Осознанное чтение тексты и задания = Mindful Reading texts and tasks. Учебное пособие = Textbook-1

PART 3. FUNCTIONAL STYLISTICS: FICTION

Andy’s there, caught between a snow-covered tree trunk and an iced-over rock, his face blue-white and quite still. His father splashes deep into the water and pulls him out.

I start crying and bury my face in my father’s shoulders.

The village doctor was one of the house guests; he and Andy’s father hold the boy up, letting water drain from his mouth, then lay him down on a coat on the snow. The doctor presses on Andy’s chest while his wife breathes into the boy’s mouth. They look more surprised than anybody when his heart restarts and then he makes a gurgling noise in his throat. Andy is wrapped in the coat and rushed to the house, submerged to the neck in a warm bath and given oxygen when the ambulance arrives.

***

He’d been under the ice, under the water, for ten minutes or more. The doctor had heard about children, usually younger than Andy, surviving without air in cold water, but never seen anything like it.

Andy recovered quickly, sucking on the oxygen, coughing and spluttering in the warm bath, then being dried and taken to a warmed bed and watched over by his parents. The doctor was worried about brain damage, but Andy seemed just as bright and intelligent afterwards as he’d been before, remembering details from earlier childhood and performing above average in the memory tests the doctor gave him and even doing well in school when that started again after the winter break.

It was a miracle, his mother said, and the local newspaper agreed. Andy and I never did get told off for what happened, and he hardly ever mentioned that day to me unless he had to. His father didn’t like talking about it very much either and used to be slightly dismissive and jokey about it all. Mrs. Gould gradually talked less about it.

Eventually it seemed it was only I who ever thought about that still, cold morning, recalling in my dreams that cry and that hand held out to me for help I could not, would not give, and the silence that followed Andy disappearing under the ice.

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And sometimes I felt he was different, and had changed, even though I know people changed all the time and people our age changed faster than most.

Even so, I thought on occasion there had been a loss; nothing necessarily to do with oxygen starvation but just as a result of the experience, the shock of his cold journey, slipping away beneath the grey lid of ice (and perhaps, I told myself in later years, it was only a loss of ignorance, a loss of folly and so no bad thing). But I could never again imagine him doing something as spontaneously crazy, as aggressively, contemptuously fate-tempting and unleashed as running out across the frozen ice, arms out, laughing.

(by Iain Banks // taken from Survivors: A Selection of Short Stories)

Mindful reading: Flashback

A flashback is a writing device that is used to interrupt the present storyline for a brief return to past events. Flashbacks provide background or context to the current events, dream sequences and memories are frequently used method to present flashbacks.

Tasks

1.Identify the status of the text, its functional style and styleforming features

2.Consider the title of the story. What do you expect from the story entitled in such a way? Did your expectations come true?

3.What is the subject matter of the story? Give its summary in a few well-motivated sentences

4.Read the features of a short story and say whether they are relatable to the story ‘Under Ice’:

▪A short story is a piece of prose fiction which can be read in one sitting

▪It mostly shows a decisive moment of life (which can entail a fatal blow)

▪There is often little action,hardly any character development, but we get a snapshot of life

▪It usually deals with only a few characters

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▪There is a close connection between the short story and the poem as there is both a unique union of idea and structure

▪A short story is something that can be read in an hour and remembered for a lifetime

5.Who tells us the story? How old is the narrator in the flashback? How old is he now?

6.What is the setting of the story? Why is the setting so important? Did you read the description of nature carefully enough? Why did the writer depict the landscape in detail?

7.Consider the composition of the story. Into how many parts does it fall? What is the focus of each part? What is the moment of the greatest tension (= the climax)?

8.Consider the ending of the story: is it happy or unhappy? In what way?

9.What did the story make you think of? What could be its message?

10.Consider the linguistic means used by Iain Banks to narrate the story

Stop and check

1)Why does the author use Present Simple to refer to events in the past?

2)What image is created in the following context: “Andy is yelling as he runs, coat-tails flapping out behind him, gloved hands outspread, his head thrown back, the earflaps on his hat snapping and clapping like wings”?

3)Pick out all the adjectives which describe the emotional state of the narrator, why are they so meaningful?

4)What syntactical device is used in the context “free and warm and vivacious”, to what effect?

5)“…he’s yelling at me to help him, come out to him, get a branch…” Why is the phrase given in italics?

