Assignments for Analysis

1. What kind of narrator tells the story?

2. At which point in the text does the narrator interrupt the narrative to make a generalization?

3. Give a character sketch of Silas Marner.

4. Consider the description of Silas’s eyes. What type of animal is he compared to? What is the “tiny grain” that he is hunting for?

5. Comment on the passage “Yet even in this stage of withering … and propped the ruin in its old place for a memorial.” What is its function?

6. Explain the use of the word “revelry”. Say, what language the author resorts to to show the character’s elation at the moment when “he drew out his gold”.

7. In describing Silas’s obsession with money the narrator uses some striking images that appeal to different senses. Find images appealing to the sense of sight and the sense of touch.

8. The text establishes an association between Silas’s money and children. Where in the text is this idea reinforced?

9. A river is a standard symbol for life. How have the events of Silas’s life affected the river? Why does Silas’s life/ river flow through “barren sand”?

10. The style of the opening paragraph is characterized by balanced couples linked by the conjunction “and”, for example, “narrowing and hardening”. Which idea does this stylistic feature underline?

11. How would you describe the tone of the passage? Is the narrator critical of Silas or is he sympathetic? Which expressions convey the narrator’s negative/ positive attitude towards the protagonist?

Before you make an overall analysis, indicate the following SDs & try to explain their role in the story.

1. … his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being.

2. Strangely Marner's face and figure shrank and bent themselves into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of his life, so that he produced the same sort of impression as a handle or a crooked tube, which has no meaning standing apart.

3. The prominent eyes that used to look trusting and dreamy, now looked as if they had been made to see only one kind of thing that was very small, like tiny grain, for which they hunted everywhere: and he was so withered and yellow…

4. Yet even in this stage of withering a little incident happened, which showed that the sap of affection was not all gone.

5. It had been his companion for twelve years, always standing on the same spot, always lending its handle to him in the early morning, so that its form had an expression for him of willing helpfulness, and the impress of its handle on his palm gave a satisfaction mingled with that of having the fresh clear water.

6. But at night came his revelry: at night he closed his shutters, and made fast his doors, and drew forth his gold.

7. How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of the dark leather mouths! … He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver--the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his labour; he loved them all.

8. He spread them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them…

9. …as if they had been unborn children--thought of the guineas that were coming slowly through the coming years, through all his life…

10. …these too belonged to the past, from which his life had shrunk away, like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of its old breadth into a little shivering thread that cuts a groove for itself in the barren sand.