Szöveggyűjtemény az ANO1012
Irodalmi szövegelemzés c. tárgyhoz
Dr. Tukacs Tamás
Nyíregyházi Egyetem
Tartalom
1. What is literature? Performance and Significance .............................................................................. 2
2. Stories and Meanings .......................................................................................................................... 3
3. Elements of narrative fiction (1) WHAT and WHO: story/plot and character / 1 ............................... 4
4. Elements of narrative fiction (1) WHAT and WHO: story/plot and character /2 .............................. 11
5. Elements of narrative fiction (2) WHEN and WHERE: setting and time ............................................ 16
6. Elements of narrative fiction (3) HOW: style, tone, narrative voice and perspective ...................... 20
7. Elements of narrative fiction (4): theme, thesis, morale .................................................................. 28
8. Poetry, prosody, metrical systems, feet and rhyme patterns, rhythm, sound effects ..................... 35
9. The speaker in the poem ................................................................................................................... 43
10. Rhetoric, figures of thought (tropes) and figures of speech ........................................................... 47
11. Symbolism, allegory, conceits ......................................................................................................... 50
1. What is literature? Performance and Significance
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one
Excepting February alone,
Which has twenty-eight in fine,
Till leap year gives it twenty-nine.
Robert Frost, “The Span of Life” (1936)
The old dog barks backward without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.
Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro” (1913)
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.”
Lydia Davis, “Childcare” (2007)
It’s his turn to take care of the baby. He is cross.
He says, “I never get enough done.”
The baby is in a bad mood, too.
He gives the baby a bottle of juice and sits him well back in a big armchair.
He sits himself down in another chair and turns on the television.
Together they watch The Odd Couple.
Lydia Davis, “City People” (2001)
They have moved to the country. The country is nice enough: there are quail
sitting in the bushes and frogs peeping in the swamps. But they are uneasy.
They quarrel more often. They cry, or she cries and he bows his head. He is
pale all the time now. She wakes in a panic at night, hearing him sniffle. She
wakes in a panic again, hearing a car go up the driveway. In the morning
there is sunlight on their faces but mice are chattering in the walls. He hates
the mice. The pump breaks. They replace the pump. They poison the mice.
Their neighbor’s dog barks. It barks and barks. She could poison the dog.
“We’re city people,” he says, “and there aren’t any nice cities to live in.”
2. Stories and Meanings
AESOP: The Vixen and the Lioness
A vixen sneered at a lioness because she never bore more than one cub.
“Only one,” the lioness replied, “but a lion.”
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The Appointment in Samarra [1933]
Death speaks: There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to
market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white
and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I
was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death
that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend
me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go
to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his
horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as
fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to
the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me
and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you
saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only
a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment
with him tonight in Samarra.
ANONYMOUS: Muddy Road
Two monks, Tanzan and Ekido, were once travelling together down a muddy
road. A heavy rain was still falling.
Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash,
unable to cross the intersection.
“Come on, girl,” said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried
her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging
temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself.“We monks don’t go near
females,” he told Tanzan, “especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous.
Why did you do that?”
“I left the girl there,” said Tanzan.“Are you still carrying her?”
3. Elements of narrative fiction (1) WHAT and WHO: story/plot and
character / 1
Misery
by Anton Chekhov
(1860-1904)
"To whom shall I tell my grief?"
The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street
lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs,
shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver, is all white like a ghost. He sits on the box
without stirring, bent as double as the living body can be bent. If a regular snowdrift fell on
him it seems as though even then he would not think it necessary to shake it off.... His little
mare is white and motionless too. Her stillness, the angularity of her lines, and the stick-like
straightness of her legs make her look like a halfpenny gingerbread horse. She is probably lost
in thought. Anyone who has been torn away from the plough, from the familiar gray
landscapes, and cast into this slough, full of monstrous lights, of unceasing uproar and
hurrying people, is bound to think.
It is a long time since Iona and his nag have budged. They came out of the yard before
dinnertime and not a single fare yet. But now the shades of evening are falling on the town.
