to be called ‘Miss’ always made her feel like a character out of Jane Austen, while insisting on ‘Ms’ required rather more assertiveness than she could generally dredge up. ‘Call me Iris’, the third option, sounded like a line from a Barbara Stanwyck movie. She shook hands in silence, and then waited for several minutes as Mr. Clark finished appending a note to a file, a task which he undertook with great intensity. At last he recapped his pen and with a sporty flick of the wrist, tossed the folder onto the pile beside the desk. ‘Robin,’ he said challengingly, placing both hands flat on the desk in front of him and leaning slightly forward, as if about to perform a handspring. ‘Yes,’ said Iris, uncertainly. ‘Bit of an enigma.’ ‘Is he?’ She was disconcerted. Tom was far more of an enigma to her than Robin. ‘Something of a depressive.’ ‘Depressive?’ It seemed an intense word for Robin’s brand of mild and self-indulgent melancholy. ‘I don’t think I’d describe him as a — ’ ‘Tends to be moody.’ ‘Well … he’s quite quiet but I wouldn’t say — ’ ‘Mumbles.’ ‘Yes. He mumbles. He definitely mumbles. It stems from lack of confidence, I think.’ ‘Older or younger twin?’ ‘Older. By seven minutes.’ Mr. Clark frowned, and she felt as if she’d just given the wrong answer in a mental arithmetic test. 137

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‘People always assume Tom’s the oldest,’ she said, placatingly. ‘He’s always been the leader — he was the first to speak and the first to walk, and Robin was always trotting along after him, and I think that’s why …’ Mr. Clark frowned again at this excess of information, and she tailed off into silence. ‘I think the main problem,’ he continued, when the floor was once again his, ‘is that he’s lacking in confidence.’ Iris replayed the conversation in her head. ‘I just said that.’ ‘What?’ ‘That’s what I just said. About his mumbling.’ Mr. Clark gazed at her uncomprehendingly. ‘I’m not following you, Mrs. Unwin.’ ‘I said he mumbles because he lacks confidence.’ ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I said.’ ‘But…’ She began to doubt her own senses. ‘I think I said it first.’ Mr. Clark looked around the room, as if for adjudication, or possibly a straitjacket, and then at his watch. ‘I think we agree, then, that he’s lacking in confidence?’ She felt herself dwindling in the chair. ‘Yes.’ ‘He assumes that his opinions aren’t worth listening to.’ ‘I know,’ she muttered. ‘Sorry?’ She raised her voice. ‘I said I know.’ ‘Did you and your husband ever consider sending the twins to different schools?’ ‘No,’ she said, startled by both the idea and the husband. ‘Why?’ ‘It might have given Robin a little breathing space, so to speak. Away from the domination of his brother.’ ‘But they’re in different classes.’ He gave a little moue of acknowledgement. ‘And they’ve each got their own room at home.’ ‘Uh huh.’ ‘And it’s not as if Robin’s ever done really badly at school. And he’s got lots of friends. And he’s never been in trouble…’ She felt like the trailer-trash single mom that she’d seen in a recent TV film, pleading to the judge after her boy had gunned down most of his classmates. Mr. Clark looked at her impassively and she remembered with a surge of pleasure that Robin had described him as an ‘arsy know-all git’. 138

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‘Do you know what he wants to do when he leaves?’ ‘No, he’s — well, he’s not really too sure.’ He nodded, as if the answer confirmed something, and then pulled Robin’s file towards him. He uncapped his flash-looking fountain pen and wrote a rapid sentence or two in a script so rounded and neat that even upside down and from the other side of the table Iris could read the final word; it was ‘mother’. TEXT 9 Rudyard Kipling The Elephant’s Child In the High and Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn’t pick up things with it. But there was one Elephant — a new Elephant — an Elephant’s Child — who was full of ‘satiable curtiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions. And he lived in Africa, and he filled all Africa with his ‘satiable curtiosities. He asked his tall aunt, the Ostrich, why her tail-feathers grew just so, and his tall aunt the ostrich spanked him with her hard, hard claw. He asked his tall uncle, the Giraffe, what made his skin spotty, and his tall uncle, the Giraffe, spanked him with his hard, hard hoof. And still he was full of ‘satiable curtiosity! He asked his broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, why her eyes were red, and his broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, spanked him with her broad, broad hoof; and he asked his hairy uncle, the Baboon, why melons tasted just so, and his hairy uncle, the Baboon, spanked him with his hairy, hairy paw. And still he was full of ‘satiable curtiosity! He asked questions about everything that he saw, or heard, or felt, or smelt, or touched, and all his uncles and aunts spanked him. And still he was full of ‘satiable curtiosity! One fine morning in the middle of the Precession of the Equinoxes this ‘satiable Elephant’s Child asked a new fine question that he had never asked before. He asked, “What does the Crocodile have for dinner?” Then everybody said, “Hush!” in a loud and dretful tone, and they spanked him immediately and directly, without stopping, for a long time. By and by, when that was finished, he came upon Kolokolo Bird sitting in the middle of a wait-a-bit thorn-bush, and he said, “My father 139

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has spanked me, and my mother has spanked me; all my aunts and uncles have spanked me for my ‘satiable curtiosity; and still I want to know what the Crocodile has for dinner!” Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, “Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fevertrees, and find out.” That very next morning, when there was nothing left of the Equinoxes, because the Precession had preceded according to precedent, this ‘satiable Elephant’s Child took a hundred pounds of sugar-cane (the long purple kind), and seventeen melons (the greeny-crackly kind), and said to all his dear families, “Good-bye. I am going to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to find out what the Crocodile has for dinner.” And they all spanked him once more for luck, though he asked them most politely to stop. Then he went away, a little warm. But not at all astonishes, eating melons, and throwing the rind about, because he could not pick it up. He went from Graham’s Town to Kimberley, and from Kimberley to Khama’s Country, and from Khama’s Country he went east by north, eating melons all the time, till at last he came to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, precisely as Kolokolo Bird had said. Now you must know and understand, O Best Beloved, that till that very week, and day, and hour, and minute, this ‘satiable Elephant’s Child had never seen a Crocodile, and did not know what one was like. It was all his ‘satiable curtiosity. The first thing that he found was a Bi-Coloured-Python-RockSnake curled round a rock. “’Scuse me,” said the Elephant’s Child most politely, “but have you seen such a thing as a Crocodile in these promiscuous parts?” “Have I seen a Crocodile?” said the Bi-Coloured-Python-RockSnake, in a voice of dretful scorn. “What will you ask me next?” “’Scuse me,” said the Elephant’s Child, “but could you kindly tell me what he has for dinner?” Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake uncoiled himself very quickly from the rock, and spanked the Elephant’s Child with his scalesome, flailsome tail. “That is odd,” said the Elephant’s Child, “because my father and my mother, and my uncle and my aunt, not to mention my other aunt, 140

