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Answers to the questions below will help you to give and form your own opinion on the language of the story/extract/fragment.
1. Is the language of the work expressive/ powerful/ charged with emotion/ stylistically coloured?
Does the author make a vast use of tropes and figures of speech?
2. Is simplicity/ accessibility/ brevity/ concision/ etc. a characteristic feature of the author’s style?
3. Is the story written in a high-flown/ plain/ colloquial/ formal/ pompous/ bombastic/ lofty/ florid/ an informal/ elevated/ ornate/ ornamental/ austere/ etc. language?
What mood and atmosphere does it create?
4. Do all the personages speak good English? Is their accent or dialect suggestive? What can you say about the personages’ educational background and social class?
5. Which stylistic groups prevail in the story: bookish, colloquial, or neutral? What effect does it produce?
6. Are all the parts of the story written in the same style or are there any fragments, which are stylistically contrasted to the rest of the story because of the language and style?
7. Are there passages written in a kind of rhythmical prose? How is this rhythmic effect achieved? Does the rhythm create the effect of dynamism (monotony)?
8. What kind of atmosphere is rendered? (That of fuss/ fatigue/ haste/ annoyance/ panic/ terror/ etc.)
PRACTICE WITH EXTRACTS
From The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
By Stephen King
1. Read the extract below and divide it into logical parts.
2. What mood is imposed by the first sentence of the extract? What stylistic device is used to produce this effect?
3. Is the impression sustained by the next sentence? Why not? What details create the atmosphere of serenity? What have you learned about the character of the extract from this sentence? Come out with as much information as possible.
4. Why is the first impression of trouble resumed in the sentence “By eleven o’clock…”? What stylistic devices set this mood back? Where is the character now? (What happened to her?) Is she in real danger? What stylistic devices make you think so?
The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. At ten o’clock on a morning in early June she was sitting in the back seat of her mother’s Dodge Caravan, wearing her blue Red Sox batting practice jersey (the one with 36 GORDON on the back) and playing with Mona, her doll. By eleven o’clock she was trying not to be terrified, trying not to let herself think, This is serious, this is very serious. Trying not to think that sometimes when people got lost in the woods they get seriously hurt. Sometimes they died
From The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
By Stephen King
1. Read the extract below and ascertain how many characters are involved in it. What are they? What have you learned about them? Describe the situation. What details make you think so?
2. What mood is set by the first sentence of the extract? What stylistic devices help to produce this effect?
3. Who is the main character of the extract? Is the atmosphere of the extract rendered impartially or through the character’s eyes? What stylistic devices determine this? What is her attitude to the situation she is involved in? Use the necessary stylistic devices for illustration and support of your opinion.
4. What is your impression about the main character?
She was tired of listening to them argue, tired of sounding bright and cheerful, close to screaming at her mother, Let him go, then! If he wants to go back to Malden and live with Dad so much, why don’t you just let him? I’d drive him myself if I had a license, just to get some peace and quiet around here! And what then? What would her mother say then? What kind of look would come over her face? And Pete. He was older, almost fourteen, and not stupid, so why didn’t he know better? Why couldn’t he just give it a rest?
From The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
By Stephen King
1. Read the extract below, state where the character is.
2. Do you think she is familiar with and feels comfortable in the environment judging by the first sentence of the extract? What stylistic devices help you to form your opinion?
3. Is the extract a description, a narration or an exposition? Give your reasons.
4. Speak about the image of the woods.
a) What method of characterization is used: direct or indirect?
b) Is the image rendered through the author’s or the character’s eyes?
c) Analyse the stylistic devices used to create this image; group them in accordance with the impression they produce. Does the impression change throughout the extract? Support your opinion with the necessary stylistic devices.
d) Has the author succeeded in creating an image of something alive while describing the woods? What means did he use for the purpose?
e) What effect is produced by gradation in the last line of the extract?
Trisha had never felt as much like a town girl as she did while that miserable, terrifying day was winding down toward dark. The woods came in clenches, it seemed to her. For a while she would walk through great old strands of pine, and there the forest seemed almost all right, like the woods in a Disney cartoon. Then one of those clenches would come and she would find herself struggling through snarly clumps of scrubby trees and thick bushes (all too many of the latter the kind with thorns), fighting past interlaced branches that clawed for her arms and eyes. Their only purpose seemed to be obstruction, and as mere tiredness slipped toward exhaustion, Trisha began to impute them with actual intelligence, a sly and hurtful awareness of the outsider in the ragged blue poncho. It began to seem to her that their desire to scratch her – to perhaps even get lucky and poke out one of her eyes – was actually secondary; what the bushes really wanted was to shut her away from the brook, her path to other people, her ticket out.
From Come Together
by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees
1. Read the extract below and state whether it is the first, the third or anonymous narration.
2. Is it a dramatic or interior monologue? Give your reasons and illustration from the extract.
3. Say in one sentence what situation is described in the extract.
4. Find proof that the girl is extremely displeased with the way she looks. What stylistic devices do the authors resort to for the purpose?
5. What trope is used to show the girl’s attitude to Jack [her boyfriend]? Do you think she has quarreled with him?
6. What is the girl’s problem now? How is she going to solve it? What stylistic device is used for expressing her decision?
7. Analyse the last paragraph and say whether she is going to put her idea into practice. Find the trope to back up your opinion.
Make-up doesn’t work!
It’s con!
It’s Friday morning and I’ve put on so many stripes of concealer under my eyes and across my nose that I look like Adam Ant, but the bags under my eyes are still glaringly obvious. Why can’t I sleep any more? It’s not fair. I used to be the Martini girl of sleep: I could do it anytime, anyplace, anywhere. It’s all bloody Jack’s fault. If this unrelenting insomnia carries on, I’m going to start doing Valium.
I scowl at myself in the mirror. There is no point. I already look like the girl on the anti-drugs poster.