The pale light of the street lamps changes to a vivid color, and the bustle of the street grows
noisier.
"Sledge to Vyborgskaya!" Iona hears. "Sledge!"
Iona starts, and through his snow-plastered eyelashes sees an officer in a military
overcoat with a hood over his head.
"To Vyborgskaya," repeats the officer. "Are you asleep? To Vyborgskaya!"
In token of assent Iona gives a tug at the reins which sends cakes of snow flying from
the horse's back and shoulders. The officer gets into the sledge. The sledge-driver clicks to the
horse, cranes his neck like a swan, rises in his seat, and more from habit than necessity
brandishes his whip. The mare cranes her neck, too, crooks her stick-like legs, and
hesitatingly sets off....
"Where are you shoving, you devil?" Iona immediately hears shouts from the dark
mass shifting to and fro before him. "Where the devil are you going? Keep to the r-right!"
"You don't know how to drive! Keep to the right," says the officer angrily.
A coachman driving a carriage swears at him; a pedestrian crossing the road and
brushing the horse's nose with his shoulder looks at him angrily and shakes the snow off his
sleeve. Iona fidgets on the box as though he were sitting on thorns, jerks his elbows, and turns
his eyes about like one possessed as though he did not know where he was or why he was
there.
"What rascals they all are!" says the officer jocosely. "They are simply doing their best
to run up against you or fall under the horse's feet. They must be doing it on purpose."
Iona looks as his fare and moves his lips.... Apparently he means to say something, but
nothing comes but a sniff.
"What?" inquires the officer.
Iona gives a wry smile, and straining his throat, brings out huskily: "My son... er... my
son died this week, sir."
"H'm! What did he die of?"
Iona turns his whole body round to his fare, and says:
"Who can tell! It must have been from fever.... He lay three days in the hospital and
then he died.... God's will."
"Turn round, you devil!" comes out of the darkness. "Have you gone cracked, you old
dog? Look where you are going!"
"Drive on! drive on!... " says the officer. "We shan't get there till to-morrow going on
like this. Hurry up!"
The sledge-driver cranes his neck again, rises in his seat, and with heavy grace swings
his whip. Several times he looks round at the officer, but the latter keeps his eyes shut and is
apparently disinclined to listen. Putting his fare down at Vyborgskaya, Iona stops by a
restaurant, and again sits huddled up on the box.... Again the wet snow paints him and his
horse white. One hour passes, and then another....
Three young men, two tall and thin, one short and hunchbacked, come up, railing at
each other and loudly stamping on the pavement with their goloshes.
"Cabby, to the Police Bridge!" the hunchback cries in a cracked voice. "The three of
us,... twenty kopecks!"
Iona tugs at the reins and clicks to his horse. Twenty kopecks is not a fair price, but he
has no thoughts for that. Whether it is a rouble or whether it is five kopecks does not matter to
him now so long as he has a fare.... The three young men, shoving each other and using bad
language, go up to the sledge, and all three try to sit down at once. The question remains to be
settled: Which are to sit down and which one is to stand? After a long altercation, ill-temper,
and abuse, they come to the conclusion that the hunchback must stand because he is the
shortest.
"Well, drive on," says the hunchback in his cracked voice, settling himself and
breathing down Iona's neck. "Cut along! What a cap you've got, my friend! You wouldn't find
a worse one in all Petersburg.... "
"He-he!... he-he!... " laughs Iona. "It's nothing to boast of!"
"Well, then, nothing to boast of, drive on! Are you going to drive like this all the way?
Eh? Shall I give you one in the neck?"
"My head aches," says one of the tall ones. "At the Dukmasovs' yesterday Vaska and I
drank four bottles of brandy between us."
"I can't make out why you talk such stuff," says the other tall one angrily. "You lie like
a brute."
"Strike me dead, it's the truth!... "
"It's about as true as that a louse coughs."
"He-he!" grins Iona. "Me-er-ry gentlemen!"
