Anthony in Blue Alsatia

Victoria Ivanova, group 55

“Anthony in Blue Alsatia” Analysis

The plot of the story is built around the imaginary travel of the main character, Anthony, a young man, who wants to escape the dull routines of his life and finds pleasure in dreaming about traveling to some unknown, peaceful, far off place.

The author introduces the main character in the exposition of the text, which presents narration: Anthony is skipping through his morning paper, searching for things that might interest him. The text has a framing structure – it begins and ends with Anthony reading a newspaper. The author resorts to bathos -“Home Rails, Questions in the House, and Three—Piece Suits”, which renders the idea, that Anthony finds the news boring, until some unusual article draws his attention and his “eye roved no more”.

The entanglement of the plot comes when Anthony starts reflecting on the situation described in this article titled “A Minor Mystery”: the breakdown of the Blue Alsatian Express near the Jura Mountains. Anthony fantasizes himself to be one of the passengers on that train. The text is based on the opposition between narrative and direct speech. Narrative represents the character’s inner world, while direct speech – the outside world. The purpose of this opposition is to convey the contrast between nervousness and peacefulness, annoyance and pleasure, life routine and exciting experience one could get traveling.

The passage starting with “Railways – it is…” renders the idea of the pleasure of traveling to some small, unknown places “with no names and no stations”, “to which no tickets are issued”. To intensify this idea, the author resorts to the image of Heavens. Such places do seem like Heaven to a person who is tired of the hustle and bustle of big cities and is looking for escape. Rhythmically arranged repetition of the word “Heavens”, emphatic structures (That is where I really wanted to go – that is…), exclamatory sentences, rhetorical questions, aposiopesis – all these means serve to support the idea that it is great luck when one gets the opportunity to travel to such places and enjoy their serenity and quietness.

As the narration goes on, there is less philosophy, more romance. “A hedgerow bowed with blossom, beyond it…” – in this passage alliteration, repetition (flowers, flowering), parallel constructions create a rhythmical effect, making it sound like typical English verse. Anthony’s dreams come into contrast with the feelings of other passengers – frustration, impatience, irritation, which are presented in the direct speech and are conveyed through emphatic constructions (“I tell you”; “are we never going to eat”), lexical repetition (“preposterous”, “late, late”), exclamatory sentences, short sentences, alliteration (“puffed his fat wife”, “fumed the fat millionaire”). The series of these stylistic means bring out the climax of direct speech – “Come!” Nevertheless, Anthony chooses to stay in his dream world – he gets off the train and is lost to sight. By the choice of words the author creates a romantic atmosphere: “a girl of sixteen”,”barefoot”,” a lovely grey-eyed child”, “a white chemise”, “laughed like music”, “the sweet hay”. The syntax becomes shorter, then follows the climax of narrative – “Stay”. The opposition between the climaxes “come” and “stay” indicates the alternative Anthony faces - coming back to reality or staying in the world of his dreams, of which Anthony chooses the latter.

The denouement falls on the final lines of the story - “he skipped it” .The framing here renders the idea that escape to one’s dream world is only temporary, coming back to the reality of life is inevitable in the end. The main idea of the story is that people, being absorbed by their daily routine, concerned about their problems, lack of time, often miss the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful world around them.