From Come Together
by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees
8. Read the extract below and state whether it is the first, the third or anonymous narration.
9. Is it a dramatic or interior monologue? What makes you think so?
10. Say in one sentence what situation is described in the extract.
11. Divide the extract into logical parts.
12. Analyse the first part of the extract and prove that the young man is glad to see the girl he is dating. Use the necessary stylistic devices for illustration.
13. Do you think he is surprised at his impression about the girl? To answer this question analyse the sentence “Last time I saw her…” to find out what the girl looked like during their previous meeting, and compare it with the part that begins with “Now, though…”
14. What stylistic devices create the effect of contrast? How does the girl look now in the young man’s opinion? What stylistic devices can you present to prove it?
15. How does he feel about the girl?
Amy’s standing there with a kind of wide smile that makes it impossible not to smile right on back. This kind of rattles me. A good sort of rattle, though, it has to be said – more baby than snake. Last time I saw her, what with all the freaking out she was doing about her recently deceased sex life and her unrequited crush on Matt, her lips had been all squished together like for want of a kinder description, a pair of mating slugs. Now, though – well, I have to, and am more than glad to. Admit – they’ve got a K and an I and an S and an S written all over them. Clothes-wise, she’s wearing a funky little black skirt and grab-me grey top. She looks good. Seriously. Beautiful. And confident. She holds my stare and, as she does, my nerves come surging back.
From Vertical Run by Joseph R. Garber
1. Read the extract below and divide it into logical parts. Give reasons for your division.
2. Analyze the opening part. What is the advantage of opening the fragment in such a way? Where is the action set?
3. Do you share the narrator’s opinion on the stated types of time? Which one was welcome by the soldiers? Why?
4. Find cases of metonymy in the fragment and dwell upon their symbolic functions.
5. Are the first two paragraphs contrasting? What is the role of polysyndeton in them?
6. What expressive means help to render the atmosphere of tension in the final paragraph?
7. What idea lies behind the antithesis “Nothing fazes them … They weep»?
8. Does the author exaggerate man’s behaviour at war? What stylistic devices does he resort to for this purpose?
9. How do you think it feels being a war soldier?
Here in the jungle there are two kinds of time – long time and slow time. Long time is what you usually get. You sit beneath a tree or in a hooch or in a field tent, or maybe you’re tiptoeing Indian file through the boonies, and nothing happens. Hours pass and nothing happens. Then you look at your Timex and discover that it has only been five minute since the last time you looked at it. Long time.
The other kind of time is slow time. There’s a flat metallic snap, the receiver of an AK-47 chambering a round. Then there is fire and explosions and screams and the whine of bullet all around and each one aimed at you for unending eternity. And when, after hours of hot terror, and no little rage, the shooting stops, you come back from hell and glance at your Timex.
Guess what? Five minutes have passed since the last time you looked at it.
Slow time. The clock gets choked with molasses. Men weep at how slow the seconds pass. They are MACV-SOG. Their shoulder patch is a fanged skull wearing a green beret. They are the hardest of the hard, the baddest of the bad. Nothing fazes them. They look at their watches. They weep.
From Vertical Run by Joseph R. Garber
1. What effect do the opening sentences of the fragment produce on the reader? What expressive means serve this purpose?
2. What mood is the main character in? What syntactic means make the character’s thoughts emotional?
3. What do you think was the character’s problem?
4. What simile reveals the character’s attitude to his pursuers?
5. What stylistic device prevails in the second paragraph of the fragment? What device helps to feel the character’s bitter irony?
Madness. Sheer lunacy. As unnecessary as it was unspeakable. All they had to do was explain it to him. He would have understood. He would not have been happy, but he would not have run. If they had told him what Ransome was telling him now, he would have cooperated. They could have offered to take him somewhere to a clean room, sterile, isolated from the outside world. Or they could have put him on a deserted island, or some other safe place. All they would have had to do was let him die with a little dignity. He wouldn’t have resisted. How could he have resisted? Knowing the truth, he would have surrendered.
But instead, they decided to treat him like a rabid animal. We’re licensed operatives, Mr. Elliot, highly trained professionals, and we know what’s best. Besides, we don’t trust anyone enough to tell you the truth. We don’t trust anyone enough to tell them that. We’ll lie to you, and we’ll lie to your friends, and we’ll lie to the people who pay us. That’s our way. Mr. Elliot, and if you aren’t used to it by now, you never will be. So kindly be a good little citizen, and don’t give us any trouble while we clear up our problem in the traditional way.
From Vertical Run by Joseph R. Garber
1. Read the fragment below. What is the stylistic advantage of the first line of the fragment?
2. Specify the cases of insertion and say what purpose they serve.
3. What trope is the first paragraph built upon? What touch does it give to the narration?
4. Does the first paragraph end climatically or anticlimatically?
5. What other figures of speech round up the fragment? What effect does it produce?
6. Is betrayal pardonable, in your opinion? Give your reasons.
One can lie, cheat, steal, and murder, and do so with an untroubled conscience. David Elliot did not, doubt that a.k.a. John Ransome, to take but one example, slept well at night, and was not troubled in his dreams. Anyone can break the commandments, each and everyone of them, and not feel the worse for it. There is no depravity or sin so vicious for which a man, given time and the proper attitude, cannot pardon himself – and for which others, in the end, will no absolve him… but for one exception, the sole offence that is never forgiven, never forgotten. No soldier will forgive a comrade-in-arms who has betrayed him.
No betrayer will forgive himself.
From The Web by Jonathan Kellerman
1. Read the fragment below and say what parts it falls into.
2. Point out the suspense at the beginning of the first part. Is the reader’s attention grasped instantly?
3. Find the chiasmus and dwell on the effect produced. How did the main character feel about the lizard?
4. What syntactic means are used to describe the lizard?
5. What synonyms are used by the author to describe the way the lizard’s behaviour? What is the aim of rendering one and the same meaning through the three synonymous verbs?