"Tfoo! the devil take you!" cries the hunchback indignantly. "Will you get on, you old
plague, or won't you? Is that the way to drive? Give her one with the whip. Hang it all, give it
her well."
Iona feels behind his back the jolting person and quivering voice of the hunchback. He
hears abuse addressed to him, he sees people, and the feeling of loneliness begins little by
little to be less heavy on his heart. The hunchback swears at him, till he chokes over some
elaborately whimsical string of epithets and is overpowered by his cough. His tall companions
begin talking of a certain Nadyezhda Petrovna. Iona looks round at them. Waiting till there is
a brief pause, he looks round once more and says:
"This week... er. . . my. . . er. . . son died!"
"We shall all die,... " says the hunchback with a sigh, wiping his lips after coughing.
"Come, drive on! drive on! My friends, I simply cannot stand crawling like this! When will he
get us there?"
"Well, you give him a little encouragement... one in the neck!"
"Do you hear, you old plague? I'll make you smart. If one stands on ceremony with
fellows like you one may as well walk. Do you hear, you old dragon? Or don't you care a
hang what we say? "
And Iona hears rather than feels a slap on the back of his neck.
"He-he!... " he laughs. "Merry gentlemen... . God give you health!"
"Cabman, are you married?" asks one of the tall ones.
"I? He he! Me-er-ry gentlemen. The only wife for me now is the damp earth.... . Heho-ho!. . . .The grave that is!... Here my son's dead and I am alive.... It's a strange thing, death
has come in at the wrong door.... . Instead of coming for me it went for my son..."
And Iona turns round to tell them how his son died, but at that point the hunchback
gives a faint sigh and announces that, thank God! they have arrived at last. After taking his
twenty kopecks, Iona gazes for a long while after the revelers, who disappear into a dark
entry. Again he is alone and again there is silence for him.... The misery which has been for a
brief space eased comes back again and tears his heart more cruelly than ever. With a look of
anxiety and suffering Iona's eyes stray restlessly among the crowds moving to and fro on both
sides of the street: can he not find among those thousands someone who will listen to him?
But the crowds flit by heedless of him and his misery.... His misery is immense, beyond all
bounds. If Iona's heart were to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole
world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant shell
that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight....
Iona sees a house-porter with a parcel and makes up his mind to address him.
"What time will it be, friend?" he asks.
"Going on for ten.... Why have you stopped here? Drive on!"
Iona drives a few paces away, bends himself double, and gives himself up to his
misery. He feels it is no good to appeal to people. But before five minutes have passed he
draws himself up, shakes his head as though he feels a sharp pain, and tugs at the reins.... He
can bear it no longer.
"Back to the yard!" he thinks. "To the yard!"
And his little mare, as though she knew his thoughts, falls to trotting. An hour and a
half later Iona is sitting by a big dirty stove. On the stove, on the floor, and on the benches are
people snoring. The air is full of smells and stuffiness. Iona looks at the sleeping figures,
scratches himself, and regrets that he has come home so early....
"I have not earned enough to pay for the oats, even," he thinks. "That's why I am so
miserable. A man who knows how to do his work,... who has had enough to eat, and whose
horse has had enough to eat, is always at ease.... "
In one of the corners a young cabman gets up, clears his throat sleepily, and makes for
the water-bucket.
"Want a drink?" Iona asks him.
"Seems so."
"May it do you good.... But my son is dead, mate.... Do you hear? This week in the
hospital.... It's a queer business.... "
Iona looks to see the effect produced by his words, but he sees nothing. The young
man has covered his head over and is already asleep. The old man sighs and scratches
himself.... Just as the young man had been thirsty for water, he thirsts for speech. His son will
soon have been dead a week, and he has not really talked to anybody yet... . He wants to talk
of it properly, with deliberation.... He wants to tell how his son was taken ill, how he suffered,
what he said before he died, how he died.... He wants to describe the funeral, and how he
went to the hospital to get his son's clothes. He still has his daughter Anisya in the country....
And he wants to talk about her too.... Yes, he has plenty to talk about now. His listener ought
to sigh and exclaim and lament.... It would be even better to talk to women. Though they are
silly creatures, they blubber at the first word.
