Analyzing a story

Introduction

The story I’m going to speak about is entitled “……….”, it is written by …

1. THE SCHOLARSHIP from “Green Years” by A. J. Cronin

2. A DOG AND THREE DOLLARS by M. Twain.

3. A DAY’S WAIT by E. Hemingway

4. THE GREEN DOCTOR by O. Henry

5. BRAVE MOTHER (from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) by H. Beecher-Stowe

6. THE READING PUBLIC by S. Leacock

7. THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE by O. Wilde

8. MARTIN EDEN by J. London

9. IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD by M. Twain

10. AS YOU LIKE IT by W. Shakespeare

The author

The author is famous for …

His well-known works are …

His manner of writing is characterized by …

The author tries to draw attention to the problem of …

Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scottish novelist and physician. His best-known works are Hatter's Castle, The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years, all of which were adapted to film.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. In his stories he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech. His best-known works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature: A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea.

William Sydney Porter better known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer. O. Henry's short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. Among his most famous stories are:"The Gift of the Magi", "The Ransom of Red Chief", "The Cop and the Anthem".

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was an American woman-writer who received a traditionally "male" education in the classics, including study of languages and mathematics. When she was 40, the first installment of her Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in the National Era.

Stephen Butler Leacock was an English-born Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humorist. He was the best-known humorist in the English-speaking world. His most notable works are Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich.

The title

The title excites our interest …. The title doesn’t produce any excitement but …

The title is predictable/unpredictable …

Genre

The story belongs to the genre of a detective story/ realistic novel/ fairy-tale/ science fiction/ historical novel.

Atmosphere

The general atmosphere of the story is unemotional/ vivid/ dramatic/ humorous/ ironical. The tension can be caught between the lines.

Narrator

The story is narrated from the author’s point of view/ from the point of view of one of the characters?

Plot

What happened in the story? REMEMBER about GRAMMAR here! Past Simple, Continuous, Perfect, Passive Voice and Conditional Sentences.

Characters

1 noun Kolobok

2 adjectives Friendly, easy-going

3 verbs met different animals, sang songs, was eaten by a fox

1 sentence, the main idea You mustn’t be too naïve and trust all the people.

The main character of the story is Kolobok. He is friendly, easygoing but too naïve. In the story travelling in the wood he met different animals, sang them songs, but at the end unfortunately he was eaten by a fox. The author wanted to say that you mustn’t be too naïve and trust all the people.

Language used

The story is characterized by the bookish/colloquial language.

The author uses archaic/ dialect/ jargon word to show …

The author used different stylistic devices for example when he describes … he draws our attention to …

Stylistically colored words such as … create the mood of sadness.

Dialogue plays an important role in creating characters.

The author uses both direct and indirect methods of character-drawing.

Using the epithets the author describes … The metaphor gives a hint about someone’s character

The story is rich with repetition / personification/ …

The author achieves the desired effect by using elliptical sentences/ …..

SCHOLARSHIP

1. Gavin murmured

2. The sun went down

3. Impossible to describe the silent joy of our meeting.

4. No wind and the day is too bright.

5. His words came as an unexpected blow.

A DOG AND THREE DOLLARS

1. Whom nobody knew and whose books nobody read.

2. We lived together. We did everything together.

3. And when we were hungry; we were both hungry.

4. “I shall be glad to help you, but it will take some of my time and …”

Own evaluation

I find the story amusing/ boring/ interesting.

I would recommend reading this story to …

What I like the best is …

A DAY’S WAIT

1. Schatz

2. “You go up to bed”

3. Downstairs, the doctor left three different medicines in different colored capsules.

4. “You mustn’t have what I have.”

5. I commenced to red. (At school in France …)

6. His gaze relaxed …

THE GREEN DOCTOR

1. Few were the evening when ….

2. Standing aside from the crown, the young man ….

3. Neat, but great poverty was the story he read.

4. The city wears with indifference

5. A story of low wages; of time lost …; … of lost jobs, lost hope and unrealized dreams

6. The hand of Fate

BRAVE MOTHER

1. “Bravo!” said Hailey, throwing the boy a piece of orange.

2. The same beautiful eyes and silky black hair.

3. "I have a friend who sells good boys in the market. He sells them to rich people

4. She looked at the river that was on her way to freedom

5. In a moment she jumped onto a large piece of ice in the river.

6. Elisa saw nothing, felt nothing, till, as in a dream, she saw the other bank of the Ohio.

THE READING PUBLIC

1. A professor standing in a corner buried in a book looks well

2. It's an extremely powerful thing

3. You know the kind of thing one reads on vacation

4. Seven Weeks in the Sahara, 5 dollars; Six Months in a Waggon, 6 dollars; Afternoons in an Oxcart, two volumes, 4 dollars 30 cents. Or here, now, Among the Cannibals of Corfu, or Among the Monkeys of New Guinea, 10 dollars.

5. … actual photographs of actual monkeys …

6. It's a very charming love story

7. In fact, it is written quite in the old style, like the dear old books of the past; quite like –" here the manager paused with a slight doubt – "Dickens and Fielding and – er – so on."

8. You seem to think it's a very wonderful book. - Frankly speaking, I imagine it's perfectly rotten.

9. His air was that of a milkman who is offered a glass of his own milk.

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE

Nightingale – she

Lizard – he

Rose-tree – it

Oak-tree – he

1. … a true lover … … a true lover …

2. Night after night I have sung about him, though I did not know him; night after night I have told his story to the stars.

3. … and she will pass me by, and my heart will break…

4. She passed through the wood like a shadow, and like a shadow she flew over the garden.

5. But the winter has frozen my buds, and the storm has broken my branches

6. One red rose is all I want, only one red rose!

7. "If you want a red rose," said the tree, "you must build it out of music by moonlight, and crimson it with your own heart's blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn must run through your heart and your blood must flow into my branches and become mine."

8. She flew over the garden like a shadow and like a shadow she passed through the wood.

9. I only ask you in return to be a true lover, for love is wiser than philosophy and mightier than power."

10. And he went into his room, and lay down on his bed, and began to think of his love; and, after a time, he fell asleep.

11. the thorn went deeper and deeper into her breast and her blood flowed out.

12. Pale it was at first, as the fog that hangs over the river – pale as the feet of the morning.

13. So the Nightingale pressed closer and closer against the thorn, and louder and louder grew her song.

14. So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and the thorn touched her heart

15. Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song

16. I have never seen any rose like this in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name

17. said the young student angrily and he threw the rose into the street and a cart-wheel went over it

18. What a silly thing love is

MARTIN EDEN

1. A week of heavy reading

2. Martin tried to read books that required years of preparatory work. One day he read a book on philosophy, and the next day a book on art. He read poetry, he read books by Karl Marx.

3. but the dictionary was in front of him more often than the book

4. He loved poetry and beauty,

5. The oldest died in India. Two are in South Africa now, and another is on a fishing-boat at sea. One is travelling with a circus.

6. She helped him with his English, corrected his pronunciation and taught him arithmetic.

7. The captain of the ship had a complete Shakespeare

8. For a time all the world took the form of Shakespearean tragedy or comedy

9. And then the great idea came to him.

10. He would be one of the eyes through which the world saw, one of the ears through which the world heard, one of the hearts through which it felt.

11. For the first time he saw the aim of his life, and saw it in the middle of the great sea

12. The bed occupied two-thirds of the room.

13. Day by day he worked on and day by day the postman delivered to him his manuscripts.

14. It was "The Ring of Bells".