6. Does the first part of the fragment stand in contrast to the second part? Prove it.
7. Pick out cases of irony in the second part of the fragment. How do they hint at the characters’ relations?
8. Point out the case of pun. Why is its use advantageous?
9. Is the image of lizard sinister or innocent or humorous? Is it symbolic?
10. What stylistic device rounds up the fragment? What idea lies behind it?
A rasping noise woke me. Scratching at one of the screens.
I sat up fast, saw it.
A small lizard, rubbing its foreclaws against the mesh.
I got out of bed and had a closer look.
It stayed there. Light brown body speckled with black. Skinny head and unmoving eyes.
It stared at me. I waved. Unimpressed, it scratched some more, finally scampered away…
I told her about the lizard. “So don’t be alarmed if it happens again.”
“Was he cute?”
“Who said it was a he?”
“Girls don’t peep through other people’s windows.”
“Now that I think about it, he did seem to be ogling you.” I narrowed my eyes and flicked my tongue. “Probably a lounge lizard.”
She laughed and got out of bed. Putting on a robe, she walked around, flexing her wrist.
“How does it feel?”
“Better actually. All the warm air.”
“And doing nothing.”
“Yes,” she said. “The power of positive nothing.”
From The Class by Eric Segal
1. Read the extract below and state its theme.
2. How is the fast moving time depicted in the first paragraph? What simile contributes to the effect? Pick out more stylistic devices which serve the same purpose.
3. How does the second paragraph introduce the theme of the extract?
4. What happened to Norman Gordon on the afternoon of his General Exams in History and Lit.? What tropes and figures of speech are used to portray his inner state?
5. How can you account for the ironic ring of the extract despite the tragic event? How does it show the author’s attitude to his personage? What role does it play in revealing the message of the extract?
Like the stretto in a fugue, spring term accelerated the tempo of a melody already racing to its conclusion. May seemed to enter even before April ended. Those who just completed senior theses barely had time to catch their breaths before taking General Examinations.
Some of the Class availed themselves of this, their final opportunity to have a nervous breakdown.
On the afternoon of his General Exams in History and Lit., Norman Gordon of Seattle, Washington, was found wandering on the banks of the Charles – providentially by his own tutor.
“Hey, Norm, did you finish writing this early?”
“No,” replied the senior who had kept a straight-A average till now, a maniac glow in his eyes. “I’ve decided that I don’t like my major at all. In fact, I’m planning not to graduate. I’m going out west to start a cattle ranch.”
“Oh,” said the tutor, then gently led him to the Health Department.
And psychiatry picked up where education had left off.
But in a sense young Gordon had succeeded in his unconscious aspiration: he had managed to avoid having to leave the four-walled shelter of a paternal institution.
From The Blue Note by Charlotte Bingham
1. Read the extract below and say what it is about. What was it that made the characters happy? What stylistic device introduces the characters’ realization of their remaining alive?
2. What figures of speech used in the first paragraph represent hardships which the characters had to overcome in the wartime?
3. What does the author mean by ‘the Yellow Peril” and “the Red Peril”? Name the trope used here.
4. What stylistic device links the two paragraphs? Is its usage advantageous? Give your reasons.
5. What expressive means make the second paragraph sound even more optimistic?
6. Analyze the cases of parallel constructions and insertion in the second paragraph and explain their purpose.
7. Comment on the use of italics in the extract.
8. What kind of repetitions does the author use in the extract? How do they render his message? What is the message?
Afterwards they said there was never to be a time quite like it again. It was not just the exuberance, and not just the fun of it either; it was the sudden realization that they were actually alive. That despite the war, doodlebugs, rationing, dreary clothes and even drearier food, despite the A-bomb and the H-bomb, despite Korea and Malaya, despite Russia and the Berlin Wall, despite the terrible treat of Communism and Marxism, the Yellow Peril and the Red Peril, despite almost everything they knew or had been told about the doom of days gone past, and the doom of days yet to come, despite all that – they were still living, and on the earth.
And what was more, and what was better, they were young, and some of them were not just young, but beautiful. Not that it mattered, beautiful or not beautiful, pretty or not pretty, handsome or not handsome; it did not matter a single, solitary little damn not once they came to and realized that after all that – all those dead people, all those fathers that had not come back, uncles who had never returned, mothers whom they had never known – they were actually alive.
But first – they had to grow up.
From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong
1. Why do you think the fragment opens with the description of the main character's wristwatch? What mood is set in by the opening paragraph?
2. Analyse the images of the wristwatch and the wind. How are they introduced in the fragment? What is their role?
3. Specify cases of metonymy, metaphor, and simile; say what purpose they serve.
4. Pick out the case of allusion and speak on its function. What effect does it create in the fragment?
5. Comment on the role of syntactic devices used in the fragment
6. What kind of girl is protrayed by the author? Is her image positive or negative? Give yor reasons.
7. What idea is emphacised by the framing, beginning with: "...meant nothing" and ending by "it didn't matter which any more."
He glanced at his wristwatch, but the face was cracked and the hands bent and the luminous dots meant nothing. And a wind came up and gathered the rain together and blew it directly into his eyes. Where was she – this girl he barely knew? He remembered her waif-like face and the detachment in her eyes and her long legs under the short blue velvet skirt, the white shoes with the thick clunky heels. He remembered how she'd drunk vodka like there was a new Prohibition Law about to be enacted. Sometimes she'd tried to make a fluting sound by pressing he r lips against the neck of the bottle and blowing. He'd seen the shape of her mouth by the light of the instrument panel and been distracted by it. Or enchanted. It didn't matter which any more.
From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong
Read the fragment bellow and answer the following questions:
1. The combination of what tropes and figures of speech introduces Nick in the fragment?
2. Did Nick fancy Darcy? What hints at it?
3. Does the author use direct or indirect method of character drawing while decribing Nick? Give your reasons.
4. What trope makes Nick's description vivid?
5. What syntactic devices convey Darcy's attitude to Nick?
Nick, handsome in a dark, gypsy kind of way – as if he knew ancient secrets, which wasn't even close to the truth – gazed at her across the table. "It's not like you can dance to it, Darcy. You can't even tap your feet.
