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Файл:From a word to an idea. Part 1. Учебное пособие
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3.1.2 Practical tasks
Task 1. Read three texts “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe,
“The Good Deed” by Pearl Buck and “Her First Ball” by Katherine Mansfield
and analyse the texts according to the following questions:
1. Be ready to tell the plot of each story.
2. State the types of narrative:
Who is the narrator? Is it the author himself or one of the characters? How is
it perceived?
3. Analyse the imagery of characters:
How many characters are there in the story? Are they flat or round? What
methods of characterization does the author resort to? Prove your point of view.
THE TELL-TALE HEART
Edgar Allan Poe
True!-—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why
will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—nor destroyed—
not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the
heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken!
and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once con-
ceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none.
I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For
his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a
vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood
ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of
the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you
should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—with what
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caution—with what foresight—with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never
kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every
night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it—oh, so gently!
And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark
lantern, all closed, closed, so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head.
Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly—
very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour
to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon
his bed. Ha!—would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my head
was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously—oh, so cautiously —cautiously
(for the hinges creaked)—I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the
vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights—every night just at midnight—but
I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was
not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day
broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and I spoke courageously to him, calling him
by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he had passed the night. So you see he
would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just
at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door.
A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night
had I felt the extent of my own powers—of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my
feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and
he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea;
and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you
may think that I drew back—but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick
darkness (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers), and so I
knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily,
steadily.
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THE GOOD DEED
Pearl Buck
New York Chinatown 1953
Mr. Pan was worried about his mother. He had been worried about her when
she was in China, and now he was worried about her in New York, although he had
thought that once he got her out of his ancestral village in the province of Szechuen1
and safely away from the local bullies, who took over when the distant government
fell, his anxieties would be ended. To this end he had risked his own life and paid
out large sums of sound American money, and he felt that day when he saw her on
the wharf, a tiny, dazed little old woman, in a lavender silk coat and black skirt, that
now they would live happily together, he and his wife, their four small children and
his beloved mother, in the huge safety of the American city.
It soon became clear, however, that safety was not enough for old Mrs. Pan.
She did not even appreciate the fact, which he repeated again and again, that had she
remained in the village, she would now have been dead, because she was the widow
of the large landowner who had been his father and therefore deserved death in the
eyes of the rowdies in power.
Old Mrs. Pan listened to this without reply, but her eyes, looking very large in
her small withered face, were haunted with homesickness.
"There are many things worse than death, especially at my age," she replied at
last, when again her son reminded her of her good fortune in being where she was.
He became impassioned when she said this. He struck his breast with his
clenched fists and he shouted, "Could I have forgiven myself if I had allowed you to
die? Would the ghost of my father have given me rest?"
"I doubt his ghost would have traveled over such a wide sea," she replied.
"That man was always afraid of the water."
Yet there was nothing that Mr. Pan and his wife did not try to do for his
mother in order to make her happy. They prepared the food that she had once
enjoyed, but she was now beyond the age of pleasure in food, and she had no
appetite. She touched one dish and another with the ends of her ivory chopsticks,
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which she had brought with her from her home, and she thanked them prettily. "It is
all good," she said, "but the water is not the same as our village water; it tastes of
metal and not of earth, and so the flavor is not the same. Please allow the children to
eat it."
She was afraid of the children. They went to an American school and they
spoke English very well and Chinese very badly, and since she could speak no
English, it distressed her to hear her own language maltreated by their careless
tongues. For a time she tried to coax them to a few lessons, or she told them stories,
to which they were too busy to listen. Instead they preferred to look at the moving
pictures in the box that stood on the table in the living room. She save them up
finally and merely watched them contemplatively when they were in the same room
with her and was glad when they were gone. She liked her son's wife. She did not
understand how there could be a Chinese woman who had never been in China, but
such her son's wife was. When her son was away, she could not say to her daughterin-law, "Do you remember how the willows grew over the gate?" For her son's wife
had no such memories.
HER FIRST BALL
Katherine Mansfield
Exactly when the ball began Leila would have found it hard to say. Perhaps
her first real partner was the cab. It did not matter that she shared the cab with the
Sheridan girls and their brother. She sat back in her own little corner of it, and the
bolster on which her hand rested felt like the sleeve of an unknown young man's
dress suit; and away they bowled, past waltzing lampposts and houses and fences
and trees. "Have you really never been to a ball before, Leila? But, my child, how
too weird—" cried the Sheridan girls.