"Let's go out and have a look at the mare," Iona thinks. "There is always time for
sleep.... You'll have sleep enough, no fear.... "
He puts on his coat and goes into the stables where his mare is standing. He thinks
about oats, about hay, about the weather.... He cannot think about his son when he is alone....
To talk about him with someone is possible, but to think of him and picture him is
insufferable anguish....
"Are you munching?" Iona asks his mare, seeing her shining eyes. "There, munch
away, munch away.... Since we have not earned enough for oats, we will eat hay.... Yes,... I
have grown too old to drive.... My son ought to be driving, not I.... He was a real cabman....
He ought to have lived.... "
Iona is silent for a while, and then he goes on:
"That's how it is, old girl.... Kuzma Ionitch is gone.... He said good-by to me.... He
went and died for no reason.... Now, suppose you had a little colt, and you were own mother
to that little colt.... And all at once that same little colt went and died.... You'd be sorry,
wouldn't you?... "
The little mare munches, listens, and breathes on her master's hands. Iona is carried
away and tells her all about it.
1886
Kate Chopin
Desiree's Baby
As the day was pleasant, Madame Valmonde drove over to L'Abri to see Desiree and
the baby.
It made her laugh to think of Desiree with a baby. Why, it seemed but yesterday that
Desiree was little more than a baby herself; when Monsieur in riding through the gateway of
Valmonde had found her lying asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar.
The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for "Dada." That was as much as she
could do or say. Some people thought she might have strayed there of her own accord, for she
was of the toddling age. The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party
of Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton
Mais kept, just below the plantation. In time Madame Valmonde abandoned every speculation
but the one that Desiree had been sent to her by a beneficent Providence to be the child of her
affection, seeing that she was without child of the flesh. For the girl grew to be beautiful and
gentle, affectionate and sincere,--the idol of Valmonde.
It was no wonder, when she stood one day against the stone pillar in whose shadow
she had lain asleep, eighteen years before, that Armand Aubigny riding by and seeing her
there, had fallen in love with her. That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck
by a pistol shot. The wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since
his father brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there. The
passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an
avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.
Monsieur Valmonde grew practical and wanted things well considered: that is, the
girl's obscure origin. Armand looked into her eyes and did not care. He was reminded that she
was nameless. What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and
proudest in Louisiana? He ordered the corbeille from Paris, and contained himself with what
patience he could until it arrived; then they were married.
Madame Valmonde had not seen Desiree and the baby for four weeks. When she
reached L'Abri she shuddered at the first sight of it, as she always did. It was a sad looking
place, which for many years had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur
Aubigny having married and buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too
well ever to leave it. The roof came down steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond
the wide galleries that encircled the yellow stuccoed house. Big, solemn oaks grew close to it,
and their thick-leaved, far-reaching branches shadowed it like a pall. Young Aubigny's rule
was a strict one, too, and under it his negroes had forgotten how to be gay, as they had been
during the old master's easy-going and indulgent lifetime.
The young mother was recovering slowly, and lay full length, in her soft white muslins
and laces, upon a couch. The baby was beside her, upon her arm, where he had fallen asleep,
at her breast. The yellow nurse woman sat beside a window fanning herself.
Madame Valmonde bent her portly figure over Desiree and kissed her, holding her an
instant tenderly in her arms. Then she turned to the child.
"This is not the baby!" she exclaimed, in startled tones. French was the language
spoken at Valmonde in those days.
"I knew you would be astonished," laughed Desiree, "at the way he has grown. The
little cochon de lait! Look at his legs, mamma, and his hands and fingernails,--real fingernails. Zandrine had to cut them this morning. Isn't it true, Zandrine?"
The woman bowed her turbaned head majestically, "Mais si, Madame."
"And the way he cries," went on Desiree, "is deafening. Armand heard him the other
day as far away as La Blanche's cabin."