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the Hippopotamus, and my other uncle, the Baboon, have all spanked me for my ‘satiable curtiosity — and I suppose this is the same thing.” So he said good-bye very politely to the Bi-Coloured-PythonRock-Snake, and helped to coil him up on the rock again, and went on, a little warm, but not at all astonished, eating melons, and throwing the rind about, because he could not pick it up, till he trod on what he thought was a log of wood at the very edge of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees. But it was really the Crocodile, O Best Beloved, and the Crocodile winked one eye — like this! “’Scuse me,” said the Elephant’s Child most politely, “but do you happen to have seen a Crocodile in these promiscuous parts?” Then the Crocodile winked the other eye, and lifted half his tail out of the mud; and the Elephant’s Child stepped back most politely, because he did not wish to be spanked again. “Come hither, Little One,” said the Crocodile. “Why do you ask such things?” “’Scuse me,” said the Elephant’s Child most politely, “but my father has spanked me, my mother has spanked me, not to mention my tall aunt, the Ostrich, and my tall uncle, the Giraffe, who can kick ever so hard, as well as my broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, and my hairy uncle, the Baboon, and including the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, with the scalesome, flailsome tail, just up the bank, who spanks harder than any of them; and so, if it’s quite all the same to you, I don’t want to be spanked any more.” “Come hither, Little One,” said the Crocodile, “for I am the Crocodile,” and he wept crocodile-tears to show it was quite true. Then the Elephant’s Child grew all breathless, and panted, and kneeled down on the bank and said, “You are the very person I have been looking for all these long days. Will you please tell me what you have for dinner?” “Come hither, Little One,” said the Crocodile, “and I’ll whisper.” Then the Elephant’s Child put his head down close to the Crocodile’s musky, tusky mouth, and the Crocodile caught him by his little nose, which up to that very week, day, hour, and minute, had been no bigger than a boot, though much more useful. “I think,” said the Crocodile — and he said it between his teeth, like this — “I think to-day I will begin with Elephant’s Child!” 141

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At this, O Best Beloved, the Elephant’s Child was much annoyed, and he said, speaking through his nose, like this, “Led go! You are hurtig be!” Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake scuffled down from the bank and said, “My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the large-pattern leather ulster” (and by this he meant the Crocodile) “will jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.” This is the way Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snakes always talk. Then the Elephant’s Child sat back on his little haunches, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose began to stretch. And the Crocodile floundered into the water, making it all creamy with great sweeps of his tail, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled. And the Elephant’s Child nose kept on stretching; and the Elephant’s Child spread all his little four legs and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose kept on stretching; and the Crocodile threshed his tail like an oar, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and at each pull the Elephant’s Child’s nose grew longer and longer — and it hurt him hijjjus! Then the Elephant’s Child felt his legs slipping, and he said through his nose, which was now nearly five feet long, “This is too butch for be!” Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake came down from the bank, and knotted himself in a double-clove-hitch round the Elephant’s Child’s hind-legs, and said, “Rash and inexperienced traveler, we will now seriously devote ourselves to a little high tension, because if we do not, it is my impression that yonder self-propelling man-of-war with the armour-plated upper deck” (and by this, O Best Beloved, he meant the Crocodile) “will permanently vitiate your future career.” That is the way all Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snakes always talk. So he pulled, and the Elephant’s Child pulled, and the Crocodile pulled; but the Elephant’s Child and the Bi-Coloured-Python-RockSnake pulled hardest; and at last the Crocodile let go of the Elephant’s Child’s nose with a plop that you could hear all up and down the Limpopo. Then the Elephant’s Child sat down most hard and sudden; but first he was careful to say “Thank you” to the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock142

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Snake; and next he was kind to his poor pulled nose, and wrapped it all up in cool banana leaves, and hung it in the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo to cool. “What are you doing that for?” said the Bi-Coloured-Python-RockSnake. “’Scuse me,” said the Elephant’s Child, “but my nose is badly out of shape, and I am waiting for it to shrink.” “Then you will have to wait for a long time,” said the Bi-ColouredPython-Rock-Snake. “Some people do not know what is good for them.” The Elephant’s Child sat there for three days waiting for his nose to shrink. But it never grew any shorter, and, besides, it made him squint. For, O Best Beloved, you will see and understand that the Crocodile had pulled it out into a really truly trunk same as all Elephants have today. At the end of the third day a fly came and stung him on the shoulder, and before he knew what he was doing he lifted up his trunk and hit that fly dead with the end of it. “‘Vantage number one!” said the Bi-Coloured-Python-RockSnake. “You couldn’t have done that with a mere-smear nose. Try and eat a little now.” Before he thought what he was doing the Elephant’s Child put out his trunk and plucked a large bundle of grass, dusted it clean against his fore-legs, and stuffed it into his own mouth. “‘Vantage number two!” said the Bi-Coloured-Python-RockSnake. “You couldn’t have done that with a mere-smear nose. Don’t you think the sun is very hot here?” “It is,” said the Elephant’s Child, and before he thought what he was doing he schlooped up a schloop of mud from the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo, and slapped it on his head, where it made a cool schloopy-sloshy mud-cap all trickly behind his ears. “’Vantage number three!” said the Bi-Coloured-Python-RockSnake. “You couldn’t have done that with a mere-smear nose. Now how do you feel about being spanked again?” “’Scuse me,” said the Elephant’s Child, “but I should not like it at all.” “How would you like to spank somebody?” said the Bi-ColouredPython-Rock-Snake. 143

