LIRE
ECRIRE
COMPRENDRE
II
Commentary
Département d’Études des Pays Anglophones
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. METHODOLOGY – REMINDERS AND BASIC TOOLS
A literary approach to reading strategies
Analytical commentary
Point of view and Narrative technique
Vocabulary
Useful expressions
Bibliography
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II. TEXTS
Bret Easton ELLIS, American Psycho
J. M. COETZEE, Disgrace
Hanif KUREISHI, The Buddha of Suburbia
Raymond Carver, “Popular Mechanics”
Harold PINTER, Ashes to Ashes
D. H. LAWRENCE, Women in Love
James JOYCE, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joseph CONRAD, Nostromo
Salman RUSHDIE, Shalimar the Clown
David JOSEPH, “Sun in an Empty Room”
William SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 135
Kate CHOPIN, “The Story of an Hour”
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I.
METHODOLOGY
REMINDERS AND BASIC TOOLS
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A LITERARY APPROACH TO READING STRATEGIES
We are not only reading a text here but also reading in view of producing a commentary. Thus a
logical aim – to establish the nature, structure and function of a text – does not appear in that
order but is starred (Barthes speaks of “texte étoilé”) through the writing. It is said that the text is
plural. The general meaning is not presented once and for all in a literary text, but it is
disseminated through different rhetorical devices (figures of speech, general style) which yield
meanings (polysemy).
Yet, our objective is to reconstitute a general meaning of the text and to show how this meaning
has been produced. It is clear that, in the process, we probably “flatten” the text and “reduce” its
beauty and significance. However we will need to provide information when we speak/write about
the text. The quality and order of our writing then will depend on our capacity to re-compose the
text in order to make its meaning clear to other readers.
=> The choice of tone and style always corresponds exactly to the subject chosen.
As a starting point let us distinguish three main steps in reading:
1) Superficial and intuitive first reading(s) generally provide a sense of what the text is about
(general subject).
2) It is only around the second reading(s) that we will be able to pay attention to the structure of
the text (detailed analysis)
3) The third reading(s) provide(s) tools for interpretation.
In order to get a good idea of the different phases involved in the reading process see Vincent
JOUVE, La Lecture, Paris, Hachette, 1993.
SUGGESTED METHOD:
The following are mostly practical tools drawn from the structuralist theory but you can make up
your own method as you go on.
One basic approach is to refuse identification with the characters or the voice in the text and to be
able to observe critically what is said and how it is said.
Context: It is advisable to know who the author is and when the text was published. Yet, while it is
essential for most documents, literary analysis (unless it is integrated in a sociological context) is
generally not primarily concerned with that.
Title: A careful study of the title: after the first reading it becomes evident that the adequacy of the
title to the meaning is important. Is it a metaphor? Is it a question? Does it just sum up the content?
Observe the narrative voice and focusing. (See List of useful literary terms)
IT SEEMS RELEVANT TO ASK ONESELF:
• Who is speaking? Keep in mind that the author is not necessarily the narrator. She or he is the
person in charge of telling the story (narration) or simply the agent of enunciation (“utterer”) Are
we dealing with a “neutral voice”, an “involved speaker”?
• Where is the voice in this text coming from? (point of view, focusing)
Without going into the details of literary theory it is always interesting to establish the place from
which the argument or the description is produced.
• Who is this text addressed to? (the target ) Audience and reception are important. Do not
forget that the author addresses himself or herself to a certain audience and that you will have to
do the same when you write.
• What does the general structure correspond to?
Observation according to a division into paragraphs might be useful: just give each a number so that
you may be able to refer to each later on. Pay attention to topic sentences and transitions.
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A rigorous comparison of the beginning and the end of the text (“tracing paper”) is a source of
learning. Proceed as you would with tracing paper by superimposing the beginning (incipit) and
the end and comparing them. Once you have done this you will be able to make the necessary
observations about:
ƒ Narration: Is the narrator at the end of the text the same person? Has he or she changed?
ƒ Time: Watch the verbs tenses and forms. Is there an opening onto the future or, on the contrary, is
there a regressive or reflexive ending (same)?
ƒ Resolution: Has the enigma been resolved (the hermeneutics been completed), the conflict been
solved etc.?
• What is recurrent in the text?
Although it is difficult to present at this stage a detailed account of the nature or type of the text,
there are, in the form and the immediately observable typographical features, elements which
inform you. It is easy, for instance, to differentiate between a poem and a short story. There are,
however, poetical short stories. This we will be able to determine only after careful analysis of the
structure. At first, we notice the recurrence of verses, rhymes etc. In general, literary interpretation
is best founded on recurrence. Some elements to take into consideration are:
ƒ Verbs: are they in the active or passive voice? A text in the passive voice tends to deal more
with psychology, thought, philosophy. One using active verbs describes events, facts, and
action.
ƒ Symbols, images, metaphors, metonymy (see List of Useful literary terms) are important to
decipher in a literary text. The repetition of the same image or motif is a clue for our analysis.
ƒ Tone: irony is suggested when, several times in an argumentative text, the dominant structure
is generally that of binary oppositions (“pro” and “cons”) belong to the essay. The obvious
aim being to subtly win the reader’s confidence (trust) and to convince him/her. In the didactic
text the dominant structure consists in “teaching a lesson” either through quotations of famous
texts (Bible) or through exemplary models given as illustrations.
Some questions about tone will help us establish the link between author and reader, between our
reading and our writing. According to what we observe we may determine the intended effect
upon the reader. While reading, we have expectations. A writer knows the effect he/she wants to
project. The problem is to evaluate whether or not our expectations are answered, subverted or
negated. For instance, we may enter a text thinking that is a credible narration since the story
seems to be told by a trustworthy narrator (neutral tone, scientific observation, and coherent level
of perception). Yet, progressively the tale slips into fantasy. The writer has lured us. Our
expectations (of pseudo scientific knowledge) are not met.
Similarly any text can be said to present itself to the reader with a “program” to be decoded. This
encoding, by the writer and “decoding”, by the reader, is part of our observation. The effect, the
function of the text can be derived from this!
In conclusion, after a serious reading we have some tools to communicate what we believe to be
the nature, structure and function of the text. It will be our task to reorganize our notes in order to
make this clear to the reader of our commentary.
To sum up the following observations could be used for almost any text:
• Looking closely at a topic sentence or at the recurrent phrases, symbols or connoted meanings
helps us determine the subject.
• Noticing the typographical presentation, the general format gives indication of the nature
(poetry, prose, newspaper article, etc.).
• The context (references, names, dates) adds to this information
• Following the unraveling of the text (beginning-end, progression in rhythm, in argumentation,
in thought) means deciphering the structure.
• Analyzing the author-reader relationship will enable us to comment on the intent/effect and
function.
