CHARACTERS

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 469.

PLOT

ANALYSIS

GLOSSARY

semicircle

tenuity

to corroborate

hirsute

virile

to slash

to skim

to burrowing into

to hitch one's sleeve

moat

opaque

gem

stern of a boat

emerald

to blot sth out

benignity

to confer

to haunt the brain

curiosity shop

amber

to take to doing sth

household refuse

to discard

constituents

railings

starfish

lustre

by dint

freakish

alert

mute

to haunt the place

prolific of

demolished house

common, n.

discharged

to take sth to heart

to condole with sb

cast down by

disorderly appearance

Is the structure of the plot traditional? Identify its elements.

At which point of the story does the tension build to a climax?

NARRATOR

I.What kind of narrator tells the story?

2.Find examples in the text of the narrator interrupting the story and addressing the reader directly. Which of the purposes listed below do the intrusions serve?

- to summarise or philosophise

- to involve the reader more directly into the story;

- to add humour;

- to encourage the reader to question the reliability of what he is reading

3. On the basis of these intrusions what attitude does the narrator seem to have towards telling the story?

- is eager to tell the story

- is detached and objective

- is drawn reluctantly into telling the story

- is passionately involved in the problem

4. How would you define the voice of the narrator?

Friendly, intimate, formal, engaging, pedantic, other

1. What details are important for John's word-portrait?

2. What type of personality does the wish to ‘find affinities' between different objects and to fantasize suggest?

3. What psychological state is implied in the passage beginning with As his hand went further and further beyond the wrist, so ... (Ph 3)?

4. Comment on the stylistic effect of the extended simile in the passage beginning with That impulse, too, may have been the impulse which leads a child to pick up one pebble on a path strewn with them (ph 6).

5. There are several sentences and even passages with philosophic undertones. Identify them. Whose point of view do they represent?

6. Find proof in the text that John was persistent and ambitious rather than lazy or idle.

7. What was John by nature?

Poet, artist, businessman, research worker, philosopher, politician, other____________. Prove your point.

8 . How does the phrase filling his pipe he said with the energy that dismisses a foolish strain of thought characterize Charlie? What foolish strain of thought is implied?

9. Compare Charles to John in the attitude to:

- politics

- beautiful bits of glass

- life in general (its aim and meaning)

10. Pick out similar expressions showing the constituents' and Charles's attitude to John?

11. What was the reason of his loneliness:

- incommunicativeness

- lack of understanding

- untidiness

- obsessive ideas

- imaginative life

- other­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­______________?

12. Which human types do John and Charles represent if the phrase the china so vivid and alert, and the glass so mute and contemplative was taken metaphorically?