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“I should like it very much indeed,” said the Elephant’s Child. “Well,” said the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, “you will find that new nose of yours very useful to spank people with.” “Thank you,” said the Elephant’s Child, “I’ll remember that; and now I think I’ll go home to all my dear families and try.” So the Elephant’s Child went home across Africa frisking and whisking his trunk. When he wanted fruit to eat he pulled fruit down from a tree, instead of waiting for it to fall as he used to. When he wanted grass he plucked grass up from the ground, instead of going on his knees as he used to do. When the flies bit him he broke off the branch of a tree and used it as a fly-whisk; and he made himself a new, cool, slushy-squshy mud-cap whenever the sun was hot. When he felt lonely walking through Africa he sang to himself down his trunk, and the noise was louder than several brass bands. He went especially out of his way to find a broad Hippopotamus (she was no relation of his), and he spanked her very hard, to make sure that the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake had spoken the truth about his new trunk. The rest of the time he picked up the melon rinds that he had dropped on his way to the Limpopo — for he was a Tidy Pachyderm. One dark evening he came back to all his dear families, and he coiled up his trunk and said, “How do you do?” they were very glad to see him, and immediately said, “Come here and be spanked for your ‘satiable curtiosity.” “Pooh,” said the Elephant’s Child. “I don’t think you peoples know anything about spanking; but I do, and I’ll show you.” Then he uncurled his trunk and knocked two of his dear brothers head over heels. “O Bananas!” said they, “where did you learn that trick, and what have you done to your nose?” “I got a new one from the Crocodile on the banks of the grey-green, greasy Limpopo River,” said the Elephant’s Child. “I asked him what he had for dinner, and he gave me this to keep.” “It looks very ugly,” said his hairy uncle, the Baboon. “It does,” said the Elephant’s Child. “But it’s very useful,” and he picked up his hairy uncle, the baboon, by one hairy leg, and hove him into a hornet’s nest. Then that bad Elephant’s Child spanked all his dear families for a long time, till they were very warm and greatly astonished. He pulled 144

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out his tall ostrich aunt’s tail-feathers; and he caught his tall uncle, the Giraffe, by the hind-leg, and dragged him through a thorn-bush; and he shouted at his broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, and blew bubbles into her ear when she was sleeping in the water after meals; but he never let any one touch Kolokolo Bird. At last things grew so exciting that his dear families went off one by one in a hurry to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to borrow new noses from the Crocodile. When they came back nobody spanked anybody any more; and ever since that day, O Best Beloved, all the Elephants you will ever see, besides all those that you won’t, have trunks precisely like the trunk of the ‘satiable Elephant’s Child. I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. I send them over land and sea, I send them east and west; But after they have worked for me, I give them all a rest. I let them rest from nine till five, For I am busy then, As well as breakfast, lunch and tea, For they are hungry men. But different folk hold different views; I know a person small — She keeps ten million serving-men, Who get no rest at all! She sends ‘em abroad on her own affairs, From the second she opens her eyes — One million Hows, two million Wheres, And seven million Whys.

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TEXT 10 Dr. Bob Moorehead The Paradox of Our Time The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees, but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life but not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space, but not inner space. We’ve done larger things, but not better things. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete. Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to 146

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someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side. Remember to give a warm hug to the one next to you because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn’t cost a cent. Remember, to say “I love you” to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak and give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind. TEXT 11 Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things (an extract) Behind the text: Estha and Rahel, eight-year-old twins, are watching the film “The Sound of Music” in the cinema hall in Kerala (India) together with Ammu (their mother) and Baby Kochamma (their grand aunt). They arrived at the Princess Circle lobby. They walked past the Refreshment Counter where the orangedrinks were waiting. And the lemondrinks were waiting. The orange too orange. The lemon too lemon. The chocolates too melty. The Torch Man opened the heavy Princess Circle door into the fan-whirring, peanut-crunching darkness. It smelled of breathing people and hairoil. And old carpets. A magical, Sound of Music smell that Rahel remembered and treasured. Smells, like music, hold memories. She breathed deep, and bottled it up for posterity. Estha had the tickets. Little Man. He lived in a cara-van. Dum dum. The Torch man shone his light on the pink tickets. Row J. Numbers 17, 18, 19, 20. Estha, Rahel, Ammu, Baby Kochamma. They squeezed past irritated people who moved their legs this way and that to make space. The seats of the chairs had to be pulled down. Baby Kochamma held Rahel’s seat down while she climbed on. She wasn’t heavy enough, so the chair folded her into itself like sandwich stuffing, and she watched from between her knees. Two knees and a fountain. Estha, with more dignity than that, sat on the edge of his chair. The shadows of the fan were on the sides of the screen where the picture wasn’t. 147

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Off with the torch. On with the World Hit. The camera soared up in the skyblue (car-coloured) Austrian sky with the clear, sad sound of church bells. Far below, on the ground, in the courtyard of the abbey, the cobblestones were shining. Nuns walked across it. Like slow cigars. Quiet nuns clustered quietly around their Reverend Mother, who never read their letters. They gathered like ants around a crumb of toast. Cigars around a Queen Cigar. No hair on their knees. No melons in their blouses. And their breath like peppermint. They had complaints to make to their Reverend Mother. Sweetsinging complaints. About Julie Andrews, who was still up in the hills, singing The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music and was, once again, late for mass. She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee the nuns sneaked musically. Her dress has got a tear. She waltzes on her way to Mass And whistles on the stair… People in the audience were turning around. ‘Shhh!’ they said. Shhh! Shhh! Shhh! And underneath her wimple She has curlers in her hair! There was a voice from outside the picture. It was clear and true, cutting through the fan-whirring, peanut-crunching darkness. There was a nun in the audience. Heads twisted around like bottle caps. Black-haired backs of heads became faces with mouths and moustaches. Hissing mouths with teeth like sharks. Many of them. Like stickers on a card. ‘Shhh!’ they said together. It was Estha who was singing. A nun with a puff. An Elvis Pelvis Nun. He couldn’t help it. ‘Get him out of here!’ the Audience said, when they found him. Shutup or Getout. Getout or Shutup. The Audience was a Big Man. Estha was a Little Man, with the tickets. ‘Estha, for heaven’s sake, shut UP!’ Ammu’s fierce whisper said. 148