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ANALYTICAL COMMENTARY
Analysing a text means to examine the elements which compose it, unveil its meaning, its
significance and impact. Reading (three readings) is the key step in this exercise. One must be
careful to avoid two major problems:
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•
Always reformulate the text to be analysed in order to maintain a certain distance from the text.
Never re-tell the ‘story’.
Never digress too far from the text to be analysed; the appropriate critical distance must be found.
Never forget that a literary work as well as any form of art is an object of creation. A critical
distance is therefore an essential tool for understanding. Never confuse an author’s creation with
completely real situations, real people with real motivations, or real places which are possibly
chosen by the author.
In analysing a text or other work of art, the manner that is used to express an idea is essential. A
stylistic analysis relies on a careful observation of the words, the language chosen to express a
thought or emotion. The thoughts or emotions are of course important in themselves, but it is
especially HOW they are said that counts in an analysis of this kind.
I. THE PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS—LINEAR ANALYSIS:
Observe the text line by line, word by word asking yourself questions, forming hypotheses which you will confirm
or reject as you progress through the text.
1. Basic and further analytical questions: Use the questions suggested in the General Reading
Guidelines and Literary Approach to Reading Strategies to help get your analysis started: Answering
the following questions will help you to identify the choices made by the author:
• Who is the author?
• What is the voice (or voices) of the text?
• What is the tone (is it objective or subjective? Does the author use irony, satire, parody, etc?)
• What is the purpose of the text: to convince the reader, to move him, to shock him?
• What is the viewpoint of a particular voice? (focusing)
• What are the characters like? Are they typical or atypical? What words or devices does the
author use to give you clues about the characters?
• What is the place and what is it like?
• What time or period is indicated? How is it indicated? How is the chain of events organized?
Does the author look forward or back? Compare the moment of the text with that of the “real
event” recounted or described in the text.
• What choices has the author made in terms of the language? What is the style used? What
words or expressions or grammatical devices establish the style of the text?
2. Lexical analysis:
• Does the author use graphic or phonetic devices to convey a message? (Spelling, alliteration,
homonyms, etc. (see the List of useful terms, p. 16)
• What lexical groups do the words belong to? What connotations are present? Are there
possible “double entendre” or multiple meanings to some words?
• Observe the syntax: Is there coordination? are there subordinate clauses? fragments? run-on
sentences? parallel constructions?
• What rhetorical figures are used? (comparison, metaphor, metonymy, etc.; if reading poetry,
observe the rime, meter, enjambments).
3. Using the elements observed should lead to a series of wider questions, such as whether the text is
to be taken literally or figuratively or both? Does the text invite the reader indirectly to reflect upon the
essence of literary creation?
Do not hesitate to underline, write notes, or mark a text you are studying in order to “possess” it. Mark whatever is
worth your attention. Note your reactions, questions, ideas, and associations of ideas in the margins of the text.
At this point you can begin to group elements; which of them converge, which are in opposition to others, which
categories do certain words or images belong to? This essential first part of your study will take time and
patience. The quality of your interpretation of a text will depend on your willingness to be thorough.
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II. THE CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF YOUR ANALYSIS:
1. Defining a clear problem: All these observation will lead you to a particular question that you will
want to study, a discovery that you will want to demonstrate. It may be a paradox that you have
found in the text, an ambiguity, a contrast, a hidden depth. You may want to analyse the relation
between the literal and the figurative meanings of the text, the surface meaning and the symbolism
of the text. You may want to analyse what the author apparently proposes to do and whether or not
he has achieved this (and how he has)?
2. Structuring your demonstration: You are now at the stage of structuring your demonstration.
Therefore the parts of your analysis will need to follow a logical progression, from the more
simple interpretations to the more complex, or from references to the past to those of the present,
etc.
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At this point a linear analysis of the text is no longer appropriate. The order of information about and
examples from the text must be logical to your analysis.
Your analysis should be structured in several separate parts, minimum two, preferably three. Each must
be a complete, developed idea which will support and justify your demonstration. Skip a line to make
you parts easily identifiable. The presentation of your paper is also an element which can help your
readers to follow your demonstration more comfortably.
It is important to write coherent paragraphs for each idea of the different parts of your analysis.
3. Supporting your analysis: You must illustrate your ideas with examples from the text.
In the same vein, never be content to indicate a result produced by the text (the atmosphere created, an
emotion, the beauty of an image) without explaining how the text generates such impressions.
In other words, NEVER DISASSOCIATE FORM AND CONTENT in your analytical commentaries.
You must remember to go back and forth between the different levels of interpretation: you may begin
with a technique or a particular aspect of the text to discuss the effect produced; or you may choose to
begin with an impression and justify it by using concrete examples from the text (tone, techniques,
characters, etc).
4. One of the most important rules to remember (in doing ANY serious university writing) is to
avoid just mentioning a particular point in your analysis, without discussing the implications of
that point. What consequences does this observation have on the whole?
III. THE INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION OF THE ANALYTICAL COMMENTARY:
Once you have organized your thoughts and have made a detailed outline of the different parts of
your demonstration (that is, you have a clear idea of how you will proceed), it is a good idea to
write your introduction.
The introduction:
I. The introduction situates the text. What is the period? What type of text is it?
II. What is the angle from which you will analyse the text? What will be your approach? What is the
particular problem or question you have chosen to study?
III. You will develop the main question by indicating a series of secondary questions to give your
reader an idea of how you will proceed. Your will give an idea of your method of analysis here but
DO NOT give your outline by announcing what you will do first, then second, etc.
The conclusion:
1. The conclusion begins with a brief reminder of questions you have studied and the principal steps
of your development. Nevertheless, it is important to avoid being overly repetitive here.
2. The conclusion is where you actually respond to the question you have chosen to study.
3. The conclusion ends with a brief consideration of other possible questions or angles from which to
study the text, or other works of the author or of other authors, or texts of other periods.
If you are clear on the orientation of your demonstration, you might even want to draft your
conclusion at the same time as you do the introduction. If you choose to do so, be absolutely sure that
you have proceeded as you say you did in your conclusion!
A Handbook of Literary Terms by Françoise GRELLET (see below) is a useful tool for this type of writing.
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POINT OF VIEW AND NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE
The Point of view can be defined as the angle from which the story is seen and recounted.
Narrative technique refers to the medium used to tell the story.
THIRD-PERSON POINT-OF-VIEW
• The omniscient narrator assumes that the author knows everything about the story and the
characters. He controls the story and sometimes breaks into the narrative to address the reader
directly. The writer thus establishes complicity with the reader but the narrative lacks the
immediacy of immediate points of view.
• Multiple character focus: The concealed narrator is given access to the consciousness of
various characters and participates in their thoughts. He does not call attention to his presence by
intrusive comment and creates the illusion that the characters are free to speak for themselves.
