4 Мар 2014 в 16:30|Это спам|Ответить

Елена Крылова▼

One stair up

The text I am going to comment on is titled “One Stair Up”. It is written by a Scottish novelist Campbell Nairne in 1932 and describes the life of Edinburgh working-class.

The extract depicts one night from the life of two young people, Andrew and Rosa. The action takes place in one of the Broadway cinemas. While Andrew really enjoys the movie and the jokes, Rosa sits unsatisfied. She does not like him and everything around. Relationship between a girl and a boy as a symbols of the young generation is the theme of the story.

The text is really interesting from the point of view of narratology. First, it seems that there is only a third person narration. However, if we analyze the lexis of the passages, it becomes clear that we are dealing with heterodiegetic narrator who is reproducing the impressions of Rosa and Andrew in an internal focalization.

The term heterodiegetic narrator was suggested by a French literary theorist Gerard Genette. Heterodiegetic, unlike homodiegetic, narrator “hovers above the story and knows everything about it”. The heterodiegetic narrator is omnipresent and almighty. In the given text “One Stair Up” the narrator describes the setting (“Swiftly the light dimmed again. The curtain rattled back and the white oblong emerged from folds already caught by lines of flickering grey print”) and also depicts the feelings and thoughts of the main characters (“What a baby he is, Rosa was thinking” – “No wonder they got big salaries if they had to put up with that kind of thing every day of their lives”). It’s a covert narrator who does not tell us his/her point of view. However, we can find it out by analyzing the speech. For instance, the following extract: “The film seems to have smashed all records. It drew tears from the hardest hearts. It sent thrills down the spine. It was a rapid-fire drama.” Here we see the humour of the words, expressed by clichés used in the film industry of the third rate. The purpose of the humour is to characterize Andrew as an average movie-goer and expose the social problems in the contemporary culture. The voice of heterodiegetic narrator can be distinguished by the bookish words (“voluptuous stillness”, the white oblong”) and more difficult structure of the sentences (“Down swung a looped curtain, pot-plants and palms leapt up under the stage apron, one row of lights and then another shed a pink radiance over the exits, in the domed roof a shower of small stars twinkled and glittered and three bowls flushed suddenly to ruby colour.”)

Focalization of the young people is interchanging throughout the text. However, most of the time Andrew is a focalizer. He thinks about Rosa all the time and tries to please her in any possible ways, he is very caring (“You see all right?”, “Liking it, Rosa?”, “Good, isn’t it?”). He loves the movies, what we can consider from lots of exclamatory and rhetorical sentences (“You had to laugh!”, “Haha!”, “Oh, this was good!”). It seems that he does not have a proper education, all his speech consists of the colloquialisms and slang (“cos”, “the big picture”, “mix-up”) and colloquial syntax (“Not much good, I expect”, “No, he would say nothing and enjoy himself”, “Ah, this was better”).

In passages of Rosa as a focalizer there are less expressive devices (Oh, for heaven’s sake stop that cackling!), as she does not like anything around. She also uses colloquialisms (“This a comedy”), letting us consider both of them coming from the same background of the poor social class. In spite of that she thinks that she is better than Andrew (“He’s just a big hulking kid”, “Is he really so stupid, she wondered. Yes, I suppose he is.”), and the worst thing is that she has the power over him. The climax of the story is set when Andrew, “forgetful of his excitement” asks her at the end of the movie: “Good, isn’t it?” The denouement follows the sentence “his hands dropped; all the joy died out of his face and eyes”. Its Rosa’s focalization, so we see that she cares about him too.

In conclusion, I w

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4 мар 2014 в 16:48|Это спам|Ответить

Елена Крылова▼

In conclusion, I would like to say, that in spite of the time difference between people depicted in the text and the readers is huge, the social problems of the youth are still actual.

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4 мар 2014 в 16:51|Это спам|Ответить

Саша Пономарёва▼

Analysis on the “One stair up”

The author of the story is Nairne Campbell, a Scottish novelist, the author of two books “One Stair Up”, and “Stony Ground”.

To my mind the theme of the story is hidden under the surface. And in order to get to it you are suppose to know the background of the story, all the peculiarities of the relationship of the characters. But for now we can only give guesses. I think this story is just about the fact that all people are different. Some of them are not getting along very well, but we should find ways of changing the situation, and never wound anyone’s feelings.

