Explain what the writer means.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 507.

Sum up the author's statements about 1) Time (1); 2) Reading (2) in your own words or the words from the text which in your opinion will best sum up the author's idea. Say how far you agree with the view expressed by the author.

Discuss some problem-questions.

The Bum

Speak on or write an essay about your assessment of the story and your impressions of it.

1. What does the writer portray at the beginning of the story (1-5)? What's the role of this part for the developing the central idea of the story?

2. What feeling does the description of the beggars evoke in the reader - anger, pity, shame, repulsion, sorrow or any other? And what did the writer feel watching them? Is such state of .poverty still characteristic of Central American countries?

3. What's the author's idea of the Russian national character as it's revealed in paragraph 8? Do you think there is something in the author's words or is he mistaken?

4. What could have happened to the red-haired man, to your mind?

5. Do you think that the description of the buzzards that the author mentions several times is only a part of the landscape or does it create a certain atmosphere in the story?

1. describing the bum as "a wreck of humanity" (6)

2. when he says: "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." (14)