• Single character focus: The narrator is effaced and the narration is shifted to a major character
who registers and evaluates what happens around him and within himself. This point of view
approaches the immediacy of the 1st person.
• No specific character focus: when the author presents his story without penetrating the feelings
or thoughts of any character. He plays the part of a simple informer. Objective fiction is common
in modern fiction.
Third-person narrative techniques: narration / indirect speech / semi-indirect speech / direct
speech, &c....
FIRST PERSON POINTS OF VIEW
• Objective autobiography: the I narrator is the central character grown older and more mature.
Distance in time detaches him from the past events he recounts. This splitting of the character into
I now / narrator and I then / subject permits objectivity (cf. Dickens, Great Expectations).
• Subjective autobiography: the central character tells the story as it happens and is deeply
involved in the events and their consequences. Subjectivity often results from the absence of time
gap between telling and happening: the narrator tends to distort facts to defend his side of the
story. (cf. Twain, Huckelberry Finn).
• Observer narration: a minor character may be used to relate the experience of the major
character. He may be an inner observer who plays a role in the action or an outer observer. He
may be the confidant of one of the protagonists or an eyewitness to the action. (cf. Nick in The
Great Gatsby).
First-person narrative techniques: the narrator may present events and thoughts as a diary or as
a straight autobiography. He may resort to interior monologue in which he reviews past events
associated with present commentary. The stream of consciousness depicts the impressions and
thoughts which flow freely through the mind of a character with no apparent logic.
The time-sequence of a story is important. The traditional mode is the chronological order, but
the time-sequence may be broken. The reader is confronted with flashbacks or anticipations
(foreshadowing). One may be struck by the frequency of certain happenings or recurring
keywords. There may be a shift of focus from one character to another.
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USEFUL EXPRESSIONS
WHAT THE WRITER DOES
- The writer tells a story, recounts an incident, gives an account of a situation, narrates an experience.
- He describes, depicts, draws a picture, gives a description of ...
- He sketches, portrays, delineates, outlines a character, a situation.
- He states, poses a problem, raises a question, an issue, a point.
- He takes up a subject, touches upon it, treats it, tackles it.
- He concentrates, dwells, harps on it / He reflects, meditates on it, ponders over it.
- He places emphasis, lays stress on it, stresses, emphasises, underlines it.
- He examines, considers, discusses a problem, views it as ...
- He maintains, asserts, declares that... / His purpose is to...
- He alludes to the fact that / He creates, invents / He illustrates, demonstrates.
- He expresses, utters, gives vent to his own feelings, ideas, views, opinions.
- He considers the arguments, the reasons for and against. / He analyses the reason why...
- He looks at both sides of the question / He considers the questions from all angles.
- He points out the disadvantages or drawbacks on the one hand, and the advantages on the other hand.
- He objects to, protests against... / He puts forward an idea, and develops it.
- He presents, provides the reader with a wide range of examples, views of ...
- He awakens, arouses, excites, compels, stimulates the interest .
- He reports, treats, deals with a large number of cases...
- He manages (fails) to bring his subject, the period alive.
- He succeeds in bringing ... / in conveying to the reader.
- He relies on particular devices to achieve his aim (effects).
- By means of particular devices, he manages to involve the reader and makes him participate in the
events.
- He appeals to, he makes appeals to the reader’s imagination.
REWRITING THE WRITER’S OPINIONS OR WORDS
- The writer claims that .../ would have us believe that ...
- This is well illustrated by the following statement: I quote: “ ... “
- As the writer puts it ... / In the writer’s words / The author, to quote his own words, says that...
- This last point can be illustrated by the writer’s own words...
- The writer relies on repetitions
- The word occurs five times in the passage.
- These words are suggestive of, they imply ...
- The impression is conveyed by ...
- To sum up / to summarise.
DRAWING ATTENTION TO A PARTICULAR POINT
- It is interesting to note, observe, remark that ...
- What is particularly striking in this passage is that ...
- We can hardly fail to be struck / impressed by ...
- It is significant that the scene should be set in ...
- The emphasis falls on ...
- The character embodies, symbolises, exemplifies ...
- It is a fact that ... / It is beyond question that / there is no denying that ...
- As we read the text closely / On reading the text
- If we pay close attention to the text, we see that ...
REFERRING TO A PARTICULAR PASSAGE IN THE TEXT
- At the beginning of our passage / The opening sentence betrays (reveals, discloses)
- Midway through the passage / In the middle of the passage
- Towards the end of the passage
- All through the passage / Throughout the passage
- From line ... to line ...
- For the whole of the first paragraph
- Considering the first paragraph as a whole / Let us consider the first paragraph
- In the preceding / previous paragraph… / In the following / next paragraph....
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VOCABULARY
GENRES
- a line (= un vers / une ligne)
- a stanza (= une strophe)
- a satire, satirical
- an epic, epic or epical
- a poem, poetic
- drama, theatre, stage
- picaresque / gothic / historical / regional novel / the novel of education or Bildungsroman.
- a short-story / a tale (≠ novel !)
- the critic (= le critique)
- criticism (= la critique)
- a piece of criticism (= une critique)
- a critical approach
- to criticise
SETTING AND ATMOSPHERE
- you have to study the recurrent patterns and the devices (procédés) a writer uses to achieve
particular effects —> the art of story-telling
- pathos (the quality in a work which evokes sympathy or pity or sorrow)
- suggestive power / effective, effectiveness (= qui porte, frappant)
- mood or predominating atmosphere
- response (= réaction) of the reader
- to arouse the reader’s sympathy / to stir reactions
- suspense: tension gathers, rises, heightens, intensifies, culminates in… / tension lessens,
subsides, slackens
- climax (point culminant) / anti-climax (= a release of feelings after a rising tension) / a reversal
of situation
- a passage may be gripping, moving, stirring, exciting, captivating, breathtaking
- it may arouse a sense of uneasiness, anguish, strangeness, a sense of the unknown
- the reader must pay attention to time-markers and place-markers in other words the historical,
geographical, social and political data
- a thorough or detailed description / a cursory description
- to conjure up (= évoquer) / to border on (toucher, confiner, friser)
CHARACTER-DRAWING OR CHARACTERISATION
- a life-like character
- a stock character (a familiar figure or a type as such as the vulnerable heroine or the villain)
- a flat character (often referred to as a caricature or a type / his behaviour is predictable or in
character)
- a round character (presents the complexity of a real individual / he/she reacts unpredictably or
out of character)
- a major figure
- the divided self (= le moi divisé) / Most characters are questing for something — liberty / love /
identity (to be in quest of)
- landmarks (repères)
- the writer has a deep insight into a character (= to have a deep understanding) / he may be
objective or ironical or he may identify with his creations which become his mouthpiece
- Characters may be revealed through their physical appearance, through gesture, turn of phrase or
the way they dress
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STYLE
- stylistic effects
- a simile (= an explicit comparison introduced by words such as “like” or “as” or “to seem”)
- dramatic irony (when the reader is supposed to understand more than the characters)
- rhythmic patterns (a smooth rhythm / a jerky rhythm)
- colloquial, familiar, informal, slangy language
- technical, scientific, learned, formal, elevated language
GRAMMATICAL TERMS
- a sentence (= une phrase)
- a phrase (= une expression)
- a clause (= une proposition)
- a sentence in the present tense
- the tense switches from the present to the past
- the mood (= le mode grammatical)
PUNCTUATION
- comma
- semicolon
- colon
- inverted commas
- quotes / quotation marks
- hyphen
- dash
- brackets
,
;
:
‘…’
“....”