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So Estha shut UP. The mouths and moustaches turned away. But then, without warning, the song came back, and Estha couldn’t stop it. ‘Ammu, can I go and sing it outside?’ Estha said (before Ammu smacked him). ‘I’ll come back after the song.’ ‘But don’t expect me to bring you out again,’ Ammu said. ‘You’re embarrassing all of us.’ But Estha couldn’t help it. He got up to go. Past angry Ammu. Past Rahel concentrating on her knees. Past Baby Kochamma. Past the Audience that had to move its legs again. Thiswayandthatway. The red sign over the door said EXIT in a red light. Estha EXITed. In the lobby, the orangedrinks were waiting. The lemondrinks were waiting. The melty chocolates were waiting. The electric blue foamleather car-sofas were waiting. The Coming Soon! posters were waiting. Estha Alone sat on the electric blue foamleather car-sofa, in the Abhilash Talkies Princess Circle lobby, and sang. In a nun’s voice, as clear as clean water. But how do you make her stay And listen to all you say? The man behind the Refreshments Counter, who’d been asleep on a row of stools, waiting for the interval, woke up. He saw, with glummy eyes, Estha Alone in his beige and pointed shoes. And his spoiled puff. The Man wiped his marble counter with a dirtcoloured rag. And he waited. And waiting he wiped. And wiping he waited. And watched Estha sing. How do you keep a wave upon the sand? Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maree…yah? TEXT 12 Anita Shreve All He Ever Wanted (an extract) The fire began in the kitchen and spread to the hotel dining room. Without warning, or perhaps just the one muffled cry of alarm, a ball of fire (yes, actually a ball) rolled through the arched and shuttered doorway from the kitchen, a sphere of moving fire so remarkable, it was as though it had life and menace, when, of course, it was simply a fact of 149

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science or of nature and not of God. For a moment, I felt paralyzed, and I remember in the greatest detail the way the flame climbed the long vermillion drapes with a squirrel’s speed and agility and how the fire actually leapt from valance to valance, disintegrating the fabric and causing it to fall as pieces of ash onto the diners below. It was nearly impossible to witness such an event and not think that a cataclysm had been visited upon the diners for their sins, past or future. If the fact of the fire did not immediately penetrate my consciousness, the heat of the blast did and soon propelled me from my seat. All around me, there was a confusion of upended tables, overturned chairs, bodies pitched toward the door of the dining room, and the sounds of broken glass and crockery. Fortunately, the windows toward the street, large windows through which a body might pass, had been thrown open by an enterprising diner. I remember that I rolled sideways through one of the window frames and fell onto the snow and was immediately aware that I should move aside to allow others to land as I had — and it was in that moment that my altruism was finally triggered. I rose to my feet and began to assist those who had sustained cuts and bruises and broken bones, or who had been mildly crushed in the chaos. The blaze lit up the escaped diners with a light greater than any other that could be produced in the night, so that I was able to see clearly the dazed expressions of those near to me. Many people were coughing, and some were crying, and all looked as though they had been struck by a blow to the head. A few men attempted heroics and tried to go back into the hotel to save those who remained behind, and I think one student did actually rescue an elderly woman who had succumbed to paralysis beside the buffet table; but generally there was no thought of re-entering the burning building once one had escaped. Indeed, so great was the heat that we in the crowd had to move farther and farther across the street until we all stood in the college quadrangle, surrounded by bare oaks and elms and stately sycamores. TEXT 13 Arturo Vivante Can-Can “I’m going to go for a drive”, he said to his wife. “I’ll be back in an hour or two.” He didn’t often leave the house for more than the few minutes it took him to go to the post office or to a store, but spent his time hang150

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ing around, doing odds jobs — Mr. Fix-it, his wife called him — and also, though not nearly enough of it, painting — which he made his living from. “All right,” his wife said brightly, as though he were doing her a favour. As a matter of fact, she didn’t really like him to leave; she felt safer with him at home; and he helped look after the children, especially the baby. “You’re glad to be rid of me, aren’t you?” he said. “Uh-huh,” she said with a smile that suddenly made her look very pretty — someone to be missed. She didn’t ask him where he was going for his drive. She wasn’t the least bit inquisitive, though jealous she was in silent, subtle ways. As he put his coat on, he watched her. She was in the living room with their elder daughter. “Do the can-can, mother,” the child said, at which she held up her skirt and did the can-can, kicking her legs up high in his direction. He wasn’t simply going out for a drive, as he had said, but going to a café, to meet Sarah, whom his wife knew but did not suspect, and with her go to a house on a lake his wife knew nothing about — a summer cottage to which he had the key. “Well, goodbye,” he said. “Bye,” she called back, still dancing. This wasn’t the way a husband expected his wife — whom he was about to leave at home to go to another woman — to behave at all, he thought. He expected her to be sewing or washing, not doing the can-can, for God’s sake. Yes, doing something uninteresting and unattractive, like darning children’s clothes. She had no stockings on, no shoes, and her legs looked very white and smooth, secret, as though he had never touched them or come near them. Her feet, swinging up and down high in the air, seemed to be nodding to him. She held her skirt bunched up, attractively. Why was she doing that of all times now? He lingered. Her eyes had mockery in them, and she laughed. The child laughed with her as she danced. She was still dancing as he left the house. He thought of the difficulties he had had arranging this rendezvouz — going out to a call box; phoning Sarah at her office (she was married, too); her being out; his calling her again; the busy signal; the coin falling out of sight; his opening the door of the phone box in order 151

