Advanced English Tutorial
Second Year
week starting 28th October 2013
Write a critical appreciation of the following passage. You may comment on theme and
motifs; character and personality; imagery; style and tone; place, time and mood;
register. You may also comment on any other aspect of the passage that you consider
worthy of discussion.
A month later my mother was dead. In my room she suffered a brain haemorrhage which took
her in her sleep. I woke up to see my father sitting quietly by her body, his hand at the back of
her hair. I expected him to weep but he calmly said that she was gone, would I please make
arrangements to have her buried in Piskariovskoye Cemetery. Then he closed his eyes and
tightened his grip on her hair and whispered her name over and over until it sounded like a
prayer or a song, gently sung. Later that day, as was the old custom, he spread her body out
on the table and washed her. He used an old shirt of his, saying that it would be his final
gesture to sentimentality. She looked terrible emaciated. He dipped the collar of his shirt in
warm soapy water and bather her neck and smoother the cloth along her collarbone. With the
sleeve he washed her small, wizened breasts. It was as if he wanted her to wear the shirt in
some way, to carry it with her on whatever journey she was on. He covered her with a sheet
and only then did I see my father cry, deeply, inconsolably.
He had left the water tap dripping and there was a gurgling form the pipes as if the sadness
were in the throat of the building. I went outside and left him alone. The air was hard and raw.
By the time I came back he had dressed her and put traditional coins on her eyes.
It was noticeably sunny the day we buried her. At Piskariovskoye we were given a plot in a
copse of trees. Light slated through the trees, midges rose from the bushes, birds darned the
air with their wings. There was little or no ceremony. It cost us three hundred rubles to bribe
for the plot and another hundred for the ground to be dug. Nearby a man on a tractor was
cutting the grass on some other graves, beautifully tended to, ringed with red roses. He
respectfully turned his engine off and waited.
My father held his hat to his chest and I noticed the little graph of sweat stains that appeared
inside the rim. How many years had he worn that one hat and how many times had she put it
on his head? He shifted, coughed and said he didn’t feel in the mood for words but that, even
in her leaving, my mother had left many signs that she had been here.
May her influence enter the air, he said.
With this he coughed a second time and gave the ground a little grimace, turned his face
away.
Later that day we took my father to the train station. Iosif, my husband, came with us to
Finlandia station. I asked for a moment alone with my father. I carried his suitcase through
the crowd. Light came in shafts through the windows falling on the greyness below. We
stopped by a train window. An old woman glared at us. My father held me tight and
whispered in my ear that I should be proud of myself. He touched my cheek and I sniffled
stupidly.
From Dancer by Colum McCann