- (= trait d’union)
— (= tiret)
(…)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Renée DÉNIER, Robert BLATTÈS, Ann NICHOLSON, L’explication de textes en anglais, Paris,
Ophrys, 1983 [Magasin 105961]
Hélène AUFFRET-BOUCÉ, Figures libres, figures imposées : l’explication de texte en anglais
(fiction), Paris, Hachette supérieur, 1993 [820(07) Fig]
Terence HUGHES, Claire PATIN, L’analyse textuelle en anglais : Narrative Theory, Textual
Practice, (1995) Paris, A. Colin, 2005 [820(07) HUG]
Françoise GRELLET, A Handbook of Literary Terms : introduction au vocabulaire littéraire
anglais, Paris, Hachette supérieur, 1996 [820(07) GRE]
Éric TAANE, L’explication de texte : méthode et pratique (domaine anglais), Paris, Hachette,
1997 [820(07) TAA]
Claudine VERLEY, Lectures critiques en anglais : A Guide to the Critical Reading of fiction in
English, (1998) Paris, Ophrys, 2009 [820(07) VER]
René GALLET, Pratique de l’explication de texte : anglais, Paris, Ellipses, 2007 [820(07) GAL]
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II.
TEXTS
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BUM ON FIFTH
I’m coming back from Central Park where, near the children’s zoo, close to the spot I
murdered the McCaffrey boy, I fed portions of Ursula’s brain to passing dogs. Walking down
Fifth Avenue around four o’clock in the afternoon, everyone on the street locks sad, the air is
full of decay, bodies lie on the cold pavement, miles of it, some are moving, most are not.
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History is sinking and only a very few seem dimly aware that things are getting bad. Airplanes
fly low across the city, crossing in front of the sun. Winds shoot up Fifth, then funnel down
Fifty-seventh Street. Flocks of pigeons rise in slow motion and burst up against the sky. The
smell of burning chestnuts mixes with carbon monoxide fumes. I notice the skyline has changed
only recently. I look up, admiringly, at Trump Tower, tall, proudly gleaming in the late
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afternoon sunlight. In front of it two smart-ass nigger teenagers are ripping off tourists at threecard monte and I have to fight the impulse to blow them away.
A bum I blinded one spring sits cross-legged on a ratty blanket near the corner of Fiftyfifth Street. Moving closer I see the beggar’s scarred face and then the sign he’s holding beneath
it, which reads VIETNAM VET BLINDED IN VIETNAM. PLEASE HELP ME. WE ARE
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HUNGRY AND HOMELESS. We? Then I notice the dog, who is already eyeing me
suspiciously and, as I approach its master, gets up, growling, and when I’m standing over the
bum, it finally barks, wagging its tail frantically. I kneel down, threateningly raise a hand at it.
The dog backs off, its paws askew.
I’ve pulled out my wallet, pretending to drop a dollar into his empty coffee can, but then
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realize: Why bother pretending? No one’s watching anyway, definitely not him. I retract the
dollar, leaning in. He senses my presence and stops shaking the can. The sunglasses he wears
don’t even begin to cover the wounds I inflicted. His nose is so junked up I can’t imagine a
person breathing through it.
“You never were in Vietnam,” I whisper in his ear.
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After a silence, during which he pisses in his pants, the dog whimpering, he croaks,
“Please…don’t hurt me.”
“Why would I waste my time?” I mutter, disgusted.
I move away from the bum, noticing, instead, a little girl smoking a cigarette, begging for
change outside Trump Tower. “Shoo,” I say. She says “Shoo” back. On The Patty Winters Show
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this morning a Cheerio sat in a very small chair and was interviewed for close to an hour. Later
this afternoon, a woman wearing a silver fox and mink coat has her face slashed in front of the
Stanhope by an enraged fur activist. But now, still staring at the sightless bum from across the
street, I buy a Dove Bar, a coconut one, in which I find part of a bone.
Bret Easton ELLIS, American Psycho, New York, Random House, 1991.
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READING QUESTIONS
FIRST READINGS AND ANALYSIS:
1. What is the nature of this text?
2. Who is the “I” that appears in line 1 down to the end? What is its function in the story?
Would you say this pronoun corresponds to the author? Justify your answer
3. The structure of the extract:
How many parts can you distinguish in the text? Give a title summarizing its content.
Observe and compare the structure of the paragraphs’ topic sentences.
Looking at the verbs which refer to the narrator’s actions, explain how the text moves
from one part to the next. What is the effect of such a structuring device?
4. What is the tense mostly used in the text? What effect does it have on the reader?
5. As he walks down 5th Avenue, how many encounters does the narrator make? What is
their effect on him?
CLOSER READING AND PRELIMINARY WRITTEN ANALYSIS:
• Consider paragraph 1 (lines 1-11):
a) How is the theme of general decay orchestrated in lines 1-11? Is there an exception to it?
b) What is the treatment of the theme of violence in this paragraph?
• Take a close look at lines 12-27:
a) How is physical violence once again considered by the narrator? How is this brought home to
the reader, at words’ level?
b) What is the function of the sign, and above all, of its message?
c) How does the theme of vision buttress the cruelty of this part?
d) How does the narrator devise a very dramatic cruelty?
• Lines 28-33:
a) What contrast and incongruity do lines 28-29 articulate?
b) Examine the effect of the transition from the exclamations “Shoo” to the “…Show” and its
“Cheerios”. In novelistic theory what does one call a memory that crops up in the course of a
narrative? What effect does the anecdote of the television program contribute to?
c) How does the narrator describe the assault of the woman in fur? What is the significance of this
dreadful event?
d) How would you interpret the image of the Dove Bar?
e) Interpreting the paragraph: what impression does the juxtaposition of unconnected images
create? Find one underlying theme which links these images together.
CONCLUSION:
- Considering the analysis just carried out, what would you say are the main implications of the
extract? In other words, what chief subjects does the extract address?
- What is Bret Easton Ellis’s chief device to do so?
- Assess the impact and value of this text. Justify your answers.