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to retrieve it; at last getting her on the line; her asking him to call again next week; finally setting a date. Waiting for her at the café, he surprised himself hoping that she wouldn’t come. The appointment was at three. It was now ten past. Well, she was often late. He looked at the clock, and at the picture window for her car. A car like hers, and yet not hers — no luggage rack on it. The smooth hardtop gave him a peculiar pleasure. Why? It was 3.15 now. Perhaps she wouldn’t come. No, if she was going to come at all, this was the most likely time for her to arrive. Twenty past. Ah, now there was some hope. Hope? How strange he should be hoping for her absence. Why had he made the appointment if he was hoping she would miss it? He didn’t know why, but simpler, simpler if she didn’t come. Because all he wanted now was to smoke that cigarette, drink that cup of coffee for the sake of them, and not to give himself something to do. And he wished he could go for a drive, free and easy, as he had said he would. But he waited, and at 3.30 she arrived. “I had almost given up hope,” he said. They drove to the house on the lake. As he held her in his arms he couldn’t think of her; for the life of him he couldn’t. “What are you thinking about?” she said afterwards, sensing his detachment. For a moment he didn’t answer, then he said, “You really want to know what I was thinking of?” “Yes,” she said, a little anxiously. He suppressed a laugh, as though what he was going to tell her was too absurd or silly. “I was thinking of someone doing the can-can.” “Oh,” she said, reassured. “For a moment I was afraid you were thinking of your wife.” Text 14 Elizabeth Wong A Cultural Divorce It’s still there, the Chinese school on Yale street where my brother and I used to go. Despite the new coat of paint and the high wire fence, the school I knew 10 years ago remains remarkably, stoically the same. Every day at 5 p.m., instead of playing with our fourth- and fifthgrade friends or sneaking out to the empty lot to hunt ghosts and animal bones, my brother and I had to go to Chinese school. No amount 152

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of kicking, screaming, or pleading could dissuade my mother, who was solidly determined to have us learn the language of our heritage. Forcibly, she walked us the seven long, hilly blocks from our home to school, depositing our defiant tearful faces before the stern principal. My only memory of him is that he swayed on his heels like a palm tree, and he always clasped his impatient twitching hands behind his back. I recognized him as a repressed maniacal child killer, and knew that if we ever saw his hands we’d be in big trouble. We all sat in little chairs in an empty auditorium. The room smelled like Chinese medicine, an imported faraway mustiness. Like ancient mothballs or dirty closets. I hated that smell. I favored crisp new scents. Like the soft French perfume that my American teacher wore in public school. There was a stage far to the right, flanked by an American flag and the flag of the Nationalist Republic of China, which was also red, white and blue but not as pretty. Although the emphasis at the school was mainly language — speaking, reading, writing — the lessons always began with an exercise in politeness. With the entrance of the teacher, the best student would tap a bell and everyone would get up, kowtow, and chant, “Sing san ho,” the phonetic for “How are you, teacher?” Being ten years old, I had better things to learn than ideographs copied painstakingly in lines that ran right to left from the tip of a moc but, a real ink pen that had to be held in an awkward way if blotches were to be avoided. After all, I could do the multiplication tables, name the satellites of mars, and write reports on “Little Women” and “Black Beauty”. Nancy Drew, my favorite book heroine, never spoke Chinese. The language was a source of embarrassment. More times than not, I had tried to disassociate myself from the nagging loud voice that followed me wherever I wandered in the nearby American supermarket outside Chinatown. The voice belonged to my grandmother, a fragile woman in her seventies who could outshout the best of the street vendors. Her humor was raunchy, her Chinese rhythmless, patternless. It was quick, it was loud, it was unbeautiful. It was not like the quiet, lilting romance of French or the gentle refinement of the American South. Chinese sounded pedestrian. Public. In Chinatown, the comings and goings of hundreds of Chinese on their daily tasks sounded chaotic and frenzied. I did not want to be thought of as mad, as talking gibberish. When I spoke English, peo153

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ple nodded at me, smiled sweetly, said encouraging words. Even the people in my culture would cluck and say that I’d do well in life. “My, doesn’t she move her lips fast,” they would say, meaning that I’d be able to keep up with the world outside Chinatown. My brother was even more fanatical than I about speaking English. He was especially hard on my mother, criticizing her, often cruelly, for her pidgin speech — smatterings of Chinese scattered like chop suey in her conversation. “It’s not ‘What it is’, Mom,” he’d say in exasperation. “It’s ‘What is it, what is it, what is it!’” Sometimes Mom might leave out an occasional “the” or “a,” or perhaps a verb of being. He would stop her in midsentence: “Say it again, Mom. Say it right.” When he tripped over his own tongue, he’d blame it on her: “See, Mom, it’s all your fault. You set a bad example.” What infuriated my mother most was when my brother cornered her on her consonants, especially “r”. My father had played a cruel joke on Mom by assigning her an American name that her tongue wouldn’t allow her to say. No matter how hard she tried , “Ruth” always ended up “Luth” or “Roof”. After two years of writing with a moc but and reciting words with multiples of meanings, I finally was granted a cultural divorce. I was permitted to stop Chinese school. I thought of myself as multicultural. I preferred tacos to egg rolls; I enjoyed Cinco de Mayo more than Chinese New Year. At last, I was one of you; I wasn’t one of them. Sadly, I still am. (Note: Cinco de Mayo — May 5th, a holiday celebrating the defeat of French Troops in Mexico at the Battle of Puebla, 1862)

Poetic Corner Oscar Wilde Symphony in Yellow An omnibus across the bridge Crawls like a yellow butterfly, And, here and there, a passer-by Shows like a little restless midge. 154

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Big barges full of yellow hay Are moved again the shadowy wharf, And, like a yellow silken scarf, The thick fog hangs along the quay. The yellow leaves begin to fade And flutter from the Temple elms, And at my feet the pale green Thames Lies like a rod of rippled jade. John Updike October The month is amber, Gold and brown. Blue ghosts of smoke Float through the town. Great V-s of geese Honk overhead, And maple trees Are fiery red. Frost bites the lawn, The stars are slits In black cat’s eyes Before she spits. At last small witches, Goblins, hags, And pirates armed With paper bags Their costumes hinged On safety pins, Go haunt a night Of pumpkin grins.

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Eleanor Farjeon November Here’s November, The year’s sad daughter, A loverless maid A lamb for the slaughter, An empty mirror, A sunless morn, A withered wreath, A husk of the corn, A night that falls Without a tomorrow, Here’s November, The month of sorrow.

