Студопедия — Further discussion. 1. Many of Hemingway's novels and short stories are concerned with courage - or lack of it
Студопедия Главная Случайная страница Обратная связь

Разделы: Автомобили Астрономия Биология География Дом и сад Другие языки Другое Информатика История Культура Литература Логика Математика Медицина Металлургия Механика Образование Охрана труда Педагогика Политика Право Психология Религия Риторика Социология Спорт Строительство Технология Туризм Физика Философия Финансы Химия Черчение Экология Экономика Электроника

Further discussion. 1. Many of Hemingway's novels and short stories are concerned with courage - or lack of it






 

1. Many of Hemingway's novels and short stories are concerned with courage - or lack of it. Discuss the courage - or lack of it - shown by the Indian woman, her husband, Nick and Uncle George.

2. Does this story shock you? Say why or why not.

3. How do you think you would have reacted in Nick's place?

4. Do you agree with the doctor's statement that the woman's screams are not important? What does he really mean by " unimportant", and do you think that Nick understands what he means?

5. Find the longest sentence in the story. Why do you think it is so long?

6. To what extent does Hemingway express an opinion of his own about is happening in his story?

7. What cliches about American fathers are reflected in the story? Are American fathers different from fathers in your country?

8. Would the story have a different significance if the last paragraph were out?

9. Would you describe this as a story of initiation. Compare it with any other similar stories (such as Doris Lessing's Through the Tunnel in this collection) which you have read.

10. Can you find any hint of racism in the story? Compare the worlds in which the white men in the story and the Indians live. Do you see any big differences in the story?


Michelene Wandor

 

Michelene Wandor was born in London in 1940, has worked as a poetry editor and theatre reviewer for Time Out magazine, and has written extensively for the theatre and the radio. Her publications include a volume of plays, two books of poetry and an interesting collection of what the author calls " fictions" entitled Guests in the Body in which the theme of possession is explored in a variety of contexts and fictional forms.

 

Sweet Sixteen[830]

Sixteen soft pink blankets fold inwards over sixteen soft warm smiling babies. Sixteen dark-haired young mothers meet their sixteen babies' soft mouths in a kiss. Sixteen mothers and babies recede[831] into the soft-focus[832] blues and greens of sixteen immaculate[833] gardens.

Naomi looks round to see the cluster[834] of orher mothers, like herself mesmerized[835] by Granada TV Rental's[836] windows. The mothers swap[837] little grins[838] and turn their attention back to the real babies bundled in push-chairs and prams. The cluster breaks, and its various components span[839] out across the cool marble floor, past the glass and perspex[840] walls, through the chrome and glass doors and into the world of echoing footsteps, surrounding arcades and fountains and climbing and weeping[841] shrubbery[842]. Lucy strains[843] to stand up in her push-chair. Naomi eases[844] her out of canvas straps and settles her on the red seat of the silver trolley. She pauses momentarily, to decide which is to be the first aisle[845] of the journey; should, she start with soft drinks, vegetables, frozen foods, tins – she decides on fruit juice.

As they wheel past the rack of special-offer Mars bars, Naomi gently deflects[846].

Lucy's outstretched hand, her thumb briefly stroking the soft palm of Lucy's hand. I could do the shopping with my eyes shut, thinks Naomi, once a week 1'for how many weeks, everything always in the same place. She turns the trolley to the right, to the fridge where the pineapple juice cartons – she stops. I The open maw[847] of the fridge gapes[848]. It is empty. Ah well. Perhaps they have run out of cartons of fruit juice.

She decides to do dairy products next; cream, buffer, some yoghurt – but instead, on the racks where the dairy products used to be, she finds pizzas, steak and kidney pies in coy[849] transparent wrappings, and further on packets of frozen, sleeping raspberries and apple and blackberry crumbles[850]. Something is wrong. She begins to collect, feeling uneasy that it isn't in the order of her choice, worried that if she leaves things now to go on to another aisle, they will have disappeared when she gets back.

She wheels on, to where she expects to find the vegetable racks: the net bags of French apples, the South African avocados, severely boycotted each time. But instead there are long blue and red spaghetti packets, rice, curled dusty[851] pasta. Again she collects, panic beginning to rise. She mustn't show it to Lucy, who is happy being wheeled at such sight-seeing speed, happy to have her outstretched hand denied, because her desire is being stroked at the rate of new products every thirty seconds.

Naomi makes confidently for the cold meat counter; it is dark, piled up with unattended towers of soft toilet paper; the plastic box where scraps of meat were sold cheaply, the ends of cuts, is upside down, empty. For the first time she notices the other women. They walk fast, their heads slightly bent, cradling[852] high-piled baskets, anxiety on their faces, grabbing cereals[853], bread, soap powders, cleansers, hurrying past pensioners, skirting[854] toddlers[855], running, running.

Lucy now has a fist in her mouth, enjoying the game, enjoying the deftness[856] of the domestic dodgems[857] where years of unthinking practice have enabled the women to anticipate[858] corners, come to a full stop at the precise point of need, to turn in a tight space, to avoid and yet not slacken speed. Naomi speeds up to join the pace, taking what she can wherever she can, until she arrives at the back of the floor space, at the point where the soft drinks used to be. Naomi gasps. The once smooth space is now a raw gash, copper cables twisting like thick muscle fibre, clinging to the broken brick and plaster gaps in the walls.