"Our nearest neighbor was fifteen miles," said Leila softly, gently opening
and shutting her fan.
Oh dear, how hard it was to be indifferent like the others! She tried not to
smile too much; she tried not to care. But every single thing was so new and
exciting. Meg's tuberoses, Jose's long loop of amber, Laura's little dark head,
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pushing above her white fur like a flower through snow. She would remember
15
forever. It even gave her a pang to see her cousin Laurie throw away the wisps of
tissue paper he pulled from the fastenings of his new gloves. She would like to have
kept those wisps as a keepsake, as a remembrance. Laurie leaned forward and put
his hand on Laura's knee.
"Look here, darling," he said. "The third and the ninth as usual. Twig?"2
Oh, how marvelous to have a brother! In her excitement Leila felt that if there
had been time, if it hadn't been impossible, she couldn't have helped crying because
she was an only child, and no brother had ever said "Twig15?" to her; no sister
would ever say, as Meg said to Jose that moment, "I've never known your hair go up
more successfully than it has tonight!"
But, of course, there was no time. They were at the drill hall already; there
were cabs in front of them and cabs behind. The road was bright on either side with
moving fanlike lights, and on the pavement gay couples seemed to float through the
air; little satin shoes chased each other like birds.
"Hold on to me, Leila; you'll get lost," said Laura.
"Come on, girls; let's make a dash for it," said Laurie.
Leila put two fingers on Laura's pink velvet cloak, and they were somehow
lifted past the big golden lantern, carried along the passage, and pushed into the
little room marked "Ladies." Here the crowd was so great there was hardly space to
take off their things; the noise was deafening. Two benches on either side were
stacked high with wraps. Two old women in white aprons ran up and down tossing
fresh armfuls. And everybody was pressing forward trying to get at the little
dressing table and mirror at the far end.
A great quivering jet of gas lighted the ladies' room. It couldn't wait; it was
dancing already. When the door opened again and there came a burst of tuning from
the drill hall, it leaped almost to the ceiling.
Twig – informal Understand?
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Dark girls, fair girls were patting their hair, tying ribbons again, tucking
handkerchiefs down the fronts of their bodices, smoothing marble-white gloves.
And because they were all laughing it seemed to Leila that they were all lovely.
Task 2. Read and analyse the story “Daughter” by Eriskine Caldwell
according to the following questions:
1. Point of view:
1. Does the author speak in his own voice or does he present the events from
the point of view of one of the characters?
2. Has the narrator access to the thoughts and feelings of all the characters or
just one?
3. Does the narrator sympathise with any of the characters or remain aloof and
detached? Is the attitude explicit or implicit?
4.Can we trust the narrator's judgement?
2. Characters:
1. What are the characters' names and what do they look like? Does this have
any significance?
2. Are the characters presented directly or indirectly through action and
speech?
3. With what problem is the protagonist faced? Is it a conflict with another
individual (with society, within himself)?
4. Does the protagonist achieve self-knowledge and awareness as a result of
his or her experience?
DAUGHTER
Eriskine Caldwell
At sunrise a Negro on his way to the big house to feed the mules had taken
the word to Colonel Henry Maxwell, and Colonel Henry phoned the sheriff. The
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sheriff had hustled Jim into town and locked him up in the jail, and then he went
home and ate breakfast.
Jim walked around the empty cellroom while he was buttoning his shirt, and
after that he sat down on the bunk and tied his shoelaces. Everything that morning
had taken place so quickly that he had not even had time to get a drink of water. He
got up and went to the water bucket near the door, but the sheriff had forgotten to
put water into it.
By that time there were several men standing in the jailyard. Jim went to the
window and looked out when he heard them talking. Just then another automobile
drove up, and six or seven men got out. Other men were coming towards the jail
from both directions of the streets.
"What was the trouble out at your place this morning, Jim?" somebody said.
Jim stuck his chin between the bars and looked at the faces in the crowd. He
knew everyone there.
While he was trying to figure out how everybody in town had heard about his
being there, somebody else spoke to him.
"It must have been an accident, wasn't it, Jim?"
A colored boy hauling a load of cotton to the gin drove up the street. When
the wagon got in front of the jail, the boy whipped up the mules with the ends of the
reins and made them trot.
"I hate to see the State have a grudge against you, Jim," somebody said.
The sheriff came down the street swinging a tin dinner-pail in his hand. He
pushed through the crowd, unlocked the door, and set the pail inside.