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Part 3 In the World of Books Assignment 1: What is Text Interpretation? Lead-in Are the words ‘text’ and ‘textile’ relatives? What is text? The very definition of ‘text’ has always been a debatable issue among scholars, as it can be studied from different viewpoints and perspectives. Consider the following definitions and express your opinion on each of them. Choose one statement which you find most adequate. 1. A text is a coherent, complete unit of speech or writing 2. A text is a sequence of signs (broadly speaking, dances and rituals can also be understood as sequences of signs) 3. A text is a self-contained unit of discourse which has a definable linguistic identity 4. A text is a sequence of sentences semantically and structurally linked 5. A text is a coherent whole which is distinguished by its structural, semantic, compositional and functional unity and which is characterised by a certain set of text categories Feel free to offer your own definition:

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What in your opinion are aims and goals of text interpretation? Discuss your ideas with groupmates. Text constitutes the middle element of the communicative act, which may be presented in the following way: Sender

Text

Receiver

Comment on a more complicated scheme of the communicative act. Language

Author

Text

Reader

Reality Would you like to add some more elements to this scheme?

Assignment 2: Fact or Fancy? Read the article and discuss it with your groupmates. Which viewpoint do you share? Never mind academia, to understand the world read a novel

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By Stephen Adams Arts Correspondent Best-selling novels such as The Kite Runner and The White Tiger can provide a better understanding of world issues than academic reports, according to a study. Fiction, including poetry, should be taken just as seriously as factsbased research when seeking an insight into issues such as migration and poverty, say a team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics (LSE). Novels should be required reading because fiction “does not compromise on complexity, politics or readability in the way that academic literature sometimes does,” said Dr Dennis Rodgers of Manchester University’s Brooks World Poverty Institute. He added: “Despite the regular flow of academic studies, expert reports, and policy position papers, it is arguably novelists who do as good a job — if not a better one — of representing and communicating the realities of international development. “While fiction may not always show a set of presentable research findings, it does not compromise on complexity, politics or readability in the way that academic literature sometimes does. “And fiction often reaches a much larger and diverse audience than academic work and may therefore be more influential in shaping public knowledge and understanding of development issues.” Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner “has arguably done more to educate Western readers about the realities of daily life in Afghanistan under the Taliban and thereafter than any government media campaign, advocacy organization report, or social science research”, says the report. It also praises the winner of this year’s man Booker Prize, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, for its “passionate depiction of the perils and pitfalls of rampant capitalism in contemporary India.” The novel “deftly highlights the social injustice and moral corruption that underpin the country’s apparently miraculous economic development during the past decade,” it says. Brick Lane by the Bangladesh-born British author Monica Ali, which deals with a young, non English-speaking woman coming to London, has arguably “contributed to wider public understandings of 159

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global development issues in ways that no academic writing ever has,” it concludes. Tom Clougherty, the policy director of the Adam Smith Institute, the free market think tank, accepted that fiction was “a useful tool in aiding people’s understanding, sparking their interest, and humanizing issues.” But he added: “There’s a problem. Fiction works by appealing to people’s emotions, not their intellect or rationality.” He said that issues such as poverty and international development were “emotionally charged” and novels often failed to take into account hard, unpalatable facts. “Years of aid won’t sort out fundamental problems,” he said. “Fiction absolutely can’t replace factual, evidence-based analysis.” (The Daily Telegraph, November 7th, 2008)

Assignment 3: What’s in a Book? Match the words denoting parts of a book with the definitions. a) acknowledgments b) bibliography c) blurb d) footnote e) foreword f) introduction g) preface 1. A short piece of writing at the beginning of a book that introduces the book or its writer. Usually is written by someone who is not the author of the book. 2. A short piece of writing at the beginning or end of the book in which the writer thanks all the people who have helped him or her. 3. A written explanation at the beginning of a book. 4. An introduction at the beginning of a book, which usually explains what the book is about or why it was written. 5. A note at the bottom of a page in a book which gives more information about something on that page. 160

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6. A list of all the books and articled used in preparing a piece of writing. 7. A short description by the publisher of the contents of the book, printed on its paper cover or in advertisements. Match the words denoting genres and kinds of books with their definitions. a) b) c) d) e) f) g) h) i) j) k) l) m) n) o) p) q) r) s) t)

anthology atlas autobiography biography cookery book detective story encyclopedia fairy tale fantasy guidebook hardback historical novel manual memoirs paperback romance science fiction textbook thriller travelogue

1. a book used a s a standard source of information on a particular subject 2. a book with covers made of flexible card, sold relatively cheaply 3. a collection of literary fragments or works, especially poems, by various authors 4. a genre of fiction that deals with crimes 5. a record of the experiences of an author touring a place 6. a book containing recipes and instructions for preparing food 161

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7. a book which tells a story set in the past and often contains actual persons and events 8. a book containing articles on various topics arranged in the alphabetical order 9. an account of a person’s life written by that person 10. a collection of maps 11. a book which tells an exciting story in an atmosphere of suspense 12. a genre of fiction dealing with space travel, aliens, and parallel universes 13. an account of a person’s life written by another person 14. a book bound in cloth, leather, or over stiff material 15. a story about fairies and other mythical or magical beings, especially one told to children 16. a book which instructs you how to do something 17. a handbook with information for visitors to a place 18. a genre of fiction that uses magic and other supernatural phenomena and is set in imaginary worlds 19. a novel which deals mainly with relationship and love and usually has a happy ending 20. a collection of reminiscences written from personal experience Give your own examples of 1. historical fiction: 2. romance: 3. science fiction: 4. fantasy: 5. detective fiction: 6. folk fairy tale: 7. literary fairy tale: 162

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Add the names of genres which have not been mentioned and offer their definitions.