"I'm trying to down grade you," Nick said. He stretched out his arm and laid his hand on the back of her fingers. He had soft hands. They felt like cotton handkerchiefs that had been dried out-doors on a spring day. He was eighteen and on his way to college in the Fall, and when he graduated he'd work in the family company, which produced something Darcy didn't like, some tissues, towels, toilet rolls, what have you.
From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong
1. Read the extract bellow and say what it is about.
2. What was Boyle's problem was judging by the extract? What lexical and syntactic devices describe his inner state? Specify each case and comment on it.
3. What figure of speech used in the second paragraph and the following dialogue makes Boyle's frustration even more pronounced?
4. What does the sentence: "And conscience was loud-mouthed luxury" imply?
5. Analyse the suspense culminating in Vass's astonishment. What was the reason for it? Why is the word "thirteen" italicised?
6. What do you make of Vass's last words? What stylistic device decodes Vass's idea? What idea is this?
Boyle's scalp was tingling. It's all too much now: huge rushes of unfocused energy, thoughts that don't gell, collisions between what's real and what's shadows of doorways, Revenue guys going through his canceled checks on microfiche at the bank, special warrants signed by judges – you could image the whole works […]
Why had he lied to Vass about it? Some vestigial shame? I don't feel shame. Shame's what happens when you hand a megaphone to your conscience. And conscience was loud-mouthed luxury […]
Vass was quiet moment. "What age is she?"
"She could pass for twenty," Boyle said.
"Yeah, but how old is she?"
Boyle stood up. "You stay here if you want. I'm going out."
"Wait –"
"Don't stop me, Rudy." He was all haste now, looking for a jacket, shoes, rummaging around. It was important to hit the streets. When I find her, she's in serious trouble.
Vass said, "You didn't answer my question."
"OK. Thirteen. One three."
"Thirteen? Unlucky number, man. Real evil vibes."
From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong
1. How does the extract open? What tone is the first paragraph written in?
2. Why didn't the main character throw out his late wife's prsonal belongings?
3. What expressive means are used by the author to drive his reasons home to the reader?
4. What seems to be the man's problem, judging by the two sentences of the second paragraph?
5. What was wrong with the man's wife? What stylistic devices make us understand it?
6. What is the author's purpot of using so many names of pills?
7. Comment on the role of the figure of speech which rounds the fourth paragraph. What other tropes and figures of speech convey the man's fury directed at the pills?
8. What stylistic devices bring the extract to the end? Speak on their function.
He wondered why he'd never gotten round to throwing the entire pharmacy out. For the same reason he'd kept all her clothing, all her jewelry, he supposed. Whatever that reason was called. Something the heart stoked up. The demands of love, the deranged idea that you kept the essence of the person by hanging on to their possessions – as if one bright afternoon she might just materialize under a halo in the doorway and say, Sorry I left you alone this long, my love. He didn't need this and he didn't need to look up at Harriet's photograph either, goddamit – that oval face and those solemn eyes with melancholy secrets hidden in them, things she'd never explained, couldn't have explained, monsters trapped in the dead-end labyrinth of her mind.
You drifted from me, he thought. And I fill the cold emptiness any way I can.
Darcy came back in the room. "Here." She was holding out a pll to him. "I'm not sure it's the smart thing to take it with brandy," she said.
He looked at the sky0blue tab. It was called Limbitrol, he remembered. It was only one of a bunch with names that rolled easily off the tongue. Elavil and Surmontil. They sounded like futuristic candies. Here, kids, chew these down. Try some Prozac while you're at it. They'd done nothing for Harriet except drive her deeper into that impenetrable pocket where she'd lived her life. He placed the pill in his mouth and swallowed it with brandy. Quickly. He didn't want the taste of it.
The telephone was ringing. The sound, shrill and unexpected and yet so goddam commonplace, went through Samsa's head like a vibrating ice pick. Darcy answered, then handed the phone to him.
From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong
1. Read the extract below and say what it is about.
2. Do the first and the following paragraphs of the extract stand in contrast? What is described in each of them?
3. What can you say about Samsa’s imagination? What techniques does the author use to depict his flow of thoughts?
4. What ruins the serene picture in Samsa’s mind? What stylistic device is it?
5. Is the simile used in the third paragraph powerful? Why couldn’t Samsa grasp the message of the letter judging by Brodsky’s words?
6. Do you share Brodsky’s stateme? Are you a fatalist?
Samsa went out into the corridor. He walked a few yards, paused a moment to drink from a water fountain. Bending to the spout, he closed his eyes and imagined himself drinking from a mountain stream, the air around him chill and clear and his heart filled with the joy of being, and if he opened his eyes he’d see mountains, deep green valleys, a hawk circling freely and full-winged in the sky. But the water tasted of the chemicals the city treatmentplant pumped int it.
He splashed his face, let water spill down his shirt, then went back to his ffice.
Brodsky tossed a sheet of paper on the desk. Samsa picked up the sheet. He stared at the handwriting and somehow couldn’t get beyond iit to the message it cntained, as if the meanings of the words were imprisoned within the letters.
“Life’s a bitch sometimes,” Brodsky said.
From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong
1. Read the extract bellow and say what it is about.
2. What mood is set in by the first paragraph?
3. Is the first paragraph suggestive of the mood, which is enhanced in the second and the third paragraphs? Give your reasons. Here you may speak on the role of segmentation in the description of the man's anxiety.
4. What tropes and figures of speech help the author to depict the man's hallucinatory mind?
5. Speak on the rhythm created by the paralle constructions in the closing paragraph. What stylistic devices follow them? Dwell upon their role.
They walked downstairs to the living room. He went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a large cognac, noticing the Scrabble game on the coffee table. "Nick gone home?" He needed to make small talk. Where you didn't have to think. As if you were concussed.
