Analysis

PLOT

1. Identify the exposition, complication, climax and outcome of the story.

2. What is peculiar about the ending? Is it predictable?

3. Underline phrases marking the appearance of the supernatural.

SETTING

1. Where is the action of the story set? What is the significance of the choice of this setting?

2. Consider the passages describing Yessney.

1. Find references to different plants.

2. Underline all epithets.

3. What connotations prevail?

4. Which words and meanings are repeated?

5. What atmosphere is created?

3. What feelings did the farm arouse in Sylvia? Which details gave her that feeling?

4. In the whole text pick out all the words connected with the notions of terror and unseen.

5. Which of the adjectives would you choose to describe the setting?

hostile

welcoming

alien

unfamiliar

inhospitable

mysterious

romantic

exotic

6. The ambivalence of the setting of the story is based on the linking of the beautiful and the cruel, of joy and terror, which is explicit in the sentence In its wild open savagery there seemed a stealthy linking of the joy of life with the terror of unseen things.

Pick out more examples of such linking in the sentences concerning

• the country

• the landscape

• the sound of a boy's laughter

• a boy’s face across a tangle of undergrowth

• the music coming from the wood

• the last things Sylvia saw and heard

7. What social class do the characters belong to? How is it reflected in theirbehaviour?

NARRATOR

1. What kind of narrator is used in this passage?

1. first person b) limited third person c) omniscient third person ?

2. Does he comment on and guide the reader’s interpretation of events? How?

CHARACTERS

1. Focus on the character of Sylvia Seltoun.

1. The story opens with the description of Sylvia’s character. Underline lexical, synonymic and semantic repetitions. What trait is emphasized through them? Pick out more cases of recurrence of this idea later in the text.

2. Why is Sylvia’s marriage described as an ‘achievement’? What aspect of social life is satirically portrayed? Who/what is the object of the author’s satire?

3. What is Sylvia’s attitude to her husband? Is it expressed openly or implied?

4. Identify the expression rendering Sylvia’s feelings at the sight of the bunch of grapes at the feet of Pan. How does it characterize her?

5. Disclose the implications of the following expressions characterizing Sylvia:

town-bred tastes

with a School-of-Art appreciation

accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than “leafy Kensington”

her imagination unsexed the most matronly dairy cows and turned them into bulls liable to “see red” at any moment

6. Which of the following adjectives would you choose to characterize Sylvia:

independent

decisive

arrogant

naive

matter-of-fact

snobbish

selfish

self-assured

conceited

self-conscious

businesslike

active

other______?

2. Focus on the character of Mortimer Seltoun

1. Comment on the play on words in “Dead Mortimer”. What other phrases or facts justify the token name of Mortimer? Could there be any hint at his own character in Mortimer’s phrase most of his children have been stillborn?

2. What epithets are used to describe the expression of his face and his manners?

3. Pick out expressions describing the change in Sylvia’s husband. How could the change be interpreted?

LITERARY TECHNIQUES

1) Identify the adjective reverberating the name of the central character. What is “leafy Kensington.”? What is the irony of the name based on?

2) What mythological allusions are based on the words Pan, sylvan, pipe music, terror, stag, hounds. (See the notes).

3) In what way does the story rewrite the myth of Actaeon?

Who:	In the myth	In the story
has a ‘sylvan’ name?
commits an offence?
takes offence?
is transformed into a stag and killed by hounds?
is killed by a stag?

3. What is the message of the ‘reversed myth’? Can Sylvia be considered a fortune huntress? A punished abuser of the weak?

4. Which phrases present the outcome (denoument) as

• terrible: ________________________________________________

• stirring :_______________________________________________

• cathartic : ______________________________________________

STYLE

1) Name the stylistic devices reinforcing the satire in the passage about Sylvia’s marriage:

	stylistic devices
married Mortimer Seltoun ...in the teeth of the cold hostility of his family, and in spite of his unaffected indifference to women
“Dead Mortimer”
intimate enemies
she had brought her victory to its concluding stage

2. In the climactic passage of the story identify and comment on the effect the following stylistic devices:

• epithet

• metaphor

• irony

• metonymy

• simile

• personification

• repetition

• parallel constructions

• detachment

3) Compare the syntax of the climactic part with the preceding one. How would you define its rhythm (sharp or smooth) ? How does the change in syntax affect the impact of this part of the text? It makes it:

- less flowing

- easier to understand

- less poetic

- less detached?

4) Which of the following adjectives would you use to describe the tone of the story?

Melancholic

Angry

Humorous

Bitter

Ironic

Triumphant

Detached

Sympathetic

Other

5) How would you define the style of this story:

poetic, matter-of-fact, unemotional, concrete, simple, philosophical, sophisticated, direct, figurative,conversational, dramatic, abstract, realistic, other?

MESSAGE

In his stories Saki uses the frame of a whimsical joke for the purpose of revealing something hidden beneath the surfaces of life. What is it in this story?

13

THE OPEN WINDOW.

Saki

“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.”

Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.

“I know how it will be,” his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; “you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.”

Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division.

“Do you know many of the people round here?” asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.

“Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here.”

He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

“Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?” pursued the self-possessed young lady.

“Only her name and address,” admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.

“Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,” said the child; “that would be since your sister's time.”

“Her tragedy?” asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.

“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

“It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?”

“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.” Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. “Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window—”

She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.

“I hope Vera has been amusing you?” she said.

“She has been very interesting,” said Framton.

“I hope you don't mind the open window,” said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; “my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the marshes to-day, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you men-folk, isn't it?”

She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,” announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably wide-spread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. “On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement,” he continued.

“No?” said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention—but not to what Framton was saying.

“Here they are at last!” she cried. “Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!”

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.

In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window; they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you bound?”

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall-door, the gravel-drive, and the front gate were dimly-noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid an imminent collision.

“Here we are, my dear,” said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window; “fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?”

“A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton; “could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of good-bye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.”

“I expect it was the spaniel,” said the niece calmly; “he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone their nerve.”

Romance at short notice was her speciality.

GLOSSARY

to discount

moping

rectory

snipe-shooting

falteringly

to get a creepy feeling

to bustle into

to say sth briskly

marshes

to rattle

scarcity of

ghastly

under delusion

ailment

infirmity

a hoarse voice

to chant

to grab at

headlong, adj

retreat

to bolt out

pariah dogs

to snarl

at short notice

ANALYSIS

PLOT

SETTING

NARRATOR

CHARACTERS

1. Mr Nuttel

2. The niece

3. Mrs Sappleton

Did Mr Nuttel see ghosts or was had the girl been pulling his leg? Prove your answer.

STYLE

O.Henry

14

WITCHE’S LOAVES

O.Henry

Miss Martha Meacham kept the little bakery on the corner (the one where you go up three steps, and the bell tinkles when you open the door).

Miss Martha was forty, her bank-book showed a credit of two thousand dollars, and she possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart. Many people have married whose chances to do so were much inferior to Miss Martha’s.

Two or three times a week’s customer came in in whom she began to take an interest. He was a middle-aged man, wearing spectacles and a brown beard trimmed to a careful point.

He spoke English with a strong German accent. His clothes were worn and darned in places, and wrinkled and baggy in others. But he looked neat, and had very good manners.

He always bought two loaves of stale bread. Fresh bread was five cents a loaf. Stale ones were two for five. Never did he call for anything but stale bread.

Once Miss Martha saw a red and brown stain on his fingers. She was sure then that he was an artist and very poor. No doubt he lived in a garret where he painted pictures and ate stale bread and thought of the good things to eat in Miss Marha’s bakery.

Often when Miss Martha sat down to her chops and light rolls or jam and tea she would sigh, and wish that the gentle-mannered artist might share her tasty meal instead of eating his dry crust in that draughty attic.

Miss Martha’s heart, as you have been told, was a sympathetic one.

In order to test her theory as to his occupation, she brought from her room one day a painting that she had bought at a sale, and set it against the shelves behind the bread counter.

It was a Venetian scene. A splendid marble palazzio (so it said on the picture) stood in the foreground – or rather forewater. For the rest there were gondola (with the lady trailing her hand in the water), clouds, sky, and chiaroscuro in plenty. No artist could fail to notice it.

Two days afterwards the customer came in.

‘Two loafs of stale bread, if you blease.

‘You haf here a fine bicture, madame,’ he said while she was wrapping up the bread.

‘Yes?’ says Miss Martha, revelling in her own cunning. ‘I do so admire art and’ (no, it would not do to say ‘artists’ thus early) ‘and paintings,’ she substituted. ‘You think it is a good picture?’

‘De balace,’ said the customer, ‘is not in good drawing. Der bairspective of it is not true. Goot morning, madame.’

He took his bread, bowed, and hurried out.

Yes, he must be an artist. Miss Martha took the picture back to her room.

How gentle and kindly his eyes shone behind his spectacles! What a broad brow he had! To be able to judge perspective at a glance – and to live on stale bread! But genius often has to struggle before it is recognized.

What a thing it would be for art and perspective if genius were backed by two thousand dollars in the bank, a bakery, and a sympathetic heart to – But these were day-dreams, Miss Martha.

Often now when he came he would chat for a while across the showcase. He seemed to crave Miss Martha’s cheerful words. He kept on buying stale bread. Never a cake, never a pie, never one of her delicious Sally Lunns.

She thought he began to look thinner and discouraged. Her heart ached to add something good to eat to his meagre purchase, but her courage failed at the act. She did not dare affront him. She knew the pride of artists.

Miss Martha took to wearing her blue-dotted silk waist behind the counter. In the back room she cooked a mysterious compound of quince seeds and borax. Ever so many people use it for the compexion.

One day the customer came in as usual, laid his nickel on the showcase, and called for his stale loaves. While Miss Martha was reaching for them there was a great tooting and clanging, and a fire-engine came lumbering past.

The customer hurried to the door to look, as anyone will. Suddenly inspired, Miss Martha seized the opportunity.

On the bottom shelf behind the counter was a pound of fresh butter that the dairyman had left ten minutes before. With a bread-knife Miss Martha made a deep slash in each of the stale loaves, inserted a generous quantity of butter, and pressed the loaves tight again.

When the customer turned once more she was tying the paper around them. When he had gone, after an unusually pleasant chat, Miss Martha smiled to herself, but not without a slight fluttering of the heart.