Assignment 4: Timeless Classics Read the article and discuss it with your groupmates. We’re a nation of book bluffers If you’ve never quite managed to finish Pride And Prejudice or Jane Eyre, you’re not alone. Some 71 per cent of us claim we’ve read classics in an attempt to seem more cultured, according to a study by Lindeman’s Wine and Book Club. Most ‘book bluffers’ said they lied about their reading because they did not want to appear stupid. More men were fibbers, with 23 per cent saying they had lied to impress a female, while women said they feared friends’ and colleagues’ judgement. Books that had been made into films or TV series were the most lied about as people at least knew the plot. The top five books people claimed to have read were: Pride And Prejudice, The Lord Of The Rings, Jane Eyre, Tess Of The d’Urbbervilles and The Hobbit. (published in Daily Mail, 10 May 2012) Consider the following questions. 1. Are these titles familiar to you? Have you read any of these books? (give an honest answer!) 2. Are Russians book bluffers? Why (not)? Comment on the phrase: A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. (M. Twain) 163

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Make up your own lists of classical must-read books. Russian classics 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. English classics 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. World classics 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Assignment 5: Book Idioms Match the idioms with their definitions. a) b) c) d) e) f) g) h) i) j) 164

to turn over a new leaf to read someone like a book to read between the lines you can’t tell a book by its cover to go by the book to leaf through to hit the books to throw the book at someone to bring someone to book one for the books

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1. to see what is really meant by what is written or said 2. you can’t tell what a person or thing is like from its outward appearance 3. to forget the past and start again with the intention of doing better 4. to understand someone very well 5. a record-breaking act 6. to charge someone with as many crimes as possible 7. to act according to the rules 8. to begin to study (Am.) 9. to look through a book, magazine or newspaper without reading it carefully 10. to make someone answer for his misdeeds Complete the sentences with these idioms. 1. We must … these criminals …; they deserve severe punishment. 2. When Sally comes to my office, it is always to ask for money. Now matter how carefully she leads up to the subject, I can …..her ….. . 3. Edward would have been happier in the Civil Service than in business. Whatever the circumstances, he always …. . 4. I didn’t want to keep making those same mistakes, so I decided to … . Now everything is better. 5. Don’t believe everything you hear; you have to … . 6. Why don’t you just …….this book to see whether you want to buy it? 7. I’ve never seen it done so fast. That’s …. ! 8. We thought he’d get off with a lighter sentence, but they really … him. 9. If you want to pass that test tomorrow, you’d better … tonight. 10. He looks like he’d be able to do the job, but I’m not sure: …. .

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Assignment 6: Talking about Books Match the nouns with the adjectives 1. deep 2. descriptive 3. detached 4. flat 5. (to be written in) a humorous 6. indirect 7. psychological 8. retrospective 9. slow moving 10. surprise 11. sustained 12. symbolic 13. tense 14. third person 15. vivid

a) essay b) character c) narration d) narrator e) presentation of events f) atmosphere g) detail h) vein i) imagery j) action k) conflict l) ending m) characterization n) insight into the character o) metaphor

Match the verbs with the appropriate endings 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 166

to add to achieve to be related to create to comment to contribute to convey to describe to draw to employ to keep to leave to present / depict to reveal to sympathize

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a) with much detail b) it for the reader to judge c) a dramatic flavour to the story d) the narrator’s attitude e) genuine imagery f) the reader in suspense g) with the character h) on the character’s actions i) a character from within / without j) a realistic background k) to the general mood of the story l) to the message of the story m) a striking effect n) the conflict o) the character Complete the sentences suggesting as many variants as possible. Do not forget about the necessary prepositions. 1. (События разворачиваются) in the suburbs of London in the twenties. 2. (Действие происходит) in the present-day America. 3. The incident (представлен) the eyes of the main character. 4. The fragment (изобилует) syntactical devices. 5. The choice of words (подчеркивает) the narrator’s attitude towards the things he describes. 6. The reader’s attention (привлечено) personality of the main character and his emotions. 7. (Чтобы описать) the character’s agitation and nervousness, the author (прибегает к) the metaphor. 8. The author (наделяет) his character with qualities typical of a child. 9. Parallel structures help (создавать) rhythm. 10. (Чтобы достичь) an ironical effect, the author (использует) words with negative connotations. 11. In the story the author (развивает) a social idea of parents’ responsibility. 167

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12. The colourful simile (подчеркивает) the unfavourable perception of the character. Study the following words to describe stories or books that make you feel strong emotions and add your own variants to the list. poignant hilarious touching powerful gripping inspiring

amusing compelling fascinating intriguing entertaining heart-warming

chilling disturbing scary shocking horrific bizarre

A blurb — a short summary published on the jackets of books, usually of a promotional character — can serve a good source of emotionally coloured expressions overcharged with positive evaluation: Intelligent, joyous and extremely funny Absolutely gripping, insightful and very sad A page-turner of the highest order Copy down at least 5 blurbs of the books you have at hand and make up your own blurb following their typical pattern.

Make up your own list of words to describe books you did not enjoy reading and share it with your groupmates. Put down the best variants in the box.

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Assignment 7: People about Books Discuss the following quotations with your groupmates. – – – – – – –

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket (Chinese proverb) You know you’ve read a good book if you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend (Paul Sweeney) “Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are” is true enough but I’d know you better if you told me what you reread (Francois Mauriac) It is the good reader that makes the good book (Ralph Waldo Emerson) I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget (William Phelps) The author writes one half of the book, the other half is written by the reader (Joseph Conrad) A novel is a machine for generating interpretations (Umberto Eco)

Read the poem written by an unknown author. What ideas would you like to add to this piece of poetry? I’ve traveled the world twice over, Met the famous; saints and sinners, Poets and artists, kings and queens, Old stars and hopeful beginners, I’ve been where no-one’s been before, Learned secrets from writers and cooks All with one library ticket To the wonderful world of books. Guy de Maupassant once said that readers are divided into various groups, each saying to the writer: “Comfort me” “Amuse me” “Touch me” “Make me dream” “Make me laugh” 169

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“Make me shudder” “Make me weep” “Make me think”. And where is your place?

