Unit two “The Escape” Solodkova Anastasia ИЯ АМБ-41 The text under analysis is “The Escape” written by a famous English writer of the 20th century Somerset Maugham. The story is about a very wealthy man Roger Charing who falls in love with Ruth Barlow, a woman who is twice a widow. After some time they start to think about marriage. Then suddenly Roger understands that he is not in love with Ruth anymore, so he finds a way to break up with his “fiancée”. He tells her that they are going to marry the day they find a perfect house, but during two years of rejecting all the offers Ruth loses her patience and leaves Roger herself. We cannot find any information about where the action takes place. It isn’t mention on purpose, because such thing can happen in life of every person. The problem of the story is lying to a partner in the relationship. So the idea is that in order to finish the relationship Roger decides to lie instead of telling the truth. In my opinion, the author of the given text wanted us to realize that honesty is the best policy and we should not lie to people, because it is fair to share all the things and go through them rather than hurting Ruth’s feelings with the hope he gave her. Somerset Maugham called the story “The Escape”, so what does it mean? Sometimes people want to avoid the situations when they need to hurt somebody, consequently they prefer to lie and think up different reasons to change the situation, to escape such things. The conflict in the given text is at first inner, within Roger, when he understands he is not into Ruth anymore. From this very moment he starts to find a way to get rid of her not in a rude way but gently and politely. Anyway, during their house-hunting there appears one more conflict, external one, between the main characters and their interests: Ruth wants to have long relationship, on the contrary, Roger wants to escape it with no loss. There are two main characters in the story: Ruth Barlow and Roger Charing. Ruth is twice a widow who, for Roger, seemed unhappy and exhausted: “…(about her eyes)…they suggested that the world was too much for her…”, “her sufferings had been more than anyone should be asked to bear”. She is one of the unfortunate people with whom nothing goes right. To describe her personality the author uses epithets: “splendid dark eyes”, “the most moving eyes”, “pathetic look” and so on. Roger is rich, considerate, gentle, generous and glad to take care of her, so he is the best variant for Mrs. Barlow. He makes a proposal of marriage to her. They are going to marry as soon as possible. He gives her “lovely jewels”. But he was happy to live the life of an unmarried man: the epithets “sufficient experience”, “careful” give the direct description of his lifestyle. The composition of the text is direct, we see how their relationship becomes at first a happy one and then goes down. The story can be divided into four main parts: the exposition, passages about Ruth’s and Roger’s love, Roger falls out of love and the break-up. The story starts from the exposition in which the author introduces the reader with the problem. In the exposition the author uses metaphor talking about marriage as a dangerous thing (“flight could save him”, “the inevitable loom”), he also uses direct speech (expressing the thoughts of “a friend of him”) and a simple emotive epithet (“women are fickle”). His humor here is in the fact that the poor friend came to what he had run away from, so this is a situational humor. The author uses the direct speech in which such epithets as “callous” (speaking about the narrator), “rotten” (speaking about Ruth) are used. We can recognize now completely that all the narrator’s words were ironic, because his epithets towards Ruth are like that, and also “stupid” and a simile “as hard as nails”. Then there comes an explanation of why he has such an attitude towards the poor widow. Going further, we come across an anticlimax. The tense is growing, but then Roger “on a sudden, fell out of love”. This is a bit unexpected. Ruth’s “pathetic (a repeated epithet) look ceased to wring Roger’s heart-strings” (a metaphor). But Roger “swore a solemn oath” (a metaphor) not to jilt Ruth, moreover, she was able to “assess her wounded feelings at an immoderately high figure” (an extended metaphor). So there begins the real climax with its growing tense. The author uses repetitions: anaphoras (“they… they”, “sometimes… sometimes”), morphological (“they looked, they inspected, they climbed”). After the main heroes’ reasoning in direct speech, their proceeded searching for a house looks like a repetition, too. Yet, the author uses an antonomasia here, calling Roger an angel (though we know he is not – an irony). Their further reasoning in the direct speech appears to be the climax (“do you want to marry me or do you not?”). Roger kept standing on his position (epithets “assiduous and gallant”). Their letters are the denouement, happy for Roger. I really liked the story and it was interesting to watch how people’s relationship develops and goes to an end. The author described this process very likely so we understand that such situations can happen to everyone.