"A few minutes ago."
He swallowed some of the brandy. He sat down, and the room rushed at him all at once as if he had turned over just like the Chrysler. He was dizzy and faint and felt like an astronaut inside a space capsule. There were inversions, strange flips, optical illusions. A voltage spike on the graph of perception. Photographs turning over, Harriet's lovely face upside down on the mantelpiece, the hands of the clock hurrying backwards.
His fingers shook. The brandy in the glass rippled. He closed his eyes. What he saw behind his eyelids was shallow pool of water and the broken branch and something black flapping in the air like a predatory bird, eyes lethal.
From Simply Divine by Wendy Holden
1. Read the extract bellow and assertain its theme. Is it states right at once?
2. What mood is set by the opening paragraph?
3. What was Jane's problem? How did Jane find herself on the staircase?
4. Group the metaphors and epithets used in the extract. Say what effect is produced by each group to serve the author's purpot.
5. Account for the author's choice of the words "click", "yowling", "um" in the extract.
6. PIck out the sentences written in the ironic key. Comment on them.
7. What other stulistic devices jump into the reader's eye? What effect do they rpoduce?
8. Was Jane attracted to the man who helped her re-enter her flat? What stylistic devices contribute to this idea?
9. What makes Jane's defeated expectancy at the end of the extract so pronounced?
Jane went into the bathroom and shot out again instantly. The air was filled with an ear-splitting shriek which she realized , after a few seconds, was her own. To accompany it, a series of crashing thuds from upstairs shook the flat above. But Jane hardly noticed. The last thing to register with any of her senses was the huge spider crouched in the bottom of the bath. Vast, malevolent and murdorous - looking, with terrifying markings on its back, it had evidently marched in from the garden while they were reading the papers.
Still sreaching, Jane bolted through the hall and out into the entrance passageway, leaving the door of the flat wide open. As she paused for breath, she heard it click hut behind her.
"Need any help?"
Head spinning with fear of the hideous beast in the tub and the dawning, dreadful awareness that she was locked out of the flat, Jane stared wildly up the stairwelll to the next floor. The man from upstairs was leaning over the barrister. Grinning at her. Grinning, it had to be said, more widely than the circumstances merited. [...]
"What were you yowling about? What's the problem?"
"Well," Jane muttered, suddenly feeling silly. "Ther's, um,ther's, um, there's a rather large spider in my, um, bath."
"Spiders won't hurt you," said her neighbour breezily. "It won't even move unless you make it. The whole point of a spider is being a spider. They don't go in for sightseeing or aerobics."
"Well, this one got a leotard on, actually," flashed back Jane, remembering the nasty markings and determined to claw back some dignity out of the situation. [...]
Two minutes later he had bounded down again, opened the latch with a credit card, entered the flat, and flipped the spider out of the bathroom window.
"Thank you so much," said Jane, stiff with embarrassment and cold.
"It's a pleasure. I'm Tom, by the way." He flashed her another knee-trembler of a grin.
"I'm Jane."
"Yes," he said. "I know."
"You know?" Her heart swooped in a somersault. He knew her name. Jane surrendered herself to the thrilling thought that he must have more than a passing interest in her to bother finding out what she was called.
"Yes. There's a pile of bills with your name and address on them by your door."
From Dance While You Can
By Susan Lewis
Read the passage bellow and answer the following questions:
1. Why does the passage sound retrospective? What is it about?
2. How did the two sweethearts use to spend their free time together?
3. What is implied by “the fairground and Violet May”? what is it suggestive of?
4. What metaphors describe the man’s pleasure of such a pastime? Is it typical of people in love to exchange their dreams and fantasie? Why so?
5. What kind of epithet is the epithet “ear-shattering”? What is its role in the passage? How and why did the man’s mood change at the end of the given passage?
Looking back now, I think we both knew how selfish we were being, but at the time we were so much in love that nothing else seemed to matter. I listened for hours while she told me about the fairground and Violet May. Then I basked in her admiration as I told her about the cases I had been involved in, shamelessly exaggerating my successes. I’m sure she knew what I was doing, but nevertheless allowed me to wander on in my own fantasy world – until, once with an ear-shattering snore, she brought me back to earth again.
From Dance While You Can
By Susan Lewis
Read the extract bellow and answer the following questions:
1. How is the extract opened? What does the advantage of the first sentence lie in?
2. What did the newcomer look like? What stylistic devices make the man’s description vivid? Give your commetary on every case.
3. Which sentences prove that the narrator had a very rich imagination? Whom did the narrator associate the newcomer with? How is the association achieved?
4. Enlarge upon the role of similes in the given extract.
5. What compositional device rounds up the second paragraph? Specify the synonyms which intensify the effect.
6. Why did the narrator try to sound humorous in the third paragraph of the extract?
7. How are further events likely to develop? Support your viewpoint.
8. Is bigamy a crime? What’s your attitude to it?
Rachel and I teurned to find a tall blond man standing on the pavement outside, shuffling uncomfortably from one foot to the other as if he were more than ready to move on. The collar of a purplish check shirt appeared above the neck of his fur-lined leather jacket, and his jeans, which had seen better days, were stuffed inside the legs of what looked like size fourteen cowboy boots. All he needed to complete his appearance was a corck-dangled hat and a can of lager.
“I think I’ll be on my way,” Rache said. She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. And she ran off down the steps. The man smiled pleasantly as she passed him, and doffed the invisible hat. I followed her down the steps and asked what he might want with Lizzie. He hooked his thumbs through his jeans loops, as if trying to give himself a confidence he was clearly far from feeling, and leaned against the pillar of the proch. I listened in stupefied silence as this stranger, who had appeared out of the darkness on a cold and windy March night, told me who he was, and why he was looking for my sister-in-law. I was dumbfounded. I was astonished. In the end I asked him to wait, and went inside to fetch Henry, Lizzie’s husband.