6)Consider the repetition of the word ‘loss’ in the final paragraph, what could it refer to?

11.Summarize your observations. Do the “what” (=the contents) and the “how” (=the language/ the form) of the text

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fit? Are they in balance or out of balance? How does their unity help communicate the message of the story? What emotional response does the text evoke? Can you relate to the narrator?

Text 3.4

Beyond the text: Matching

1)Band-Aid

2)coatroom

3)parking meter

4)germs

5)hiccups

a)a room where coats and other garments can be left temporarily

b)small organisms that cause diseases

c)a brand name for adhesive bandages

d)spasms of the diaphragm accompanied by a distinctive sound

e)a device that you put money into for parking your vehicle

Eleven

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared,

and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

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Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.

You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.

Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one hundred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I’d have known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk. I would’ve known how to tell her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth.

“Whose is this?” Mrs. Price says, and she holds the red sweater up in the air for all the class to see. “Whose? It’s been sitting in the coatroom for a month.”

“Not mine,” says everybody, “Not me.”

“It has to belong to somebody,” Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember. It’s an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope. It’s maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn’t say so.

Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, “I think it belongs to Rachel.” An ugly sweater like that all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out.

“That’s not, I don’t, you’re not . . . Not mine.” I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I was four.

“Of course it’s yours,” Mrs. Price says. “I remember you wearing it once.” Because she’s older and the teacher, she’s right and I’m not.

Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem number four. I don’t know why but all of a sudden I’m feeling sick inside, like the part of me that’s three wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite

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down on my teeth real hard and try to remember today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me for tonight, and when Papa comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.

But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain. I move the red sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and books and eraser as far from it as possible. I even move my chair a little to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine.

In my head I’m thinking how long till lunchtime, how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it over the schoolyard fence, or leave it hanging on a parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and toss it in the alley. Except when math period ends Mrs. Price says loud and in front of everybody, “Now, Rachel, that’s enough,” because she sees I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-tip corner of my desk and it’s hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don’t care.

“Rachel,” Mrs. Price says. She says it like she’s getting mad. “You put that sweater on right now and no more nonsense.”

“But it’s not—” “Now!” Mrs. Price says.

This is when I wish I wasn’t eleven because all the years inside of me — ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one— are pushing at the back of my eyes when I put one arm through one sleeve of the sweater that smells like cottage cheese, and then the other arm through the other and stand there with my arms apart like if the sweater hurts me and it does, all itchy and full of germs that aren’t even mine.

That’s when everything I’ve been holding in since this morning, since when Mrs. Price put the sweater on my desk, finally lets go, and all of a sudden I’m crying in front of everybody. I wish I was invisible but I’m not. I’m eleven and it’s my birthday today and I’m crying like I’m three in front of everybody. I put my head down on the desk and bumy face in my stupid clown-sweater arms. My face all hot and spit coming out of my mouth because I can’t stop the little animal noises from coming out of me until there aren’t any more tears left in my eyes, and it’s just my body shaking like when you have the hiccups, and my whole head hurts like when you drink milk too fast.

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But the worst part is right before the bell rings for lunch. That stupid Phyllis Lopez, who is even dumber than Sylvia Saldivar, says she remembers the red sweater is hers! I take it off right away and give it to her, only Mrs. Price pretends like everything’s okay.

Today I’m eleven. There’s a cake Mama’s making for tonight and when Papa comes home from work we’ll eat it. There’ll be candles and presents and everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you, Rachel, only it’s too late.

I’m eleven today. I’m eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one, but I wish I was one hundred and two. I wish I was anything but eleven, because I want today to be far away already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny tiny you have to close your eyes to see it.

(by Sandra Cisneros)

Beyond the text: Cultural aspect

Chicano literature refers to literature written by Mexican Americans in the United States.

Mindful reading: Point of view

Point of view is the perspective from which a story is narrated. The most common points of view used in fiction are first person (‘I’) and third person (‘he / she’). The ‘I’ of the story, or the narrator, should not be mixed up with the author of the text. Think about advantages and disadvantages of the choice of each technique: first-person narration, third-person narration, shifting points of view.

Tasks

1.Identify the status of the text, its functional style and styleforming features

2.Into what category would you place the story? If you were a librarian, how would you tag it?

3.Consider the title of the story. What expectations did you have before reading the story?

4.Give a brief account of what happened in a story. Which details can be dropped, which are really meaningful? If possible, compare and discuss your summaries.