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DISGRACE
After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and
twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a
committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and
retreats to his daughter Lucy’s isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter’s influence and the natural rhythms
of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and
Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the flaws in their relationship.
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The living-room is in a mess, so is his own room. Things have been taken: his jacket, his good
shoes, and that is only the beginning of it.
He looks at himself in a mirror. Brown ash, all that is left of his hair, coats his scalp and
forehead. Underneath it the scalp is an angry pink. He touches the skin: it is painful and beginning to
ooze. One eyelid is swelling shut; his eyebrows are gone, his eyelashes too.
He goes to the bathroom, but the door is closed. ‘Don’t come in,’ says Lucy’s voice.
‘Are you all right? Are you hurt?’
Stupid questions; she does not reply.
He tries to wash off the ash under the kitchen tap, pouring glass after glass of water over his
head. Water trickles down his back; he begins to shiver with the cold.
It happens every day, every hour, every minute, he tells himself, in every quarter of the country.
Count yourself lucky to have escaped with your life. Count yourself lucky not to be a prisoner in the
car at this moment, speeding away, or at the bottom of a donga* with a bullet in your head. Count
Lucy lucky too. Above all Lucy.
A risk to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around,
not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into
circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day. That is the theory; hold to the
theory and to the comforts of the theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose
workings pity and terror are irrelevant. That is how one must see life in this country: in its schematic
aspect. Otherwise one could go mad. Cars, shoes; women too. There must be some niche in the system
for women and what happens to them.
Lucy has come up behind him. She is wearing slacks and a raincoat now; her hair is combed
back, her face clean and entirely blank. He looks into her eyes. ‘My dearest, dearest…’ he says, and
chokes on a sudden surge of tears.
She does not stir a finger to soothe him. ‘Your head looks terrible,’ she remarks. ‘There’s babyoil in the bathroom cabinet. Put some on. Is your car gone?’
‘Yes. I think they went off in the Port Elizabeth direction. I must telephone the police.’
‘You can’t. The telephone is smashed.’
She leaves him. He sits on the bed and waits. Though he has wrapped a blanket around himself,
he continues to shiver. One of his wrists is swollen and throbbing with pain. He cannot recollect how
he hurt it. It is already getting dark. The whole afternoon seems to have passed in a flash.
Lucy returns. ‘They’ve let down the tyres of the kombi,’ she says. ‘I’m walking over to
Ettinger’s. I won’t be long.’ She pauses. ‘David, when people ask, would you mind keeping to your
own story, to what happened to you?’
He does not understand.
‘You tell what happened to you, I tell what happened to me,’ she repeats.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ he says in a voice that is fast descending to a croak.
‘No, I’m not,’ she says.
‘My child, my child!’ he says, holding out his arms to her. When she does not come, he puts
aside his blanket, stands up, and takes her in his arms. In his embrace she is stiff as a pole, yielding
nothing.
J. M. COETZEE, Disgrace, Chapter 11, London: Vintage, 2000, pp. 97-99.
*Deriving from South Africa, the term “donga” originally means “valley” or “track”.
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About the author: John Maxwell Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1940.
Though his parents were not of British descent, the language spoken at home was English. He
held various positions as a Professor of Literature in South Africa and in the U.S. His first
book, Dusklands, was published in 1974. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) received
international notice. He won Britain’s Booker Prize twice for Life & Times of Michael K.
(1983) and for Disgrace (1999). Coetzee also wrote numerous essays on South African
literature and culture, and translates Dutch and Afrikaans literature. In 2002 he emigrated to
Australia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2003.
READING QUESTIONS
FIRST READING: TO COME TO A PROVISIONAL CONCLUSION ON THE EFFECT OF THE TEXT ON THE
READER
1) What is the general subject of this excerpt?
2) What kind of text is it? How would you define its genre?
3) What is the narrative strategy? What kind of narrator, what types of discourse is the text built upon?
4) Identify the two characters: who are they? What is their relationship?
5) Give your general impression about what happened.
SECOND READING: TO GIVE A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT
6) How is violence presented in the text? Gather all the clues allowing you to determine what
happened exactly.
7) What are the different forms of violence displayed in the text?
8) What is the impact of such a presentation of violence upon the reader? What is the effect of
ellipses?
9) Compare the two characters’ responses to the shock they experienced:
- Analyze the metamorphosis undergone by the male character: gather the clues allowing you to
determine what happened to him. Comment on the expression “angry pink” (l. 4).
- How is Lucy’s reaction made to contrast with David’s? Comment on her tone (see for instance lines
6, 25, 28, 33-35, etc.).
10) What elements in the text inform the reader of the time and place of the narrative? What is the
effect created by the scarcity of information?
THIRD READING: TO HIGHLIGHT THE FUNCTION OF THE TEXT, ITS MEANING AND ARGUMENT
11) Give a detailed commentary of paragraphs 4 and 5 (l. 11-21):
- Analyze the change in tone; who speaks? What does the passage represent? What is its function in
the middle of the narration? What effect does it create?
- Identify the logic / system that is evoked: is violence clearly condemned, or is it explained? What is
original about this demonstration?
- Reformulate paragraph 5.
12) How do you understand Lucy’s response to what happened to her?
13) Interpret the repetition of expressions such as ‘My dearest, my dearest…’ (l. 23-24), ‘My child,
my child!’ (l. 40) and the gestures accompanying them.
14) Comment on the reversal of the father-child relationship. Interpret the reference to ‘baby-oil’
(l. 26). Why is Lucy so hard and so distant?
15) Interpret the novel’s title in the light of the excerpt.
16) What do you know about violence in South Africa, now and in the past? Can we establish a link
between the South African social, economical and political context and this fictional excerpt?
ESSAY QUESTION:
Violence and possession.
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THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA
Karim, the narrator, is an Anglo-Indian young man living in the South London suburbs. The following passage
narrates a misadventure happening to him while paying a visit to a girl he is trying to seduce.
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I parked the bike outside, chaining it to the fence. When I tried to open the gate I discovered it
was jammed. I couldn’t fiddle about; I climbed over. In the porch I pulled the bell and heard it ring
somewhere deep in the house. It was spooky, I can tell you. There was no reply, so I strolled around
the side.
‘Karim, Karim,’ Helen said quickly, in an anxious voice, from a window above my head.
‘Hiya,’ I called. ‘I just wanted to see you.’
‘Me too, yeah?’
I got irritated. I always wanted everything to happen immediately. ‘What’s wrong, then? Can’t
you come out? What’s this Juliet business you’re doing?’
At this her head seemed to have been jerked back into the house. There was some muffled
arguing - a man’s voice - and the window banged down. Then the curtains were drawn.
‘Helen, Helen!’ I called, suddenly feeling quite attached to her.