Had she been too bold? Would he take offence? But surely not. There was no language of edibles. Butter was no emblem of unmaidenly forwardness.

For a long time that day her mind dwelt on the subject. She imagined the scene when he should discover her little deception.

He would lay down his brushes and palette. There would stand his easel with the pictire he was painting in which the perspective was beyond criticism.

He would prepare for his luncheon of dry bread and water. He would slice into a loaf – ah!

Miss Martha blushed. Would he think of the hand that placed it there as he ate? Would he –

The front door bell jangled viciously. Somebody was coming in, making a great deal of noise.

Miss Martha hurried to the front. Two men were there. One was a young man smoking a pipe – a man she had never seen before. The other was her artist.

His face was very red, his hat was on the back of his head, his hair was wildly rumpled. He clenched his two fists and shook them ferociously at Miss Martha. At Miss Martha.

‘Dummkopf!’ he shouted with extreme loudness; and then ‘Tausendonfer!’ or something like it, in German.

The young man tried to draw him away.

‘I vill not go,’ he said angrily, ‘else I shall told her.’

He made a bass drum of Miss Martha’s counter.

‘You haf shpoilt me,’ he cried, his blue eyes blazing behind his spectacles. ‘I vill tell you. You vas von meddlingsome old cat!’

Miss Martha leaned weakly against the shelves and laid one hand on her blue-dotted silk waist. The young man took his companion by the collar.

Come on,’ he said, ‘you’ve said enough.’ He dragged the angry one out at the door to the sidewalk, and then came back.

‘Guess you ought to be told, ma’am,’ he said, ‘what the row is about. That’s Blumberger. He’s an architectural draughtsman. I work in the same office with him.

‘He’s been working hard for three months drawing a plan for a new city hall. It was a prize competition. He finished inking the lines yesterday. You know, a draughtsman always makes his drawing in pencil first. When it’s done he rubs out the pencil lines with handfuls of stale breadcrumbs. That’s better than india-rubber.

‘Blumberger’s been buying the bread here. Well, to-day – well, you know, ma’am, that butter isn’t – well, Blumberger’s plan isn’t good for anything now except to cut up into railroad sandwiches.’

Miss Martha went into the back room. She took off the blue-dotted silk waist and put on the old brown serge she used to wear. Then she poured the quince seed and borax mixture out of the window into the ash can.

GLOSSARY

to trim a beard to a point

darned clothes

baggy clothes

stale bread

garret

crust

draughty

attic

in the foreground

discouraged

a meagre purchase

to affront sb

to take to wearing

a compound of

quince seeds

a nickel

tooting

a fire-engine

to go lumbering

to seize the opportunity.

to make a slash in

to take offence

edibles

forwardness

easel

to be beyond criticism

viciously

rumpled hair

ferociously

row

draughtsman

india-rubber

ANALYSIS

PLOT

Identify the structural components of the plot.

• What do we learn from the exposition?

• What is the culmination?

• When does the climax come? Comment on the denoument. What is the implication of the two closing sentences?

SETTING

Comment on the use of the definite article with bakery in the opening sentence. What is the role of the parenhesis?

What is the role of the setting of the story?

• place

• time

• milieau

NARRATOR

1. What kind of narrator tells the story?

a) first person, b) omniscient third person, c) limited third person

2. Identify the point at which the the narrator intrudes in the text. Which of the purposes listed below does the intrusion serve?

* to summarise, philosophise or moralise

* to involve the reader more directly into the story

* to add humour

3. Pick out words and phrases rendering the narrator’s attitude to Miss Martha. Is it positive, negative or neutral? Is it expressed openly or implied? What means are used to render it?

4. How wouldyou define the voice of the narrator?

Friendly, intimate, formal, engaging, pedantic, other

CHARACTERS

I. Miss Martha

1. Is there any description of Miss Martha’s appearance? What details provide clues about hers personality?

Which word combination characterizing Miss Martha is repeated throughout the story?

2. What is the phrase she cooked a mysterious compound associated with? What does the epithet add?

3. Pick out the passages representing Miss Martha’s thoughts? What can we guess about her character?

4. What does the choice of the word genius suggest about Miss Martha’s attitude towards the customer?

5. Identify Miss Martha’s unuttered represented speech.How does it characterize her?

II. The customer

1.Which of the following aspects of the customer does his description focus on?

• physical

• social

• personality traits

2. What is peculiar about the speech of the customer? What is the name of the stylistic device employed? How does his speech characterise him?

3. How would you define the tone of the customer’s voice in the first and the second dialogue?

Calm, angry, hysterical, controlled, persuasive, defiant, angry, resigned, arrogant, intimidating, other:______

4. How are his emotions revealed through the second dialogue? Does the narrator describe his feelings directly or does he use more subtle means to communicate the intensity of emotions? Which of the following techniques can you identify?

• epithets

• metaphor

• personification

• symbolic gesture

• brief exclamatory sentences

• foreign words

• jestures or details of appearance implying emotional state

STYLE

1) Which of the following adjectives would you choose to describe the tone of the story?

