Analysis of Text № 2

The text “How We KeptMother’s Day” is written by Stephen Leacock, the famous Canadian writer of the 20^thcentury. His stories, full of humour and sarcasm, expose the contradiction of life in modern bourgeois society.

Leacock says that the basis of humour lies in the contrasts offered by life itself, but "the deep background that lies behind and beyond what we call humour is revealed only to the few who, by instinct or by effort, have given thought to it".

Thetitle of the story is not difficult for comprehenshion and it is possible to forsee the further events in some ways: maybe children and their Father really want to make a wonderful surprise for Mother if they love her sincerely. But if they are selfish and eccentric by nature, they will think only about their own well-being.

The text belongs to a belles-lettres styleand tosocialandpsychological genres. We can see that the action takes place in Canada in one well-off family. The members of this family are going to have a special celebration of Mother's Day. This story also opens real relations between them and shows their characters and inner world.

The text is a narrationbecause it reflects all events dynamically. It also containsa descriptionof family's doings towards each other and their Mother. All events are colourful, emitional and even funny. The action is not slow. It is rather fast. The story presents an interesting example of the indirect method of characterization. The author does not say directly that the members of the family are callous and hard-hearted people but makes them act and lets the reader draw his own conclusion.

The main theme of the story isrelations between the memebersof the family. It coincides with theidea of the story which depicts the same problem. The author doesn't sympathize with the main characters and doesn't remain aloof. He describes them in humorous way and demonstrates different funny and absurd facts, e.g.the members of the family buying presents for themselves on Mother's Day, but buying nothing for their Mother. There is also a humour of words when the reader doesn't laugh at what is happening in the story but at how it is put by the author, e.g.But of course we are felt that it would never do to let Father stay at home, especially as we knew he would make trouble if he did.

The text under analysis consists of several parts.

In exposition of the story the main characters are represented.It's one well-off Canadian family which wanted to keep Mother's Day. All members began making all special preparations for this holiday. They were also planning how to spend this lovely day. Their final decision about spending the whole day in the open air without Mother is represented in complication. Climax describes all family's returning home, festive dinner in the evening and their ''proposition'' to wash up after it. Denouenment displays Mother's reaction about ''the most wonderful day in her life''.

The text is finished on ironical and humorous note and in some degree it is left for suggestion. It's possible to ponder over further life of the family, their deeds, observation and future life.

Depending upon the manner in which the narration is represented we can speak about the language of the story. It's informal and abounds with numerous colloquial words and phrases, e.g. all that kind of thing, awfully (in awfully becoming), a little bit, have a big day, get messed up, the dinner…was great fun. Grammatical structures are free and careless because of the omission of the conjunctionthat.The interjectionwellintroduces some of the passages (which normally occures in oral speech). We can find some modal constructions and sequences of tenses; e.g. The two girls thought that it would be a nice thing to dress in our bes for such an occasion. We all felt that it would never do to let Father stay home. We knew he would make trouble. In general the text is represented in Past Indefinite Tense and it isn't overfilled in complicated constructions.