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5.Who tells the story and how does it affect the tone of the narration?

6.How does this story relate to you? Did it trigger memories of your eleven-year-old self? Do you ever have the same feelings on your birthday about your age?

7.What did the story make you think of? How would you formulate its message?

8.Sandra Cisneros resorts to stylization imitating the manner of

speech of an eleven-year-old girl. Do you find her stylization skillful?

Stop and check

1)Find the instances of repetition. Why is it so abundantly used?

2)Think about the use of ‘them’ and ‘you’ in the story, what could these pronouns signal?

3)What device is used in the following context “the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain”? Find more examples of imagery comparing the red sweater to different objects. Can you find the foundation feature of imagery?

4)“…it’s maybe a thousand years old…”: What device is used in the context, is it typical in the speech of teenagers?

5)Consider the vocabulary and syntax in the story; can you make any conclusions related to the length of sentences?

6)“I want today to be far away already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny tiny you have to close your eyes to see it.” What is meant by ‘o’ in this sentence? What image does it create?

9.Reflect on other variants of choosing the perspective, do you think it would change your emotional response to the story?

10.Summarize your observations. Do the “what” (=the contents) and the “how” (=the language/ the form) of the text fit? Are they in balance or out of balance? Can you relate to the narrator? Why (not)?

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Text 3.5

Beyond the text: Matching

1)damsel

2)gauze

3)concertina

4)kingfisher

5)preposterous

6)chicory

7)sunbonnet

8)chemise

9)slope

10)hay rake

a)a musical instrument which you play by pressing buttons on the end pieces while moving them apart

b)a plant with blue flowers and leaves which are eaten in salads

c)a very thin, light cloth with tiny holes in it

d)an old-fashioned name of an unmarried girl

e)a garden tool consisting of a row of metal or wooden teeth attached to a long handle

f)a loose part of clothing for women which covers the top part of the body

g)a small brightly coloured bird with a long pointed beak

h)a hat that shades the face and neck from the sun

i)ridiculous and absurd

j)the side of a mountain, hill, or valley

Anthony in Blue Alsatia

Skipping his breakfast paper one day, bewildered, as he always was, by vital facts about Home Rails, Questions in the House, and ThreePiece Suits: facts grasped, as he knew, instantaneously in their full import all over England by different orders of mind from his, through which they slipped as through gauze, Anthony’s roving eye was captured by certain words in a paragraph headed

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Mouchard (near the Jura Mountains)

Jura Mountains…Blue smoke…a blue-eyed Alsatian…a Concertina… the Blue Alsatian Express… many miles from nowhere…hay-making damsels in white sunbonnets… hayrakes…laughing at us…

A Minor Mystery

Anthony’s eye roved no more. He felt that the gauze, which could not contain the torrents of the world’s activities, might house this butterfly and not brush off its bloom. He read the paragraph with attention. It described the breakdown “many miles from nowhere” of the Blue Alsatian Express at the foot of the Jura Mountains. It described the blue smoke rising from a heated axle, the engine-driver sprinting along the lines like a madman, soldiers jumping out on the line and playing a concertina, a nervous woman-passenger wondering what had happened; it indicated the plutocratic luxury of the corridor train with its restaurant; it told of the blue mountains and the blue sky, and “the hay-making damsels in white sunbonnets and hayforks on their shoulders” who “are laughing at us over the hedgerows.”

And then came the paragraph headed “A Minor Mystery” which ended the account of the accident.

“One mystery about this train will never be solved. When it first came to a standstill, a quiet little man, who looked like a country farmer, packed up his things, climbed out of the train, and deliberately walked away from it without any outward sign of annoyance, hesitation, or distraction, crossing the fields and disappearing into a wood.

Had the breakdown occurred within easy reach of his own home or destination?”

“Oh, no,” said Anthony, answering the journalist, “of course not!” Why should it? It was most unlikely. And – annoyance? Why should

the little man be annoyed? And where was the Mystery, Minor or Major? Railways – it is their drawback – compel you to travel to somewhere.

You, who desire to travel to Anywhere, must take your ticket to Stroud or Stoke, and chance it. The safest plan is to choose some place with a name like Lulworth, Downderry, or Nether Wallop; such places cannot go far wrong. But even though they prove to be heaven in its first, second, or third degree, still, there you must go, and nowhere else; –

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