Pedantic, neutral, ironic, solemn, humorous, playful, other:

2) Characterise the humour of the story:

• verbal (when what the narrator or the ch-s say is funny)

• behavioural

• situational

3)Explain how Miss Martha’ s thoughts add a touch of humour to the narration.

4) Which of the following stylistic devices are employed for the humorous effect?

• epithet

• personification

• pun

• irony

• simile

• metaphor

• zeugma

• periphrasis

• semantically false chain

• anticlimax

• bathos

• oxymoron

• litotes

• decomposition of a set phrase

Identify them in the text:

5. What does the humorous tone underline?

• the mild mockery of the narrator

• the absurdity of the situation

• the light-hearted nature of the subject under discussion

• other________________

6. Identify the case of repetition in parallel constructions. What effect is achieved through the stylistic convergence?

7. Pick out all cases of the distant repetition of the word heart. Underline all other elements that are repeated.

8. Circle the epithets characterizing the two men, their appearance and actions. What mood is sustained by the epithets?

9. How is tension built in the story? Through:

• repetition

• expressive syntax

• stylisticaly coloured vocabulary

• imagery

• other means_____________

10. Circle foreign words and comment on their role in the story.

11. Is the l-ge that is used rich in descriptive elements (epithets, metaphors, similes) or is it sparing and direct?

TITLE

What meanings of the word witch do you know?

Which of them is relevant for the story? Who is the witch? Why?

W.S. Maugham

15

THE BUM

W.S. Maugham

God knows how often I had lamented that I had not half the time I needed to do half the things I wanted. I could not remember when last I had had a moment to myself. I had often amused my fancy with the prospect of just one week's complete idleness. Most of us when not busy working are busy playing; we ride, play tennis or golf, swim or gamble; but I saw myself doing nothing at all. I would lounge through the morning, dawdle through the afternoon, and loaf through the evening. My mind would be a slate and each passing hour a sponge that wiped out the scribblings written on it by the world of sense. Time, because it is so fleeting, time, because it is beyond recall, is the most precious of human goods and to squander it is the most delicate form of dissipation in which man can indulge. Cleopatra dissolved in wine a priceless pearl, but she gave it to Antony to drink; when you waste the brief golden hours you take the beaker in which the gem is melted and dash its contents to the ground. The gesture is grand and like all grand gestures absurd. That of course is its excuse. In the week I promised myself I should naturally read, for to the habitual reader reading is a drug of which he is the slave; deprive him of printed matter and he grows nervous, moody, and restless; then, like the alcoholic bereft of brandy who will drink shellac or methylated spirit, he will make do with the advertisements of a paper five years old; he will make do with a telephone directory. But the professional writer is seldom a disinterested reader. I wished my reading to be but another form of idleness. I made up my mind that if ever the happy day arrived when I could enjoy untroubled leisure I would complete an enterprise that had always tempted me, but which hitherto, like an explorer making reconnaissances into an undiscovered country, I had done little more than enter upon: I would read the entire works of Nick Carter.

But I had always fancied myself choosing my moment with surroundings to my liking, not having it forced upon me; and when I was suddenly faced with nothing to do and had to make the best of it (like a steamship acquaintance whom in the wide waste of the Pacific Ocean you have invited to stay with you in London and who turns up without warning and with all his luggage) I was not a little taken aback. I had come to Vera Cruz from Mexico City to catch one of the Ward Company's white cool ships to Yucatan; and found to my dismay that, a dock strike having been declared over-night, my ship would not put in. I was stuck in Vera Cruz. I took a room in the Hotel Diligencias overlooking the square and spent the morning looking at the sights of the town. I wandered down side streets and peeped into quaint courts. I visited the parish church which is very picturesque. Then I found that I had seen all that was to be seen and I sat down in the coolness of the arcade that surrounded the square and ordered a drink. The sun beat down on the square with a merciless splendour. The coco-palms drooped dusty and bedraggled. Great black buzzards perched on them for a moment uneasily, swooped to the ground to gather some bit of offal, and then with lumbering wings flew up to the church tower. I watched the people crossing the square; negroes, Indians, Creols, and Spanish; the motley people of the Spanish Main; and they varied in colour from ebony to ivory. As the morning wore on the tables around me filled up, chiefly with men, who had come to have a drink before luncheon, for the most part in white ducks, but some notwithstanding the heat in the dark clothes of professional respectability. A small band, a guitarist, a blind fiddler, and a harpist, played rag-time and after every other tune the guitarist came round with a plate. I had already bought the local paper and I was adamant to the newsvendors who pertinaciously sought to sell me more copies of the same sheet. I refused, oh, twenty times at least, the solicitations of grimy urchins who wanted to shine my spotless shoes; and having come to the end of my small change I could only shake my head at the beggars who importuned me. They gave one no peace. Little Indian women, in shapeless rags, each one with a baby tied in the shawl on her back held out skinny hands and in a whimper recited a dismal screed; blind men were led up to my table by small boys; the maimed, the halt, the deformed exhibited the sores and the monstrosities with which nature or accident had afflicted them; and half naked, underfed children whined endlessly their demand for coppers. But these kept their eyes open for the fat policeman who would suddenly dart out on them with a thong and give them a sharp cut on the back or over the head. Then they would scamper, only to return again when, exhausted by the exercise of so much energy, he relapsed into lethargy.