The plot is about two teenagers who went to see a movie. Through the story, we notice that they have nothing in common. Like two movies, the big picture and the ad movie, they were so different from each other. The time is the first half of the 20th century, the place is Great Britain.

In the story there is a combination of external and internal conflicts. The external conflict is between a boy and a girl. And internal conflicts are revealed through the retelling of the boy’s and girl’s thoughts about each other. We should take a notice on the fact that nothing changes through the story. The characters aren’t changing, they are static. Their relationship between them isn’t changing. At the end of the story the boy is still very delicate about the girl, as in the beginning; and the girl does feel the same indifference and negligence towards the boy, as in the beginning of the text. The text can be divided into several parts: exposition, complication, climax and denouement.

There are two main characters in the text: Andrew and Rosa. They are both flat characters, there are no story behind them in the text. They aren’t described very well, and we can only create their portraits, based on their thoughts and actions. We can see the stylistic parallel in the text, the comparison Andrew and Rosa, and the comparison of the movies. Rosa reminds me of the ad picture, because the ad picture had the plot, emotions, things to think after, etc. The big picture was funny and entertaining, yet seemed a bit shallow and pathetic. In my opinion those two movies are not bad or good, they are just different in genre, and orientated to the different audiences. The same thing with the characters, I think Rosa isn’t smarter that Andrew, she’s just more mature. And Andrew is a little childlike, yet honest and sweet.

The story is narrated by 3rd person. There are several stylistic devises:

Metaphor: “hardest hearts”, “Peter Pan”; “smashed all the records”;

Epithet: “vibrant”, “rapid-fire”, “million dollar prize”; etc.

In the story there are also several colloquial expressions. I think the author put them in the text intentionally, in order to give the readers the hint that the characters are teenagers, and to single out the fact that the characters are different from each other, because in addition to the colloquialisms there are several bookish expressions.

I think the author intended to show us that people are different, yet it doesn’t mean that we have the right to treat them differently.

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5 мар 2014 в 2:25|Это спам|Ответить

Ganya Starostin▼

The text which I am going to analyze is called “One stair up” by Campbell Nairne. Campbell Nairne is a Scottish novelist, the author of two books “One stair up” (1932) and “Stony Ground”(1934). “One stair up” describes the life of a working-class family from Edinburgh. The great advantage of this novel is that it shows the life with great realism, fine style and good sense of humor.

The text took place in cinema, maybe in 1930-s, in Edinburgh. Two young people – Andrew and Rosa – came to watch a movie. During the film we could see their attitude to each other, and what kind of relations they had had. Andrew and Rosa are both from the working-class of Edinburgh, and, I think, it was their maybe first date in cinema at all. Cinema theaters were rare at that time and their popularity grew (“Prefer cinemas to theatres any day”). So, the author compares the theatre with something very luxury and unusual. We can see that Rosa doesn’t want to be in theatre with Andrew, and this date and this film were boring to her, but “it pleased her to be seen in the dress circle, even with Andrew”. Because of that, she tries to find familiar faces. What about Andrew, so, he just tried to impress her companion, he likes Rosa. Also, he prefers not to see anybody else in theatre unlike her. They had big difference.

I think we can divide this text into four parts: 1) Coming to the cinema; 2) Andrew and Rosa sitting in the circle before the comedy (their dialogue); 3) The film itself; 4) The final part, when Rosa says her opinion about the movie.

The climax of the text, in my opinion, is the moment when Rosa said her attitude to the film. “Good, isn’t it?” – “I don’t see anything funny in that”. So there we can see a big difference between these two characters.

The text is quite problematic for understanding and translating, because the author used a lot of epithets (rapid-fire drama, hot darkness, shadowy faces, looped curtain, hardest hearts), metaphors (a shower of stars, a shaft of white light), metonymy (young blood), and simile (a carpet that yielded like, a hard-worked dog, for you saw it, or another like it, in dozens of these comic films). The main idea which the author wants to show is “Tastes differs.”

As we know, they are from the same social strata – working class. But, we can see in the text, a big difference in their behavior. Rosa tries to be noticed in circle, Andrew – not. In my opinion, it’s shown on the title of the novel “One stair up”. So, the question – who is pitiful – Rosa, who wants better life, or Andrew, who already reconcile with it – is controversial.

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