I let him take a good look at the man standing at the door before I made the introduction. “Henry Clive, meet John Roseman. Or should I put it another way. Henry, meet Lizzie’s husband.”
From Rage of Angels by Sidney Sheldon
1. Read the extract bellow and. state whether it is narration, description or exposition. Is it the first-person, the third-person or anonymous?
2. Consider how Mary Beth Warner is portrayed by the author:
a) Is she presented in a negative or positive light?
b) What means of characterization does the author resort to for the purpose?
c) What stylistic devices does he select to achieve the effect?
d) Group the epithets used in the extract and say what purpose they serve.
e) How does the setting contribute to the description of Mary Beth Warner?
f) What is the role of the last sentence of the extract?
The following morning, Jennifer drove out the Saw Mill River Parkway, headed upstate. It was a crisp, clear morning, a lovely day for a drive. Jennifer turned on the car radio and tried to forget her nervousness about the meeting facing her.
The Warner house was a magnificently preserved house of Dutch origin, overlooking the river at Croton-on-Hudson, set on a large estate of rolling green acres. Jennifer drove up the driveway to the imposing front entrance. She rang the bell and a moment later the door was opened by an attractive woman in her middle thirties. The last thing Jennifer had expected was this shy southern woman who took her hand, gave her a warm smile and said, “I’m Mary Beth. Adam didn’t do you justice. Please come in.”
Adam’s wife was wearing a beige wool skirt that was softly full, and a silk blouse opened just enough to reveal a mature but still lovely breast. Her beige-blond hair was worn long and slightly curling about her face, and was flattering to her blue eyes. The pearls around her neck could never be mistaken as cultured. There was an air of old-world dignity about Mary Beth Warner.
The interior of the house was lovely, with wide, spacious rooms filled with antiques and beautifu paintings.
A butler served tea in the drawing room from a Georgian silver tea service.
From Whispers by Dean Koontz
1. Read the extract bellow and formulate its theme.
2. State whether it is narration, description or exposition. Is it the first-person, the third-person or anonymous?
3. Divide it into logical parts. Say whether they are logically connected or set in contrast.
4. Read the opening sentence of the extract again. How does it introduce the author's purport?
5. Analyse the next part of the extract:
a) Whose collective image is portrayed by the author here? What stylistic device does he resort to for the purpose?
b) What is the rank and file's opinion of Hollywood public life?
c) What is the function of segmentation at the end of this paragraph? What effect does it produce?
6. Analyse the last paragraph of the extract:
a) How does the first sentence of the paragraph set contrast to what was described previously? What is the function of anaphora here?
b) What is the real life of people in movie and television industries? Find as much evidence as you can to illustrate the contrast between the established image and the real one.
c) Does the extract end climatically or anticlimatically? What effect does the ending produce?
The public image of Hollywood life had very little to do with the facts. Secretaries, shopkeepers, clerks, taxi drivers, mechanics, housewives, waitresses, people all over the country, in everyday jobs of all kinds came home weary from work and sat in front of the television and dreamed about life among the stars. In the vast collective mind that brooded and murmured from Hawaii to Maine and from Florida to Alaska, Hollywood was a sparkling blend of wild parties, fast women, easy money, too much whiskey, too much cocaine, lazy sunny days, drinks by the pool, vacation in Acapulco and Palm Springs, sex in the back seat of a fur-lined Rolls-Royce. A fantasy. An illusion. She supposed that a society long abused by corrupt and incompetent leaders, a society standing upon pilings that had been rotten by inflation and excess taxation, a society existing in the cold shadow of sudden nuclear annihilation, needed its illusions if it were to survive. In truth, people in the movie and television industries worked harder than almost anyone else, even though the product of their labour was not always, perhaps not even often, worth the effort. The star of a successful television series worked from dawn till nightfall, often fourteen or sixteen hours a day. Of course, the rewards were enormous. But in reality, the parties were not so wild, the women no faster than women in Philadelphia or Hackensack or Tampa, the days sunny but seldom lazy, and the sex exactly the same as it was for secretaries in Boston and shopkeeper in Pittsburgh.
From Whispers by Dean Koontz
1. Read the extract bellow and say what it about.
2. State whether it is narration, description or exposition. Is it the first-person, the third-person or anonymous?
3. Divide the extract into logical parts and explain your choice.
4. Analyse the first paragraph of the extract:
a) What mood is imposed in it? What stylistic devices is this mood realized through?
b) What is wrong with the character?
c) Pick out different metaphors which illustrate the character's fear of loss? Why does she think that she did not deserve what she has?
d) How does the gradation of similes enhance her anxiety?
5. Analyse the second paragraph of the extract:
a) Is the mood of this paragraph the same? What stylistic device is responsible for this effect?
b) Speak of the character's childhood to explain why she was so afraid to lose what she had. Pick out all the necessary tropes and figures of speech for illustration of your conclusions.
c) What is the function of the represented speech at the end of the paragraph? How does it change the mood of the whole extract?
5. What is the message of the extract in your opinion?
She knew exactly what was wrong with her. Her jumpiness was a symptom of the I-don’t-deserve-all-this-happiness disease, a mental disorder with which she was intimately acquainted. She had come from nowhere, from nothing, and now she had everything. Subconsciously, she was afraid that God would take notice of her and decide that she didn’t deserve what she’d been given. Then the hammer would fall. Everything she had accumulated would be smashed and swept away: the house, the car, the bank accounts… her new life seemed like a fantasy, a marvelous fairytale, too good to be true, certainly too good to last.
No. Dammit, no! She had to stop belittling herself and pretending that her accomplishments were only the result of good fortune. Luck had nothing to do with it. Born into a house of despair, nurtured not with milk and kindness but with uncertainty and fear, unloved by her father and merely tolerated by her mother, raised in home where self-pity and bitterness had driven out all hope, she had of course grown up without a sense of real worth. For years she had struggled with an inferiority complex. Bit that was behind her now. Se had been through therapy. She understood herself. She didn’t dare those doubts rise again within her. The house and car and money would not be taken away; she did deserve them. She worked hard, and she had talent.