But suddenly my attention was attracted by a beggar who, unlike the rest of them and indeed the people sitting round me, swarthy and black-haired, had hair and beard of a red so vivid that it was startling. His beard was ragged and his long mop of hair looked as though it had not been brushed for months. He wore only a pair of trousers and a cotton singlet, but they were tatters, grimy and foul, that barely held together. I have never seen anyone so thin: his legs, his naked arms, were but skin and bone and through the rents of his singlet you saw every rib of his wasted body; you could count the bones of his dust-covered feet. Of that starveling band he was easily the most abject. He was not old, he could not well have been more than forty, and I could not but ask myself what had brought him to this pass. It was absurd to think that he would not have worked if work he had been able to get. He was the only one of the beggars who did not speak. The rest of them poured forth their litany of woe if it did not bring the alms they asked continued until an impatient word from you chased them away. He said nothing. I suppose he felt that his look of destitution was all the appeal he needed. He did not even hold out his hand, he merely looked at you, but with such wretchedness in his eyes, such despair in his attitude, it was dreadful; he stood on and on, silent and immobile, gazing stead-fastly, and then, if you took no notice of him, he moved slowly to the next table. If he was given nothing he showed neither disappointment nor anger. If someone offered him a coin he stepped forward a little, stretched out his claw-like hand, took it without a word of thanks and impassively went his way. I had nothing to give him and when he came to me, so that he should not wait in vain, I shook my head.

'Dispence Usted por Dios,' I said, using the polite Castillian formula with which the Spaniards refuse a beggar.

But he paid no attention to what I said. He stood in front of me, for as long as he stood at the other tables, looking at me with tragic eyes. I have never seen such a wreck of humanity. There was something terrifying in his appearance. He did not look quite sane. At length he passed on.

It was one o'clock and I had lunch. When I awoke from my siesta it was still very hot, but towards evening a breath of air coming in through the windows which I had at last ventured to open tempted me into the square. I sat down under my arcade and ordered a long drink. Presently people in greater numbers filtered into the open space from the surrounding streets, the tables in the restaurant round it filled up, and the kiosk in the middle the band began to play. The crowd grew thicker. On the free benches people sat huddled together like dark grapes clustered on a stalk. There was a lively hum of conversation. The big black buzzards flew screeching overhead, swooping down when they saw something to pick up, or scurrying away from under the feet of the passers-by. As twilight descended they swarmed, it seemed from all parts of the town, towards the church tower; they circled heavily about it and hoarsely crying, squabbling, and jangling, settled themselves uneasily to roost. And again bootblacks begged me to have my shoes cleaned, news­boys pressed dank papers upon me, beggars whined their plaintive demand for alms. I saw once more that strange, red-bearded fellow and watched him stand motionless, with the crushed and piteous air, before one table after another. He did not stop before mine. I supposed he remembered me from the morning and having failed to get anything from me then thought it useless to try again. You do not often see a red-haired Mexican, and because it was only in Russia that I had seen men of so destitute a mien I asked myself if he was by chance a Russian. It accorded well enough with the Russian fecklessness that he should have allowed himself to sink to such a depth of degradation. Yet he had not a Russian face; his emaciated features were clear-cut, and his blue eyes were not set in the head in a Russian manner; I wondered if he could be a sailor, English, Scandinavian or American, who had deserted his ship and by degrees sunk to this pitiful condition. He disappeared. Since there was nothing else to do, I stayed on till I got hungry, and when I had eaten came back. I sat on till the thinning crowd suggested it was bed-time. I confess that the day had seemed long and I wondered how many similar days I should be forced to spend there.

But I woke after a little while and could not get to sleep again. My room was stifling. I opened the shutters and looked out at the church. There was no moon, but the bright stars faintly lit its outline. The buzzards were closely packed on the cross above the cupola and on the edges of the tower, and now and then they moved a little. The effect was uncanny. And then, I have no notion why, that red scarecrow recurred to my mind and I had suddenly a strange feeling that I had seen him before. It was so vivid that it drove away from me the possibility of sleep. I felt sure that I had come across him, but when and where I could not tell. I tried to picture the surroundings in which he might take his place, but I could see no more than a dim figure against a background of fog. As the dawn approached it grew a little cooler and I was able to sleep.

I spent my second day at Vera Cruz as I had spent the first. But I watched for the coming of the red-haired beggar, and as he stood at the tables near mine I examined him with attention. I felt certain now that I had seen him somewhere. I even felt certain that I had known him and talked to him, but I still could recall none of the circumstances. Once more he passed my table without stopping and when his eyes met mine I looked in them for some gleam of recollection. Nothing. I wondered if I had made a mistake and thought I had seen him in the same way as sometimes, by some queer motion of the brain, in the act of doing something you are convinced that you are repeating an action that you have done at some past time. I could not get out of my head the impression that at some moment he had entered into my life. I racked my brains. I was sure now that he was either English or American. But I was shy of addressing him. I went over in my mind the possible occasions when I might have met him. Not to be able to place him exasperated me as it does when you try to remember a name that is on the tip of your tongue and yet eludes you. The day wore on.

