Analysis of the Text 2
The extract is taken from the novel by John
Galsworthy “In Chancery”. It is written in belles-lettres
style.
The text opens with the narration which is
interrupted with the descriptions and the unuttered
represented speech of Soames and the dialogue.
The author describes Soames’s meditations
about the general exultation at a small victory at
Mafeking.
In this text the author looks at the problem of future
destiny of the country. It is rendered through the
meditations of his main character who actually is the
mouthpiece of the author.
The Predicative SPU: Why, this was serious-might come to anything! The crowd was cheerful, but
some day they would come in different mood!
The most ws in the text belong to the neutral
style however there are many ws and phrases which
belong to the informal style: doggedly, hold up, pipe
on, pipe off, stucco, idiocy, egad, to stink, to yell,
hideous, mob. By this the author emphasizes the
opposition between the gentility and Forsyteism with
their reserve and restraint and the exultant mob.
The a. uses a number of synonyms speaking
about the people in the street: a crowd, a mob,
populace, swarm and even employs
sustained
metaphor with a simile within it: This stream of people
came from every quarter, as if impulse had unlocked
flood-gates, let flow waters. For the Forsytes don’t take
them as people, as human-beings, they take them just as
cauldron with the lid off. Through these metaphors and
words of negative connotation populace and a mob J.G.
opens up Soames’s irritation and discontent with this
merry carnival. To show the opposition between the
world of the Fs and the others the a employs the SD of
Antithesis: In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings,
to enter which people paid sixty pounds, this
shrieking, whistling, dancing dervish of a crowd was
swarming.
S. identifies Democracy with a crowd. The a.
uses parallel constructions to stress this fact: This was
the populace, the innumerable living negation of
gentility and Forsyteism. This was Democracy! Here
we observe a case of Metonymy: Democracy! It stank,
yelled, was hideous!
Through the SD of Unuttered Represented
Speech the a. shows S’s state of mind, his rejection of
this excitement. The abundance of exclamatory
sentences, rhetorical questions: Mafeking! Of course,
it had been relieved! Good! But was that an excuse?
This was--egad!--Democracy! It stank, yelled, was
hideous! No, it wasn't English!, stylistic conversion:
Nothing sacred to them - convey Soames’s
condemnation.
Soames feels dread and deep surprise. It is a
queer outlandish nightmare for him.
Here we observe the category of retrospection which
reveals itself quite explicitly with the help of such
lexical means as in 1900, He remembered, and in the
late eighties and which brings a reader back to the
events which S. was witness of.
Another category we observe in the text is the
category of spatial continuum. Mafeking is a town in
South Africa which had been relieved and that was a
reason for such exultation.
The increase in Soames’s emotional tension is
rendered with a help of the SD of Climax (Gradation):
He was bewildered, exasperated, offended.
The SD of repetition It wasn't English! No, it
wasn't English! also contributes into the emotional
state of Soames.
He is lonely, he does not have anybody to share
his thoughts and feelings. The a opens up this idea
through the elliptical sentences: A wife! Somebody to
talk things over with. One had a right! Damn it!
One had a right!
Summing up our analysis we come to the conclusion
that S suffers from deep depression. He is afraid of
another revolution, of violence, of the coming fall and
decline of the British Empire. He is full of resentment
against all the changes in the society.
Categories
- of modality
- prospect (future events)
- of discontinium (abrupt change of events)