From Man and Boy by Tony Parsons
1. Read the extract bellow and formulate its theme.
2. What narrative method and techniques are used in it? Come out with the examples from the extract to prove your opinion.
3. Does the opening sentence set the mood for the whole fragment? What mood is this? How do the first two paragraphs enhance it?
4. Why do Gina’s things “have to go”? Pick out the tropes that show the character’s attitude to them?
5. Find the paragraph, in which the character’s wife is described. What effect does she produce on the reader? What stylistic devices serve this purpose?
6. Analyse the part about the character’s removing Gina’s things:
a) Is it an easy job for him? Give evidence from the extract.
b) Find the metaphor which portrays the bookshelves after sorting out. How does it contribute to the general mood of the extract?
c) Analyse the paragraph, which begins with “Starting to sweat hard…” What device is used to show that there were a lot of Gina’s thigns around? Find the trope that expresses the man’s desire to rid of his wife’s possessions. Why are the things described “all trash now”?
d) Provide the figure of speech, which shows the man’s amazement at the quick result of his job.
e) Why do you think the man spent another two hours putting everything back in place? What stylistic devices are used by the author to show it? How do they contribute to the description of the character’s despair?
7. Speak about the message of the extract
Gina was gone and she was everywhere. The house was full of CDs I would never listen to (sentimental soul music about love lost and found), books I would never read (women struggling to find themselves in a world full of rotten men) and clothes I would never wear (skimpy M&S underwear)
And Japan. Lots of books about Japan. All the classic texts that she had urged me to read – Black Rain, Pink Samurai, Barefoot Gen, Memories of Silk and Straw – and a battered old copy of Snow Country, the one I had actually read, the love story she said I had to read if I was ever going to understand.
Gina’s things, and they chewed up my heart every time I saw them.
They had to go.
I felt bad about throwing it all out, but then if someone leaves you, they really should take their stuff with them. Because every time I saw one of her Luther Vandross records or Margaret Atwood novels or books about Hiroshima, I felt all the choking grief rise up inside me again. And in the end I just couldn’t stand it any more.
Gina, I thought, with her dreams of undying love and hard-won independence, Gina who could happily accommodate Naomi Wolf’s steely, post-feminist thoughts and Whitney Houston’s sweet nothings.
That was my Gina all right.
So I got to work, stuffing everything she had left behind into rubbish sacks. The first one was quickly full – did the women never throw anything away? – so I went back into the kitchen and got an entire roll of heavy-duty bin-liners.
When I had finished removing all her paperbacks, the bookshelves looked like a mouth full of broken teeth.
Throwing away her clothes was much easier because there was no sorting involved. Soon her side of our wardrobe was empty apart from mothballs and wire coat hangers.
I felt better already.
Starting to sweat hard, I prowled the house mopping up what was left of her presence. There were all the Japanese prints from her single days. A painting she had bought on our holiday to Antigua when Pat was a baby. A pink razor on the edge of the bath. A couple of Gong Li videos. And a photograph of our wedding day with her looking like the most beautiful girl in the world and me grinning like a happy, dopey bastard who never believed he could get so lucky.
All trash now.
Finally, I looked in the laundry basket. Among Pat’s Star Wars pajamas and my faded Calvins there was the old Cap T-shirt that Gina liked to sleep in. I sat on the bottom of the stairs holding that T-shirt for a while, wondering what she was sleeping in tonight. And then I threw it into the last rubbish sack.
It’s amazing how quickly you can remove the evidence of someone’s life from the house. It takes so long to put your mark on a home, and so little time to wipe it away.
Then I spent another two hours fishing it all of the rubbish sacks and carefully returning the clothes, the CDs, the books, the prints and everything else to exactly where I had found them.
Because I missed her. I missed her like mad.
And I wanted all her things to be just as she had left them, all ready and waiting for her in case she ever felt like coming back home.
From Man and Boy by Tony Parsons
1. Read the extract bellow and say what it is about. What stylistic device is used to introduce the theme in the opening sentence?
2. Speak about the narrative method and techniques used in the extract. How do they characterize the narrator?
3. What method of characterization does the author use to portray the man?
4. What is the character’s attitude to his thirtieth birthday at the beginning of the extract?
5. Is the mood set in the extract optimistic or pessimistic? Find evidence from the extract to prove your opinion.
6. Prove that the man can’t choose how to celebrate this birthday. What images arise in his mind? How do they contribute to your impression about him?
7. Analyse the last two paragraphs of the extract and say why the man can’t choose a definite way of celebration. (What does he think of becoming thirty?) What stylistic devices serve the purpose?
8. Sum up everything and say what idea runs through the extract.
Thirty should be when you think – these are my golden years, these are my salad days, the best is yet to come – all that old crap.
You are still young enough to stay up all night, but you are old enough to have a credit card. All the uncertainties and poverty of your teens and twenties are finally over – and good riddance to the lot of them – but the sap is still rising.
Thirty should be a good birthday. One of the best.
But how to celebrate reaching the big three-oh? With a collection of laughing single friends in some intimate bar or restaurant? Or surrounded by a loving wife and adoring small children in the bosom of the family home?
There has to be a good way of turning thirty. Perhaps they are all good ways.
All my images of this particular birthday seemed to be derived from some glossy American sitcom. When I thought of turning thirty, I thought of attractive thirty-nothing marrieds snogging like teens in heat while in the background a gurgling baby crawls across some polished parquet floor, or I saw a circle of good-looking, wisecracking friends drinking latte and showing off their impressive knitwear while wryly bemoaning the dating game. That was my problem. When I thought of turning thirty, I thought of somebody else’s life.
That’s what thirty should be – grown-up without being disappointed, settled without being complacent, worldly wise, but not so worldly wise that you feel like chucking yourself under the train. Time of your life.