The front door opened. Helen’s dad stood there. He was a big man with a black beard and
thick arms. I imagined that he had hairy shoulders and, worst of all, a hairy back, like Peter Sellers and
Sean Connery. (I kept a list of actors with hairy backs which I constantly updated.) And then I went
white, but obviously not white enough, because Hairy Back let go of the dog he was holding, a Great
fucking Dane, and it padded interestedly towards me, its mouth hanging open like a cave. It looked as
though a jagged wedge had been ripped from the lump of its head to form its yellow-toothed, stringspittled mouth. I put my arms out in front of me so the dog wouldn’t rip my hands off. I must have
looked like a sleepwalker, but as I wanted my hands for other purposes I didn’t care about this
Baroque pose, though as a rule I cared fanatically about the way I looked, and behaved as if the entire
world had nothing better to do than constantly observe me for slips in a very complicated and private
etiquette.
‘You can’t see my daughter again,’ said Hairy Back. ‘She doesn’t go out with boys. Or with
wogs.’
‘Oh well.’
‘Got it?’
‘Yeah,’ I said sullenly.
‘We don’t want you blackies coming to the house.’
‘Have there been many?’
‘Many what, you little coon?’
‘Blackies.’
‘Where?’
‘Coming to the house.’
‘We don’t like it,’ Hairy Back said. ‘However many niggers there are, we don’t like it. We’re
with Enoch. If you put one of your black ‘ands near my daughter I’ll smash it with a’ammer! With
a’ammer!’
Hairy Back slammed the front door. I took a couple of steps back and turned to go. Fucking
Hairy Back. I badly wanted to piss. I looked at his car, a big Rover. I decided to let his tyres down. I
could do it in a few seconds, piss in the window, and if he came out I’d be over the fence quicker than
a cat through a window. I was moving towards the Rover when I realized that Hairy Back had left me
alone with the dog, which was sniffing at turds only a few yards away. It started to move. I stood there
pretending to be a stone or a tree until, gingerly, I turned my back on the dog and took a couple of
steps, as if I were tip-toeing across a dangerous roof. I was hoping Helen would open the window and
call my name, and call the dog’s name too. ‘Oh, Helen, Helen,’ I murmured.
My soft words obviously affected the dog, for suddenly there was a flurry and I felt something
odd on my shoulders. Yes, it was the dog’s paws.
Hanif KUREISHI, The Buddha of Suburbia, London: Faber, 1990, 39-41
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Raymond Carver (1938-1988) was a major American short story writer and poet "inclined toward brevity and
intensity". Like Poe, Carver insisted on the fact that “the story [or poem] can be written and read in one sitting."
His work was focused on sadness and loss in everyday lives of ordinary people.
POPULAR MECHANICS
Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water. Streaks of it ran down from the little
shoulder-high window that faced the backyard. Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it
was getting dark on the inside too.
He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door.
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I’m glad you’re leaving! I’m glad you’re leaving! she said. Do you hear?
He kept on putting his things into the suitcase.
Son of a bitch! I’m so glad you’re leaving! She began to cry. You can’t even look me in the face, can you?
Then she noticed the baby’s picture on the bed and picked it up.
He looked at her and she wiped her eyes and stared at him before turning and going back to the living room.
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Bring that back, he said.
Just get your things and get out, she said.
He did not answer. He fastened the suitcase, put on his coat, looked around the bedroom before turning off the
light. Then he went out to the living room.
She stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, holding the baby.
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I want the baby, he said.
Are you crazy?
No, but I want the baby. I’ll get someone to come for his things.
You’re not touching this baby, she said.
The baby had begun to cry and she uncovered the blanket from around his head.
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Oh, oh, she said, looking at the baby.
He moved toward her.
For God’s sake! she said. She took a step back into the kitchen.
I want the baby.
Get out of here!
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She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove.
But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby.
Let go of him, he said.
Get away, get away! she cried.
The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove.
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He crowded her into the wall then, trying to break her grip. He held onto the baby and pushed with all his weight.
Let go of him, he said.
Don’t, she said. You’re hurting the baby, she said.
I’m not hurting the baby, he said.
The kitchen window gave no light. In the near dark he worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the
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other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder.
She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her.
No! she screamed just as her hands came loose.
She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby’s other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and
leaned back.
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But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.
In this manner, the issue was decided.
Raymond CARVER, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, N.Y., Vintage Books (Random House), 1982.
Pause
DEVLIN: He adored you?
REBECCA: Oh yes. He did. He did. And he held it there, very gently, very
gently, so gently. He adored me, you see.
DEVLIN: And did he? Did he put his hand round your throat?
Silence.
REBECCA: I said ‘Put your hand round my throat.’ I murmured it through his
hand, as I was kissing it, but he heard my voice, he heard it through his hand,
he felt my voice in his hand, he heard it there.
Pause.
DEVLIN: What did you say? You said what? What did you say?
And then I would speak.
Pause.
Harold PINTER, Ashes to Ashes, Faber, 1996
DEVLIN: Do you feel you’re being hypnotised?
Silence
REBECCA: Yes.
DEVLIN: Your legs were opening?
Pause
REBECCA: Yes.
DEVLIN: So your legs were opening?
REBECCA: My body went back, slowly but truly.
DEVLIN: And your body? Where did your body go?
REBECCA: He put a little... pressure... on my throat, yes. So that my head
started to go back, gently but truly.
DEVLIN: And did you?
REBECCA: Oh yes. I kissed his fist. The knuckles. And then he’d open his hand
and give me the palm of his hand... to kiss... which I kissed.
DEVLIN: What then? What are you saying?
REBECCA: Well... for example... he would stand over me and clench his fist.
And then he’d put his other hand on my neck and grip it and bring my head
towards him. His fist... grazed my mouth. And he’d say, ‘Kiss my fist.’
REBECCA: No.
Are you saying he put no pressure on your throat? Is that what you’re saying?
Devlin standing with drink. Rebecca sitting.
Silence.
Pause
What do you mean, he adored you? What do you mean?
[Characters: Devlin, Rebecca – both in their forties. Time: Now]
ASHES TO ASHES
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COAL-DUST
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Going home from school in the afternoon, the Brangwen girls descended the
hill between the picturesque cottages of Willey Green till they came to the railway
crossing. There they found the gate shut, because the colliery train was rumbling
nearer. They could hear the small locomotive panting hoarsely as it advanced with
caution between the embankments. The one-legged man in the little signal-hut by
the road stared out from his security, like a crab from a snail-shell.
Whilst the two girls waited, Gerald Crich trotted up on a red Arab mare. He
rode well and softly, pleased with the delicate quivering of the creature between his
knees. And he was very picturesque, at least in Gudrun’s eyes, sitting soft and
close on the slender red mare, whose long tail flowed on the air. He saluted the two
girls, and drew up at the crossing to wait for the gate, looking down the railway for
the approaching train. In spite of her ironic smile at his picturesqueness, Gudrun
liked to look at him. He was well set and easy, his face with its warm tan showed
up his whitish, coarse moustache, and his blue eyes were full of sharp light as he
watched the distance.