Another day came, another morning, another evening. It was Sunday and the square was more crowded than ever. The tables under the arcade were packed. As usual the red-haired beggar came along, a terrifying figure in his silence, his threadbare rags, and his pitiful distress. He was standing in front of a table only two from mine, mutely beseeching, but without a gesture. Then I saw the policeman who at intervals tried to protect the public from the importunities of all these beggars sneak round a column and give him a resounding whack with his thong. His thin body winced, but he made no protest and showed no resentment; he seemed to accept the stinging blow as in the ordinary course of things, and with his slow movements slunk away into the gathering night of the square. But the cruel stripe had whipped my memory and suddenly I remembered.

Not his name, that escaped me still, but everything else. He must have recognized me, for I have not changed very much in twenty years, and that was why after that first morning he had never paused in front of my table. Yes, it was twenty years since I had known him. I was spending a winter in Rome and every evening I used to dine in a restaurant in the Via Sistina where you got excellent macaroni and a good bottle of wine. It was frequented by a little band of English and American art students, and one or two writers; and we used to stay late into the night engaged in endless arguments upon art and literature. He used to come in with a young painter who was a friend of his. He was only a boy then, he could not have been more than twenty-two; and with his blue eyes, straight nose and red hair he was pleasing to look at. I remembered that he spoke a great deal of Central America, he had had a job with the American Fruit Company, but had thrown it over because he wanted to be a writer. He was not popular among us because he was arrogant and we were none of us old enough to take the arrogance of youth with tolerance. He thought us poor fish and did not hesitate to tell us so. He would not show us his work, because our praise meant nothing to him and he despised our censure. His vanity was enormous. It irritated us; but some of us were uneasily aware that it might perhaps be justified. Was it possible that the intense consciousness of genius that he had, rested on no grounds? He had sacrificed everything to be a writer. He was so certain of himself that he infected some of his friends with his own assurance.

I recalled his high spirits, his vitality, his confidence in the future, and his disinterestedness. It was impossible that it was the same man, and yet I was sure of it. I stood up, paid for my drink, and went out into the square to find him. My thoughts were in turmoil. I was aghast. I had thought of him now and then and idly wondered what had become of him. I could never have imagined that he was reduced to this frightful misery. There are hundreds, thousands of youth who enter upon the hard calling of the arts with extravagant hopes; but for the most part they come to terms with their mediocrity and find somewhere in life a niche where they can escape starvation. This was awful. I asked myself what had happened. What hopes deferred had broken his spirit, what disappointments shattered him, and what lost illusions ground him to the dust? I asked myself if nothing could be done. I walked round the square. He was not in the arcades. There was no hope of finding him in the crowd that circled round the band-stand. The light was waning and I was afraid I had lost him. Then I passed the church and saw him sitting on the steps. I cannot describe what a lamentable object he looked. Life had taken him, rent him on its racks, torn him limb from limb, and then flung him, a bleeding wreck, on the stone steps of that church. I went up to him.

"Do you remember Rome?" I said.

He did not move. He did not answer. He took no more notice of me than if I were not standing before him. He did not look at me. His vacant blue eyes rested on the buzzards that were screaming and tearing at some object at the bottom of the steps. I did not know what to do. I took a yellow-backed note out of my pocket and pressed it in his hand. He did not give it a glance. But his hand moved a little, the thin claw-like fingers closed on the note and scrunched it up; he made it into a little ball and then edging it on his thumb flicked it into the air so that it fell among the jangling buzzards. I turned my head instinctively and saw one of them seize it in his beak and fly off followed by two others screaming behind it. When I looked back the man was gone.

I stayed three more days in Vera Cruz. I never saw him again.

GLOSSARY

to lament

to lounge

to dawdle

to loaf

to squander

to indulge in dissipation

beaker

gem

moody

to make do with

reconnaissances

bedraggled.

buzzards

offal

motley people

ducks

pertinaciously

solicitations

grimy

urchins

to importune sb

maimed

a thong

to scamper

swarthy

mop of hair

tatters

foul

singlet

starveling

abject

alms

destitution

a wreck of humanity

siesta

squabbling

roost

with the crushed air

mien

fecklessness

emaciated features

scarecrow

to elude

to beseech

to give sb whack with sth

to wince

to whip sb’s memory

thoughts were in turmoil

to aghast

to defer hopes

to grind to the dust

a lamentable object

to scrunch sth up

COMPREHENSION

1. Why was the narrator stuck up in Vera Cruz?

2. What did he occupy himself with?

3. How did the newsvendors importune him?

4. How many times did he encounter the red-haired beggar?

5. Why did the narrator think that the beggar had recognized him?

6. What made the red-haired boy unpopular in Rome?

7. Had his character changed? In what way?

8. What did the narator give the beggar? What feeling of the latter did it arouse?

ANALYSIS

SETTING

1) What thematic groups of words can you single out in the paragraphs? What atmosphere do they sustain?

2) What can you say about the structure of the sentences? How does the syntax reinforce the atmosphere sustained by the words?

3) Circle the words and expressions adding to the theme of ‘beggars’ in ph 4. What is the effect of accumulation of these words in two sentences?

4) What impression if maintained in the same paragraph by enumeration and parallel constructions?