Naomi hears a voice saying. Nothing is where it was. Lucy giggles and she realizes that she has spoken out loud. She looks round. No one seems to have heard her. They are all too busy. Naomi looks down at the trolley. It is full of everything she has meant to buy, but none of it is in the right order, the order she is used to.

Naomi wheels the trolley slowly towards the cash tills[859]. Lucy, sensitive to the change in pace, stops giggling; she is now pale and still. Naomi joins a queue at a cash till, watching the other women, their eyes darting[860], their hands cupped protectively over their prospective[861] puchases, as if there were some danger of someone whisking[862] everything out again and back onto the alien shelves.

Naomi stands behind a woman who fumbles[863] for her cheque-book. Naomi watches as the white snakes with purple figures spill out of the tills, paper bags plastic carriers[864], boxes and baskets flash[865] between the tills and the plate glass[866] window.

Naomi's turn comes. She lifts a bottle of lemon and lime[867] out of the trolley.

The outside is sticky. Naomi moves her index[868] and second fingers to a dry part of the bottle, her hand slips, the bottle falls, its soft edge knocks against the rim of the conveyor belt and bursts.

Thick, bright green liquid squirts[869] luminously back into the trolley, over tins of tuna fish. Lucy claps her hands in delight, and reaching into the trolley, she lifts a packet of white self-raising flour[870] and drops it with a dull thud on the floor. A white cloud powders the feet of the women. Lucy giggles. Naomi feels a cloud of answering laughter rise in her, tries to keep it down, looks up and catches the eye of the woman queuing behind her. The woman smiles, ruffles Lucy's hair and then lifts a bag of tomatoes from her own basket and hurls[871] it overarm against the special offer of tea bags. Red seed drips down against the green boxes.

The women look at one other. Suddenly bits of flattened, squared ham fly free of their jellied[872], cellophane[873] packets, duck pate bursts out of its blue pottery bowls, salt and vinegar crisps[874]

crackle[875] underfoot, sliding through whiter than white cottage cheese, a treacle[876] pudding roosts[877]" among the spilled biscuit crumbs. The air is thick with suspended golden arcs from tinned peaches, rains of mint-flavoured petit pois[878], chunky[879] Branston pickle[880] washed along by mineral water from Malvern[881] spa[882].

The lights of the cash tills spark[883] white, the women sitting at the money machines aren't sure which way to turn, one surreptitiously[884] picks up a cucumber and slides it along the floor, into a welcoming pool of raspberry yoghurt.

Outside the plate glass window red and blue lights flash as pale men in dark blue peer through the window at all the Christmas and birthday and anniversary celebrations in one.

Ten feet away, sixteen dark-haired mothers smile at their babies for the sixteenth time and enfold them in sixteen warm, pink blankets.


Understanding the story

 

1. What image of the world do we get from the first paragraph of the story? Is it a true picture of life?

2. Why do the mothers grin at each other?

3. When does Naomi begin to worry, and why?

4. Wouldn't things be easier if she had a shopping-list?

5. Why does she begin to collect things she perhaps does not want instead of going on to another aisle and coming back later?

6. Why do you think she would have boycotted South African goods at the time this story was written? Would she still do so today?

7. Why is Lucy not worried by the changes in the supermarket?

8. Are the other women behaving in the same way as Naomi?

9. What is so worrying about what is happening at the back of the super-market?

10. When does Lucy's attitude towards the " game" of shopping change?

11. How does the " riot" start?

12. What part does Lucy play?

13. Can you find a medical term for the " cloud of answering laughter" which Naomi feels?

14. Is the reaction of the woman behind Naomi " normal"? What would she normally do?

15. Who are the " pate men in dark blue", and why are they pale?

16. What do you think the women in the supermarket are really celebrating?

 







Дата добавления: 2014-11-12; просмотров: 567. Нарушение авторских прав; Мы поможем в написании вашей работы!



Расчетные и графические задания Равновесный объем - это объем, определяемый равенством спроса и предложения...

Кардиналистский и ординалистский подходы Кардиналистский (количественный подход) к анализу полезности основан на представлении о возможности измерения различных благ в условных единицах полезности...

Обзор компонентов Multisim Компоненты – это основа любой схемы, это все элементы, из которых она состоит. Multisim оперирует с двумя категориями...

Композиция из абстрактных геометрических фигур Данная композиция состоит из линий, штриховки, абстрактных геометрических форм...

Механизм действия гормонов а) Цитозольный механизм действия гормонов. По цитозольному механизму действуют гормоны 1 группы...

Алгоритм выполнения манипуляции Приемы наружного акушерского исследования. Приемы Леопольда – Левицкого. Цель...

ИГРЫ НА ТАКТИЛЬНОЕ ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЕ Методические рекомендации по проведению игр на тактильное взаимодействие...

Философские школы эпохи эллинизма (неоплатонизм, эпикуреизм, стоицизм, скептицизм). Эпоха эллинизма со времени походов Александра Македонского, в результате которых была образована гигантская империя от Индии на востоке до Греции и Македонии на западе...

Демографияда "Демографиялық жарылыс" дегеніміз не? Демография (грекше демос — халық) — халықтың құрылымын...

Субъективные признаки контрабанды огнестрельного оружия или его основных частей   Переходя к рассмотрению субъективной стороны контрабанды, остановимся на теоретическом понятии субъективной стороны состава преступления...

Studopedia.info - Студопедия - 2014-2024 год . (0.009 сек.) русская версия | украинская версия