Ideas and questions for further discussion

1. Who tells the story? In what form is it written? What does the author gain by choosing this type of narrator and this form?

2. What event does Mrs. Laird want to share with “dear Alicia” and why?

3. When and where did this event take place? Is the setting established only in the exposition or does it accompany the main event of the story? State the function of the setting. How effective is the writer’s introduction of the surroundings? Find supporting evidence in the text of the story.

4. Introduce the characters: Tom, Hundland, the Laird's wife (age, appearance, social status, manners, occupation, interests, etc). What do Tom and the lady have in common? Comment on the method(s) of character creation and the means of indirect characterization G. Brown employed to make the character-images vivid, convincing and true-to-life. Describe the impression they produce on each other and on the reader.

5. What do you think of the boy's song? Is it a perfect proof of the lady’s first impression about the boy (“he is a bit simple in the head”)? Which part of the story – the boy's song or the woman's letter – is more powerful, in your view? Why? Do the readers learn more about Tom from the words of his father and Mrs. Laird or from his song? What enigmas of his soul does Tom’s song reveal?

6. What plot structure does the story have? Comment on its components. What is the culmination of the story? What form does the ending of the story take? Does the closing part of the story impress you?

7. Identify the conflicts the plot of the story is based on. What is the central conflict, in your opinion?

8. What literary representational forms does G. Brown resort to?

9. Have a careful look at the language that the writer uses. In the section before the boy's song, can you detect a point after which the woman's style becomes more poetic, more figurative and ornate?

10. Explain the meaning of the following phrases from the story:

- a white five-pointed star;

- I heard the faintest rhythmic displacement of dry sand grains;

- Who could it be the despoiler of my solitude?

- I hidden in my rock cranny;

- Shenstone lay spreadeagled at my feet;

- shore wanderer;

- empty unremembering empyrean;

- pencil on paper is tardy;

- cries of a rock-questing gull;

- The sands were flushed with the last of the sun.

11. How different is the language Tom uses to sing his song from the lady’s language? Give examples from the text.

12. What is implied in the title of the story? To what extent does it contribute to the message? What message did the writer manage to convey to you through his story?

13. Some themes are juxtaposed in the story: leisure and toil, wealth and poverty, sickness and health, intellect and nature, insanity and genius. Which couple do you consider to be the most important? Why? How are they revealed in the story?

14. Spot the cases of tone-shifts in the story. Why do they occur?

What is the author’s attitude to the subject-matter?

What is the general mood (the atmosphere) of the story? How is it created? What does it make you feel?