5) Pick out the extracts where the image of buzzards is juxtaposed to the description of beggars? What is the ground of the parallel the author makes? Can this setting be considered symbolic?

6) Point out the extended personification in ph 4. What effect is reinforced by alliteration used in convergence with the same device?

7) Consider the word-combination ‘merciless splendour’: what stylistic device is employed?

Re-read the descriptions of the place and pick out other words reinforcing each of the opposite notions

‘merciless’	‘splendour’
others

8. Focus on the TEMPORAL PERSPECTIVE

a)What devices does the author employ to give the impression of slow-moving time?

- lexical indicators (adverbs and adjectives, such as slowly, etc.)

- sentence structure (simple/complicated; balanced/unbalanced)

- Continuous Tense forms

- Participles I

- predominance of stative verbs over dynamic verbs

b) What is the aim of the flashback?

PLOT STRUCTURE

1. Is the presentation of the events scenic or panoramic?

2. Try to point out the exposition, complication, climax and denoument.

NARRATOR

1.Examine the three opening paragraphs.

- Underline all the words reinforcing the theme of ‘hard work’. What personal qualities of the narrator are stressed by the semantic repetition?

- What narrator’s idea of time is revealed through the extended metaphor in paragraph

- What is the role of the extended metaphor in paragraph 2? How many words of this paragraph are connected with the idea of reading? What is achieved through the lexical and semantic repetitions?

- What is in common between these two metaphors? What do they suggest about the personality of the narrator:

intensity of feelings

habitual way of life

philosophy of life

other ?_______________

2. There is an opinion that the story-teller whom we get to know gives warmth to this story from the beginning. Which of the suggested adjectives will you choose to characterize him:

enterprising

hearty

full-blooded

passionate

overactive

restless

enthusiastic

zealous

fervent

hardworking

tireless

impatient

industrious

time-saving

avid

other_______

CHARACTERS

Focus on the character of the BUM

1. Pick out all the words and expressions the narrator uses to characterize directly

the Bum’s appearance	the impression he made	his personal qualities

Do you agree that one of the features of this story is quick presentation and estimate of character?

2. Which of the Bums’s own actions or words reinforce the narrator’s characteristics? Which of them suggest something else?

3. The Bum is shown against two different types of milieu: in the the present setting of the story and in the flashback. In what ways is he the part of his milieu and in waht way is he different? Does he truly belong to any social group? What does it mean :”to belong to a group”?

4. What does the repeated simile “claw-like” suggest? How does the parallel with the buzzards emphasize the contrast between the Bum and a usual beggar? Study ph 15 (But his hand... screaming behind it)

5. What do you think was the reason for his failure:

arrogance and pride

laziness

both

other?

STYLE

I.Comment on the syntax.

1. What is the stylistic effect of parallel constructions in the 1^st and 4^th paragraphs.? Do they

- slow down the narration

- speed it up

- give the impression of peace and calm

- give the impression of monotony

- reinforce the atmosphere of leisure

- other?

2. Comment on the syntax of the 5^th paragraph.Pick out examples of parallel constructions interacting with enumeration: what is emphasized through the convergence?

3. How does the juxtaposition of long and very short sentences add to the portrait of the Bum in the 6^th and 15^th paragraphs?

4. Pick out more examples of such juxtaposition of sentences of contrasting length? What is the effect of it on the rhythm? What emotional state is conveyed?

II. Comment on the imagery

1. the amount of stylistic devices creating images

2. their role

MESSAGE

1. Maugham saw himself primarily as a pathologist of human feeling. Does this story prove it?

2. What is the message ? Is it a harrowing story of

- the man without talent who persists in devoting his life to art or writing?

- the man with talent who was too arrogant to make any compromise with circumstances?

- the man with talent who was too lazy to achieve any success in art ?

- other__________?

16.

THE MAN WITH THE SCAR.

W.S. Maugham

It was on account of the scar that I first noticed him, for it ran, broad and red, in a great crescent from his temple to his chin. It must have been due to a formidable wound and I wondered whether this had been caused by a sabre or by a fragment of shell. It was unexpected on that round , fat, and good-humoured face. He had small and undistinguished features, and his expression was artless. His face went oddly with his corpulent body. He was a powerful man of more than common height. I never saw him in anything but a very shabby grey suit, a khaki shirt, and a battered sombrero. He was far from clean. He used to come into the Palace Hotel at Guatemala City every day at cocktail time and strolling leisurely round the bar offered lottery tickets for sale. If this was the way he made his living it must have been a poor one for I never saw anyone buy, but now and then I saw him offered a drink. He never refused it. He threaded his way among the tables with a sort of rolling walk as though he were accustomed to traverse long distances on foot, paused at each table, with a little smile mentioned the numbers he had for sale, and then, when no notice was taken of him, with the same smile passed on. I think he was for the most part a trifle the worse for liquour.

I was standing at the bar one evening, my foot on the rail, with an acquaintance – they make a very good dry Martini at the Palace Hotel in Guatemala City – when the man with the scar came up. I shook my head as for the twentieth time since my arrival he held out for my inspection his lottery tickets. But my companion nodded affably.

‘Que tal, general? How is life?’

‘Not so bad. Business is none the good, but it might be worse.’

‘What will you have, general?’

‘A brandy.’