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SOURCES REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING

1. Антрушина Г. Б. Пособие для чтения на английском языке. — М.: Издательство «Международные отношения», 1975. 2. Арнольд И. В. Стилистика. Современный английский язык: Учебник для вузов. — 8-е изд. — М.: Флинта: Наука, 2006. 3. Бабенко Л. Г. Филологический анализ текста. Основы теории, принципы и аспекты анализа: Учебник для вузов. — М.: Академический проспект, 2004. 4. Гальперин И. Р. Стилистика английского языка: Учебник (на английском языке). — 3-е изд. — М.: Книжный дом «ЛИБРОКОМ», — 2010. 5. Гвишиани Н. Б. Современный английский язык: Лексикология. — М.: Изд-во МГУ, 2000. 6. Гуревич В. В. English Stylistics. Стилистика английского языка: Учеб. пособие. — 5-е изд. — М.: Флинта: Наука, 2011. 7. Знаменская Т. А. Стилистика английского языка. Основы курса: Учебное пособие. — 3-е изд., испр. — М.: Едиториал УРСС, 2005. 8. Кухаренко В. А. Практикум по стилистике английского языка: Учеб. пособие. — 5-е изд. — М.: Флинта: Наука, 2011. 9. Леонова А. И., Колосов С. А. Practice in Stylistic Analysis and Interpretation: Учеб.-метод. пособие. — Тверь: Твер. гос. ун-т, 2005. 10. Новикова И. А., Петрова Н. Ю., Давиденко Т. Г. Практикум к курсу английского языка под редакцией В. Д. Аракина: 4 курс. — М.:Гуманит. Изд. Центр ВЛАДОС, 2003. 11. Скибо В. Н. Практический курс по интерпретации текста (английский язык). — М.: МГЛУ, 2004. 12. Скребнев Ю. М. Основы стилистики английского языка: Учебник. — 2-е изд., испр. — М.: ООО «Издательство Астрель», 2003. 171

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13. Солганик Г. Я. Стилистика текста: Учеб. пособие. — 5-е изд. — М.: Флинта: Наука, 2003. 14. Сошальская Е. Г., Прохорова В. И. Stylistic Analysis: Учеб. пособие. — М.: Высшая школа, 1976. 15. Шишкина Т. Н., Леденева Т. В., Юрченко М. А. What is the English We Read. Универсальная хрестоматия текстов на английском языке. — М.: ТК Велби, Изд-во Проспект, 2006.

COPYRIGHTS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Antico, John, Hazerligg, M. K. Insight through Fiction: Dealing Effectively with the Short Story. — California: Cummings Publishing Company, 1970. Clarke, David. The Language of Literature. — Edinburgh: Holmes McDougall, 1979. Eleven Plus: Topics for Text Skills. — Berlin: Cornelsen Verlag, 1986. Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. — Cambridge, 1927 Griffith, Kelley. Writing Essays about Literature. A Guide and Style Sheet. — 5th edition. — Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998. Lodge, David. The Art of Fiction. — London: Vintage Books, 2011. Macmillan Literature Guide for Russia. — Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2005. Maley, Alan. Short and Sweet: Short texts and how to use them. — Penguin Books, 1993. Marcus, Sybil. A World of Fiction: Twenty Timeless Short Stories. — Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995. Munsell, Paul, Clough, Martha. A Practical Guide for Advanced Writers in English as a Second language. — Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984 Skwire, David, Skwire, Sarah E. Writing with a Thesis: A Rhetoric and Reader. — 7th edition — Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998. Welty, Eudora. Place in Fiction // Collected essays. — New York, 1994.

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LIST OF AUTHORS WHOSE TEXTS WERE USED IN EXERCISES

Ahern, Cecilia Archer, Jeffrey Armstrong, Neil Asimov, Isaac Austen, Jane Bach, Richard Banks, Iain Braine, John Brooks, Walter Bukowski, Charles Burns, Robert Cisneros, Sandra Chesterton, Gilbert Chandler, Raymond Christie, Agatha Churchill, Winston Coe, Jonathan Cushing, Richard Cushman, Phil Davis, Lydia Dickens, Charles Dryden, John Dylan, Bob Éclair, Jenny Eco, Umberto

Edwards, Kim Evans, Lissa Faulkner, William Farjeon, Eleanor Fleming, Ian Frayn, Michael Fry, Stephen Galsworthy, John Gilbert, Elizabeth Goethe, Johann Groom, Winston Hemingway, Ernest Henry, O. Heym, Stefan Holmes, Rupert Hornby, Nick Jerome, Jerome K. Kaufman, Bel Keyes, Marian Kipling, Rudyard La Guma, Alex Le Carre, John Lodge, David Longfellow, Henry 173

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Mayes, Frances Mansfield, Katherine Maugham, William Somerset McCourt, Frank Milne, Alan Alexander Mitchell, David Moorehead, Bob Murdoch, Iris Nabokov, Vladimir Obama, Barack Peale, Norman Vincent Pessl, Marisha Petry, Ann Phelps, William Pile, Stephen Roth, Philip Rowling, Joanne Roy, Arundhati Salinger, Jerome Shakespeare, William Shaw, Bernard Shreve, Anita Simon, Roger Steinbeck, John Stout, Rex Thatcher, Margaret Tolkien, John Trollope, Joanna Twain, Mark Updike, John 174

Vivante, Arturo Walpole, Hugh Ward, William Waugh, Evelyn Weldon, Fay Wilde, Oscar Williams, Greg Wodehouse, Pelham Grenville Wong, Elizabeth

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Getting Prepared for the Exam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 A Winning beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Block 1 ‘Fiction vs. Non-fiction’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Block 2 ‘Theme and Topic. Meaning and Message’. . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Block 3 ‘Text Types’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Block 4 ‘Point of View’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Block 5 ‘Character and Characterization’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Block 6 ‘Architecture of the Text’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Block 7 ‘Stylistic Devices’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Block 8 ‘Atmosphere and Style’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Supplement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Part 1 Texts for Guided Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Part 2 Texts for Independent Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Part 3 In the World of Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

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Степанова Светлана Юрьевна

СОВЕРШЕНСТВУЙТЕ НАВЫКИ РАБОТЫ С ТЕКСТОМ: ГОТОВИМСЯ К ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОМУ ЭКЗАМЕНУ BRUSH UP YOUR TEXT SKILLS: GETTING PREPARED FOR THE STATE EXAM Учебно-методическое пособие

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