Several men came up behind the sheriff and looked over his shoulder into the
jail.
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"Here's your breakfast my wife fixed up for you, Jim. You'd better eat a little,
Jim boy." Jim looked at the pail, at the sheriff, at the open jail door, and he shook
his head.
"I don't feel hungry," he said. "Daughter's been hungry, though — awful
hungry."
The sheriff backed out the door, his hand going to the handle of his pistol. He
backed out so quickly that he stepped on the toes of the men behind him.
"Now, don't you get careless, Jim boy," he said. "Just sit and calm yourself."
He shut the door and locked it. After he had gone a few steps towards the
street, he stopped and looked into the chamber of his pistol to make sure it had been
loaded.
The crowd outside the window pressed in closer. Some of the men rapped on
the bars until Jim came and looked out. When he saw them, he stuck his chin
between the iron and gripped his hands around it.
"How come it to happen, Jim?" somebody asked. "It must have been an
accident, wasn't it?"
Jim's long thin face looked as if it would come through the bars. The sheriff
came up to the window to see if everything was all right.
"Now, just take it easy, Jim boy," he said. The man who had asked Jim to tell
what had happened, elbowed the sheriff out of the way. The other men crowded
closer.
"How come, Jim?" the man said. "Was it an accident?" "No," Jim said, his
fingers twisting about the bars. "I picked up my shotgun and done it."
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The sheriff pushed towards the window again. "Go on, Jim, and tell us what
it's all about." Jim's face squeezed between the bars until it looked as though
only his ears kept his head from coming through.
"Daughter said she was hungry, and I just couldn't stand it no longer. I just
couldn't stand to hear her say it."
"Don't get all excited now, Jim boy," the sheriff said, pushing forward one
moment and being elbowed away the next.
"She waked up in the middle of the night again and said she was hungry. I
just couldn't stand to hear her say it."
Somebody pushed all the way through the crowd until he got to the window.
"Why, Jim, you could have come and asked me for something for her to eat,
and you know I'd have given you all I got in the world."
The sheriff pushed forward once more.
"That wasn't the right thing to do," Jim said. "I've been working all year and I
made enough for all of us to eat."
He stopped and looked down into the faces on the other side of the bars.
"I made enough working on shares, but they came and took it all away from
me. I couldn't go around begging after I'd made enough to keep us. They just came
and took it all off. Then Daughter woke up again this morning saying she was
hungry, and I just couldn't stand it no longer."
"You'd better go and get on the bunk now, Jim boy," the sheriff said.
"It don't seem right that the little girl ought to be shot like that," somebody
said.
"Daughter said she was hungry," Jim said. "She'd been saying that for all of
the past month. Daughter'd wake up in the middle of the night and say it. I just
couldn't stand it no longer."
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"You ought to have sent her over to my house, Jim. Me and my wife could
have fed her something, somehow. It don't look right to kill a little girl like her."
"I'd made enough for all of us," Jim said. "I just couldn't stand it no longer.
Daughter'd been hungry all the past month."
"Take it easy, Jim boy," the sheriff said, trying to push forward.
The crowd swayed from side to side.
"And so you just picked up the gun this morning and shot her?" somebody
asked.
"When she woke up this morning saying she was hungry, I just couldn't stand
it."
The crowd pushed closer. Men were coining towards the jail from all
directions, and those who were then arriving pushed forward to hear what Jim had to
say.
"The State has got a grudge against you now, Jim," somebody said, "but
somehow it don't seem right."
"I can't help it," Jim said. "Daughter woke up again this morning that way."
The jailyard, the street, and the vacant lot on the other side were filled with
men and boys. All of them were pushing forward to hear Jim. Word had spread all
over town by that time that Jim Carlisle had shot and killed his eight-year-old
daughter Clara.
"Who does Jim share-crop for?" somebody asked.
"Colonel Henry Maxwell," a man in the crowd said. "Colonel Henry has had
Jim out there about nine or ten years."
"Henry Maxwell didn't have no business coming and taking all the shares.
He's got plenty of his own. It ain't right for Henry Maxwell to come and take Jim's
too."
The sheriff was pushing forward once more.
"The State's got a grudge against Jim now," somebody said. "Somehow it
don't seem right, though."
The sheriff pushed his shoulder into the crowd of men and worked his way in
closer.
A man shoved the sheriff away.
"Why did Henry Maxwell come and take your share of the crop, Jim?"
"He said I owed it to him because one of his mules died about a month ago."
The sheriff got in front of the barred window.
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