The locomotive chuffed slowly between the banks, hidden. The mare did not
like it. She began to wince away, as if hurt by the unknown noise. But Gerald
pulled her back and held her head to the gate. The sharp blasts of the chuffing
engine broke with more and more force on her. The repeated sharp blows of
unknown, terrifying noise struck through her till she was rocking with terror. She
recoiled like a spring let go. But a glistening, half-smiling look came into Gerald’s
face. He brought her back again, inevitably.
The noise was released, the little locomotive with her clanking steel
connecting-rod emerged on the highroad, clanking sharply. The mare rebounded
like a drop of water from hot iron. Ursula and Gudrun pressed back into the hedge,
in fear. But Gerald was heavy on the mare, and forced her back. It seemed as if he
sank into her magnetically, and could thrust her back against herself.
‘The fool!’ cried Ursula loudly. ‘Why doesn’t he ride away till it’s gone by?’
Gudrun was looking at him with black dilated, spellbound eyes. But he sat
glistening and obstinate, forcing the wheeling mare, which spun and swerved like a
wind, and yet could not get out of the grasp of his will, nor escape from the mad
clamour of terror that resounded through her, as the trucks thumped slowly,
heavily, horrifying, one after the other, one pursuing the other, over the rails of the
crossing.
The locomotive, as if wanting to see what could be done, put on the brakes, and
back came the trucks rebounding on the iron buffers, striking like horrible cymbals,
clashing nearer and nearer in frightful strident concussions. The mare opened her
mouth and rose slowly, as if lifted up on a wind of terror. Then suddenly her forefeet struck out, as she convulsed herself utterly away from the horror. Back she
went, and the two girls clung to each other, feeling she must fall backwards on top
of him. But he leaned forward, his face shining with fixed amusement, and at last
he brought her down, sank her down, and was bearing her back to the mark. But as
strong as the pressure of his compulsion was the repulsion of her utter terror,
throwing her back away from the railway, so that she spun round and round on two
legs, as if she were in the centre of some whirlwind. It made Gudrun faint with
poignant dizziness, which seemed to penetrate to her heart.
D.H. Lawrence: Women in Love (1916, pub. 1920), ch.IX “Coal-Dust”, p.168-169
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THE PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
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A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one
whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare
legs were delicate as a crane’s and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as
a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and softhued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips where the
white fringes of her drawers were like featherings of soft white down. Her slateblue skirts were kilted
boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird’s soft and slight, slight and
soft as the breast of some darkplumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and
touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.
She was alone and still, gazing out to sea: and when she felt his presence and the worship of his
eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long
she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream
gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water
broke the silence low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and
thither: and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.
—Heavenly God! cried Stephen’s soul, in an outburst of profane joy.
He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His cheeks were aflame; his
body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands,
singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.
Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his
ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph,
to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an
envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the
ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!
He halted suddenly and heard his heart in the silence. How far had he walked? What hour was
it?
There was no human figure near him nor any sound borne to him over the air. But the tide was
near the turn and already the day was on the wane. He turned landward and ran towards the shore and,
running up the sloping beach, reckless of the sharp shingle, found a sandy nook amid a ring of tufted
sand knolls and lay down there that the peace and silence of the evening might still the riot of his
blood.
He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies; and
the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast.
He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His eyelids trembled as if they felt the vast cyclic
movement of the earth and her watchers, trembled as if they felt the strange light of some new world.
His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by
cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer, or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and
unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full
crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light,
flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than other.
James Joyce: The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), pp.175-177
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NOSTROMO
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On the tenth day, after a night spent without even dozing off once (it had occurred to him that
Antonia could not possibly have ever loved a being so impalpable as himself), the solitude appeared like a
great void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord to which he hung suspended by both hands,
without fear, without surprise, without any sort of emotion whatever. Only towards the evening, in the
comparative relief of coolness, he began to wish that this cord would snap. He imagined it snapping with a
report as of a pistol – a sharp, full crack. And that would be the end of him. He contemplated that
eventuality with pleasure, because he dreaded the sleepless nights in which the silence, remaining
unbroken in the shape of a cord to which he hung with both hands, vibrated with senseless phrases, always
the same but utterly incomprehensible, about Nostromo, Antonia, Barrios, and proclamations mingled into
an ironical and senseless buzzing. In the daytime he could look at the silence like a still cord stretched to
breaking-point, with his life, his vain life, suspended from it like a weight.
‘I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I fell,’ he asked himself.
The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got up, gaunt, dirty, white-faced, and looked at it
with his red-rimmed eyes. His limbs obeyed him slowly, as if full of lead, yet without tremor; and the
effect of that physical condition gave to his movements an unhesitating, deliberate dignity. He acted as if
accomplishing some sort of rite. He descended into the gully; for the fascination of all that silver, with its
potential power, survived alone outside of himself. He picked up the belt with the revolver, that was lying
there, and buckled it round his waist. The cord of silence could never snap on the island. It must let him fall
and sink into the sea, he thought. And sink! He was looking at the loose earth covering the treasure. In the
sea! His aspect was that of a somnambulist. He lowered himself down on his knees slowly and went on
grubbing with his fingers with industrious patience till he uncovered one of the boxes. Without a pause, as
if doing some work done many times before, he slit it open and took four ingots, which he put in his
pockets. He covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out of the gully. The bushes closed
after him with a swish.
It was on the third day of his solitude that he had dragged the dinghy near the water with an idea of
rowing away somewhere, but had desisted partly at the whisper of lingering hope that Nostromo would
return, partly from conviction of utter uselessness of all effort. Now she wanted only a slight shove to be
set afloat. He had eaten a little every day after the first, and had some muscular strength left yet. Taking up
the oars slowly, he pulled away from the cliff of the Great Isabel, that stood behind him warm with
sunshine, as if with the heat of life bathed in a rich light from head to foot as if in a radiance of hope and
joy. He pulled straight towards the setting sun. When the gulf had grown dark, he ceased rowing and flung
the sculls in. The hollow clatter they made in falling was the loudest noise he had ever heard in his life. It
was a revelation. It seemed to recall him from far away. Actually the thought, ‘Perhaps I may sleep
tonight,’ passed through his mind. But he did not believe it. He believed in nothing; and he remained
sitting on the thwart.
The dawn from behind the mountains put a gleam into his unwinking eyes. After a clear daybreak
the sun appeared splendidly above the peaks of the range. The great gulf burst into a glitter all around the
boat; and in this glory of merciless solitude the silence appeared again before him, stretched taut like a
dark, thin string.
