3.1. Answer the following questions.
What made Tod quit smoking?
Was it difficult for him to do it?
Has his attitude to smoking changed since then?
What idea from the book impressed him so much?
Section 4. Follow up activity
4.1. Read a candid confession telling how a young girl fell prey to the nasty habit and how finally she broke herself of it. Why did she take up smoking? How did it affect her health? Was is difficult for her to get rid of this destructive habit?
The Confession
The first time we met, I was an innocent eight-year-old. My friends and I secretly took you down to our dark cellar, so that our parents wouldn’t find out. Later on, when I was about ten-year-old, we started to meet every weekend when my friends and I went to a noisy discotheque at our local youth club. We used to sneak out from the club up into the shady woods, where my friends and I sat with make-up on our faces and garish nail polish on our nails feeling very adult and mature.
From nineteen onwards we met several times a day, and by then my mother allowed you to come into my room. She did not want to know you, having gone through so much to get rid of you. Naturally she was rather disappointed in me but what could she do? She kept hoping that I would “get my act together” but at this age I was unruly and rebellious and punishment and curfews didn’t work.
There is no doubt that you have been everything to me. You have been there when I needed a friend or when I was sad. You calmed me down when I was upset. In other words, you have been one of my best friends.
Unlike others in similar situations, I didn’t associate with you because it was fashionable or I thought it was tough. However, I had seen you and your equals, together with beautiful, sophisticated women; women who ate at expensive restaurants and drank red wine by candlelight. My friends and I tried to imitate those women; we wanted to live in that kind of world.
The problem is I liked you too much. There was no going back. I was caught in your trap. My flat was almost ruined because of you. My skin became a washed out pale grey. Sometimes I felt like an old woman. How was I so blind, deaf and ignorant for all those years? Why couldn’t I let you go? I know the answer myself, it was because I didn’t care then, but I do now.
In spite of being it difficult, I am trying to end up our destructive relationship, as one must end all best relationships. I hope I will succeed in my effort to stop smoking and that I will never buy another packet of Prince again. After more than eighteen years together I bid you farewell, my fair Prince.
4.2. Interview a person who has managed to give up smoking, and on its basis write a true story similar to the one you’ve just read.
4.3. Surely now you are aware of the fact that smoking puts at stake not only our health but our life too, as it can lead to fatal diseases. Sam Shay was a chain-smoker, he smoked six packs of cigarettes a day and died of lung cancer.
Write an epitaph for him. An epitaph is a speech or written passage composed in commemoration of a dead person. You may write your own one or use the model suggested below, just change the numeral in the third line and the last line correspondingly.
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Here lies Sam Shay. Smoked six packs a day. He started smoking when he was one. Now he's one dead son-of-a-gun.
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Here lies Sam Shay. Smoked six packs a day. He started smoking when he was two. Now there's nothing he can ….