By thirty you have finally realised that you are not going to live forever, of course. But surely that should only make the laughing latte-drinking present taste even sweeter? You shouldn’t let your inevitable death put damper on things. Don’t let the long, slow slide to the grave get in the way of a good time.
From Cold Fire by Dean Koontz
1. Read the extract below and say what it is about outline the situation described.
2. Which narrative techniques are used in the extract? How do they render its atmosphere and the character’s state.?
3. Divide the extract into logical parts and say what they touch upon.
4. Analyse the first paragraph. How does the rhyme “Snuggle down in my cocoon, be a butterfly soon” hint at the changes the character has undergone. What device does the author resort to for the purpose?
5. What changes are these? What expressive means and stylistic devices are used to reveal them? What events brought these changes about?
6. What kind of emotions were fighting in her mind when she saw the CNN reporter at the airport? What tropes and figures of speech help to express them?
7. What conclusion did the woman come to? How did she feel about it?
8. Analyze the paragraph, which begins with “She was free…” What was she free from? Was it good riddance? Give your reasons, providing illustrations from the text.
9. What is her attitude to journalism and her place in it?
10. Look through the last paragraph. How does it explain the woman’s career choice? What stylistic devices does the author use to portray her childhood and adolescence? How does the paragraph account for her present free-spiritedness?
11. Why did she laugh like a kid?
12. Formulate the message of the extract and comment upon it.
Earlier in the night, tongue lubricated by beer, she had spoken a truth as she had slipped off the precipice of sleep: “Snuggle down in my cocoon, be a butterfly soon.” Now she knew what she had meant, and she understood the changes that she had been going through, changes that she had only begun to realize were under way when she had been in the VIP lounge at the airport after the crash.
She was never going back to the Portland Press.
She was never going to work on a newspaper again.
She was finished as a reporter.
That was why she had overreacted to Anlock, the CNN reporter at the airport. Loathing him, she was nevertheless eaten by guilt on a subconscious level because he was chasing a major story that she was ignoring even though she had been a part of it. If she was a reporter, she should have been interviewing her fellow survivors and rushing to write it up for the Press. No such desire touched her, however, not even for a fleeting moment, so she took the raw cloth of her subconscious self-disgust and tailored a suit of rage with enormous shoulders and wide, wide lapels; then she dressed herself in it and strutted and seethed for the CNN camera, all in frantic attempt to deny that she was going to walk away from the career and a commitment that she had once thought would last all her life.
Now she got out of bed and paced, too excited to sit still.
She was finished as a reporter.
Finished.
She was free. As a working-class kid from a powerless family, she had been obsessed by a lifelong need to feel important, included, a real insider. As a bright child who grew into a brighter woman she had been puzzled by the apparent disorderliness of life, and she had been compelled to explain it as best she could with the inadequate tools of journalism. Ironically, the duel quest for acceptance and explanations – which had driven her to work and study seventy- and eighty-hour weeks for as long as she could remember – had left her rootless, with no significant lover, no children, no real friends, and no more answers to the difficult question of life than those with which she had started. Now she was suddenly free of those needs and obsessions, no longer concerned about belonging to any elite club or explaining human behaviour.
She had thought she hated journalism. She didn’t. What she hated was her failure at it; and she had failed because journalism had never been the right thing for her.
To understand herself and break the bonds of habit, all she had needed was to survive a devastating airline tragedy. […]
She laughed. She sat in one of the two armchairs, drew her legs up under her, and laughed as she had not laughed since she had been a giddy teenager.
No, that was where the problem began: she had never been giddy. She had been a serious minded teenager, already hooked on current events, worried about World War III because they told her she was likely to die in a nuclear holocaust before she graduated from high school; worried about overpopulation because they told her that famine would claim one and a half billion lives by 1990, cutting the world population in half, decimating even the United States; worried because man-made pollution was causing the planet to cool down drastically, insuring another ice age that would destroy civilization within her own lifetime!!!, which was front-page news in the late seventies, before the Greenhouse Effect and worries about planetary warming. She had spent her adolescence and early adulthood worrying too much and enjoying too little. Without joy, she had lost perspective and had allowed every news sensation – some based on genuine problems, some entirely fraudulent – to consume her.
Now she laughed like a kid.
CHECKING YOUR PROGRESS
The fragments in this section have no helping questions, which means that it is time for you to use your own analytical thinking and skills. Still to give you further guidance, we offer a scheme of extract analysis; besides, the most important elements in these fragments are printed in bold type.
Scheme of Extract Analysis
1. Give general information about the extract. Say what or who is described/portrayed, where, when or under what circumstances
2. See if the extract/fragment can be divided into logical parts. Say what is presented in each item.
3. State how many characters are involved in the narration. Come out with as much information about them as you can, making the best of the hints and clues of the extract.
4. Say whether the extract is a description/narration/exposition
5. Analyse the opening sentence of the extract. Say whether it’s advantageous (disadvantageous) to start the description (narration, exposition) that way.
6. Exemplify the details, which create the general mood of the extract.
7. Specify the described situation and say what expressive means plunge the reader into the atmosphere in question or help him to vividly visualize the character(s).
8. Group the tropes and figures of speech used by the author in accordance with the image(s) (the mood) they create or the situation(s) (the environment, the characters’ inner state, etc.) they describe.
9. Speak on the symbolic function of images or symbolic implications evoked by certain words/ phrases/etc.
10. Say whether the extract is (characters are) presented statically or dynamically.
11. Note rhythmical sentences and dwell upon the effect they produce.
12. Speak on the role of syntax in creating certain effects.
13. Dwell upon the peculiarities of the extract:
a) Say what method of character drawing is used in the extract (direct or indirect) and support your opinion with some evidence from the extract;
b) Account for the personal touch of the author, if any;
c) Note the style and language peculiarities, if they are striking;
d) Express you own vision of the problem(s) raised, or analyze the character(s) behaviour in though-provoking or didactic fragments.
Дата: 2019-07-30, просмотров: 297.