His eyes looked at it while, without haste, he shifted his seat from the thwart to the gunwhale. They
looked at it fixedly, while his hand, feeling about his waist, unbuttoned the flap of the leather case, drew
the revolver, cocked it, brought it forward pointing at his breast, pulled the trigger, and, with convulsive
force, sent the still-smoking weapon hurtling through the air. His eyes looked at it while he fell forward
and hung with his breast on the gunwhale and the fingers of his right hand hooked under the thwart. They
looked –
‘It is done,’ he stammered out, in a sudden flow of blood. His last thought was: ‘I wonder how that
Capataz died.’ The stiffness of the fingers relaxed, and the lover of Antonia Avellanos rolled overboard
without having heard the cord of silence snap in the solitude of the Placid Gulf, whose glittering surface
remained untroubled by the fall of his body.
Joseph Conrad: Nostromo (1904), pp.414-416
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SHALIMAR THE CLOWN
Author of the controversial novel The Satanic Verses, here Salman Rushdie tells the story of an American
ambassador and diplomat, Max Ophuls and his daughter India, with flashbacks to the half century of the
destruction of rural Kashmir after Pakistan’s secession from India.
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There was the earth and there were the planets. The earth was not a planet. The planets were
the grabbers. They were called this because they could seize hold of the earth and bend its destiny
to their will. The earth was never of their kind. The earth was the subject. The earth was the
grabbee.
Pachigam was the earth, the grabbee, helpless, and powerful uncaring planets stooped low,
extended their celestial and merciless tentacles and grabbed.
Who lit that fire? Who burned that orchard? Who shot those brothers who laughed their
whole lives long? Who killed the sarpanch? Who broke his hands? Who broke his arms? Who
broke his ancient neck? Who shackled those men? Who made those men disappear? Who shot
those boys? Who shot those girls? Who smashed that house? Who smashed that house? Who
smashed that house? Who killed that youth? Who clubbed that grandmother? Who knifed that
aunt? Who broke that old man’s nose? Who broke that young girl’s heart? Who killed that lover?
Who shot his fiancée? Who burned the costumes? Who broke the swords? Who burned the
library? Who burned the saffron field? Who slaughtered the animals? Who burned the beehives?
Who poisoned the paddies? Who killed the children? Who whipped the parents? Who raped that
lazy-eyed woman? Who raped that grey-haired lazy-eyed woman as she screamed about snake
vengeance? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that woman
again? Who raped that dead woman? Who raped that dead woman again?
The village of Pachigam still exists on the official maps of Kashmir, due south of Srinagar
and west of Shirmal near the Anantnag road. In such public records as are still available for
inspection its population is given as three hundred and fifty, and in a few guides for the benefit of
visitors there are passing references to the bhand pather, a dying folk art, and to the dwindling
number of dedicated troupes that seek to preserve it. This official existence, this paper self is its
only memorial, for where Pachigam once stood by the blithe Muskadoon, where its little street ran
along from the pandit’s house to the sarpanch’s, where Abdullah roared and Boonyi danced and
Shivshankar sang and Shalimar the clown walked the tightrope as if treading upon air, nothing
resembling a human habitation remains. What happened that day in Pachigam need not be set
down here in full detail, because brutality is brutality and excess is excess and that’s all there is to
it. There are things that must be looked at indirectly because they would blind you if you looked
them in the face, like the fire of the sun. So, to repeat: there was no Pachigam any more.
Pachigam was destroyed. Imagine it for yourself.
Second attempt: The village of Pachigam still existed on maps of Kashmir, but that day it
ceased to exist anywhere else, except in memory.
Third and final attempt: The beautiful village of Pachigam still exists.
Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown, London, Jonathan Cape, 2005, pp. 308-309.
Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will
One will of mine to make thy large Will more.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus.
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Sonnet 135
SHAKESPEARE
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SUN IN AN EMPTY ROOM
For Edward Hopper
By David Joseph
The long window has let it in
with the morning and the voices of
birds working the day.
Inside, it doesn’t warm the corners.
The shadows sit there, huddled,
toothless in a molding’s wedge.
Along the wall, the light lifts,
surfacing, suspended towards the white
well of a window’s ledge.
Outside, the sun is a bolt, a flash rocketed
to earth in a gasp or wail
of heat and roar and pompous glow.
But in an empty room, sun is like a deer
nibbling alongside a brook, cool water
rustling, and no hunters in sight.
READING QUESTIONS:
1. Observe each stanza of the poem. What is the central image of each stanza?
2. The central image of the second stanza is likened to another image. Which one? How do
you know? Why has the poet done this?
3. Taking liberties with the conventions of general writing is called poetic license. Find an
example of poetic license in the poem.
4. The poem was written with the painting of Edward Hopper “Sun in an empty Room”
(1963) in mind. Compare the atmosphere of the painting to that created by the poem.
WRITING AND ANALYSIS QUESTIONS:
1. Write a paragraph in which you describe the atmosphere depicted in the painting and
created by the poem. You may not use any of the phrases of the poem in your description.
2. Write a short essay on the relation between art forms, here painting and poetry. Where
does the relation come from? Can such “dialogue” between forms or between artists
enhance communication?
3. Analyze the poem line by line, stanza by stanza. Carefully observe the painting and then
write an analytical commentary of the poem from a particular angle of observation you
have found.
ESSAY QUESTION:
Poetry is not taught in schools as a means of communication. Discuss.
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Edward Hopper, “Sun in an Empty Room”, 1963
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/interior/
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THE STORY OF AN HOUR
Kate Chopin
Kate Chopin, 1851-1904, wrote short stories and two novels. Her major one, The Awakening, published in 1899,
renders the personal feelings and experience of a young woman. “The Story of an Hour” was originally published
in 1894 in Vogue Magazine.
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Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to
break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed
in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had
been in the newspaper office when intelligence1 of the railroad disaster was received, with
Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure
himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall2 any less careful, less
tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed
inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her
sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She
would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she
sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into
her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all
aquiver3 with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street
below a peddler4 was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was
singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves5.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had
met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless,
except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to
sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a
certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off
yonder6 on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather
indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it?
She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the
sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing
that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as
powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.
When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips.
She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of
1 intelligence: the news
2 forestall: prevent
3 a-quiver: trembling
4 peddler: a travelling salesman going from house to house to sell his wares
5 the eaves: the edge of a roof that sticks out over a wall
6 yonder (arch.): over there
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terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat
fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and
exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.
She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in
death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But
she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to
her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for
herself. There would be no powerful will bending7 hers in that blind persistence with which
men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A
kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in
that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What
could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which
she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring
for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg, open the door—you will make yourself ill. What
are you doing Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life
through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot8 along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer
days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might
be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a
feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory.
She clasped her sister’s waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting
for them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who
entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been
far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at
Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
But Richards was too late.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.
7 bending: directing, forcing hers
8 running riot: throwing off any restraint