He tossed it down and put the glass back on the bar. He nodded to my acquaintance.

‘Gracias. Hasta luego.’

Then he turned away and offered his tickets to the men who were sitting next to us.

‘Who is your friend?’ I asked. ‘That’s a terrible scar on his face.’

‘It doesn’t add to his beauty, does it? He’s an exile from Nicaragua. He’s a ruffian of course and a bandit, but not a bad fellow. I give him a few pesos now and then. He was a revolutionary general, and if his ammunition hadn’t given out he’d have upset the government and be Minister of War now instead of selling lottery tickets in Guatemala. They captured him, along with his staff, such as it was, and tried him by court-martial. Such things are rather summary in these countries, you know, and he was sentenced to be shot at dawn. I guess he knew what was coming to him when he was caught. He spent the night in gaol and he and the others, there were five of them altogether, passed the time playing poker. They used matches for chips. He told me he’d never had such a run of bad luck in his life; they were playing with a short pack, Jacks to open, but he never held a card; he never improved more than half a dozen times in the whole sitting and no sooner did he buy a new stack than he lost it. When day broke and the soldiers came into the cell to fetch them for execution he had lost more matches than a reasonable man could use in a lifetime.

‘They were led into the patio of the gaol and placed against a wall, the five of them side by side, with the firing party facing them. There was a pause and our friend asked the officer in charge of them what the devil they were keepin him waiting for. The officer said that the general comanding the government troops wished to attend the execution and they awaited his arrival.

‘ “Then I have time to smoke another cigarette,” said our friend. “He was always unpunctual.”

But he had barely lit it when the general – it was San Ignacio, by the way: I don’t know whether you ever met him – followed by his A.D.C. came into the patio. The usual formalities were performed and San Ignacio asked the codemned men whether there was anything they wished before the execution took place. Four of the five shook their heads, but our friend spoke.

‘ “Yes, I should like to say good-buy to my wife.”

‘ “Bueno,” said the general, “I have no objection to that. Where is she?”

‘ “She is waiting at the prison door.”

‘ “Then it will not cause a delay of more than five minutes.”

‘ “Hardly that, Senor General,” said our friend.

‘ “Have him placed on one side.”

‘Two soldiers advanced and between them the condemned rebel walked to the spot indicated. The officer in command of the firing squad on a nod from the general gave an order, there was a ragged report, and the four men fell. They fell strangely, not together, but one after the other, with movements that were almost grotesque, as though they were puppets in a toy theatre. The officer went up to them and into one who was still alive emptied two barrels of his revolver. Out friend finished his cigarette and threw away the stub.

‘There was a little stir at the gateway. A woman came into the patio, with quick steps, and then, her hand on her heart, stopped suddenly. She gave a cry and with outstretched arms ran forward.

‘ “Caramba,” said the General.

‘She was in black, with a veil over her hair, and her face was dead white. She was hardly more than a girl, a slim creature, with little regular features and enormous eyes. But they were distraught with anguish. Her loveliness was such that as she ran, her mouth slightly open and the agony of her face beautiful, a gasp of surprise was wrung from those indifferent soldiers who looked at her.

‘The rebel advanced a step or two to meet her. She flung herself into his arms and with a hoarse cry of passion: alma de mi corazon, soul of my heart, he pressed his lips to hers. And at the same moment he drew a knife from his ragged shirt – I haven’t a notion how he managed to retain possession of it – and stabbed her in the neck. The blood spurted from the cut vein and dyed his shit. Then he flung his arms round her and once more pressed his lips to hers.

‘It happened so quickly that many did not know what had occured, but from the others burst a cry of horror; they sprang forward and seized him. They loosened his grasp and the girl would have fallen if the A.D.C. had not caght her. She was unconscious. They laid her on the ground and with dismay on their faces stood round watching her. The rebel knew where he was striking and it was impossible to staunch the blood. In a moment the A.D.C. who had been kneeling by her side rose.

‘ “She’s dead,” he whispered.

‘The rebel crossed himself.

‘ “Why did you do it?” asked the general.

‘ “I loved her.”

‘A sort of sigh passed through those men crowded together and they looked with strange faces at the muderer. The general stared at him for a while in silence.

‘ “It was a noble gesture,” he said at last. “I cannot execute this man. Take my car and have him led to the frontier. Senor, I offer you the homage which is due from one brave man to another.”

‘A murmur of approbation broke from those who listened. The A.D.C. tapped the rebel on the shoulder, and between the two soldiers without a word he marched to the waiting car.’

My friend stopped and for a little I was silent. I must explain that he was a Guatemalecan and spoke to me in Spanish. I have translated what he told me as well as I could, but I have made no attempt to tone down his rather high-flown language. To tell the truth I think it suits the story.

‘But how then did he get the scar?’ I asked at length.

‘Oh, that was due to a bottle that burst when I was opening it. A bottle of ginger ale.’

‘I never liked it,’ said I.

GLOSSARY

on account of

crescent

temple

formidable

sabre

undistinguished features

an artless expression

corpulent body

battered

to thread one’s way

affably

ruffian

to upset the government

court-martial

gaol

distraught with anguish

to loosen the grasp

dismay

to staunch the blood

homage

approbation

high-flown language