Madame Valmonde had never removed her eyes from the child. She lifted it and
walked with it over to the window that was lightest. She scanned the baby narrowly, then
looked as searchingly at Zandrine, whose face was turned to gaze across the fields.
"Yes, the child has grown, has changed," said Madame Valmonde, slowly, as she
replaced it beside its mother. "What does Armand say?"
Desiree's face became suffused with a glow that was happiness itself.
"Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy,
to bear his name; though he says not,--that he would have loved a girl as well. But I know it
isn't true. I know he says that to please me. And mamma," she added, drawing Madame
Valmonde's head down to her, and speaking in a whisper, "he hasn't punished one of them-not one of them--since baby is born. Even Negrillon, who pretended to have burnt his leg that
he might rest from work--he only laughed, and said Negrillon was a great scamp. oh, mamma,
I'm so happy; it frightens me."
What Desiree said was true. Marriage, and later the birth of his son had softened
Armand Aubigny's imperious and exacting nature greatly. This was what made the gentle
Desiree so happy, for she loved him desperately. When he frowned she trembled, but loved
him. When he smiled, she asked no greater blessing of God. But Armand's dark, handsome
face had not often been disfigured by frowns since the day he fell in love with her.
When the baby was about three months old, Desiree awoke one day to the conviction
that there was something in the air menacing her peace. It was at first too subtle to grasp. It
had only been a disquieting suggestion; an air of mystery among the blacks; unexpected visits
from far-off neighbors who could hardly account for their coming. Then a strange, an awful
change in her husband's manner, which she dared not ask him to explain. When he spoke to
her, it was with averted eyes, from which the old love-light seemed to have gone out. He
absented himself from home; and when there, avoided her presence and that of her child,
without excuse. And the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his
dealings with the slaves. Desiree was miserable enough to die.
She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her peignoir, listlessly drawing through her
fingers the strands of her long, silky brown hair that hung about her shoulders. The baby, half
naked, lay asleep upon her own great mahogany bed, that was like a sumptuous throne, with
its satin-lined half-canopy. One of La Blanche's little quadroon boys--half naked too--stood
fanning the child slowly with a fan of peacock feathers. Desiree's eyes had been fixed
absently and sadly upon the baby, while she was striving to penetrate the threatening mist that
she felt closing about her. She looked from her child to the boy who stood beside him, and
back again; over and over. "Ah!" It was a cry that she could not help; which she was not
conscious of having uttered. The blood turned like ice in her veins, and a clammy moisture
gathered upon her face.
She tried to speak to the little quadroon boy; but no sound would come, at first. When
he heard his name uttered, he looked up, and his mistress was pointing to the door. He laid
aside the great, soft fan, and obediently stole away, over the polished floor, on his bare
tiptoes.
She stayed motionless, with gaze riveted upon her child, and her face the picture of
fright.
Presently her husband entered the room, and without noticing her, went to a table and
began to search among some papers which covered it.
"Armand," she called to him, in a voice which must have stabbed him, if he was
human. But he did not notice. "Armand," she said again. Then she rose and tottered towards
him. "Armand," she panted once more, clutching his arm, "look at our child. What does it
mean? tell me."
He coldly but gently loosened her fingers from about his arm and thrust the hand away
from him. "Tell me what it means!" she cried despairingly.
"It means," he answered lightly, "that the child is not white; it means that you are not
white."
A quick conception of all that this accusation meant for her nerved her with unwonted
courage to deny it. "It is a lie; it is not true, I am white! Look at my hair, it is brown; and my
eyes are gray, Armand, you know they are gray. And my skin is fair," seizing his wrist. "Look
at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand," she laughed hysterically.
"As white as La Blanche's," he returned cruelly; and went away leaving her alone with
their child.
When she could hold a pen in her hand, she sent a despairing letter to Madame
Valmonde.
"My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand has told me I am not white. For
God's sake tell them it is not true. You must know it is not true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot
be so unhappy, and live."
The answer that came was brief:
"My own Desiree: Come home to Valmonde; back to your mother who loves you.
Come with your child."
When the letter reached Desiree she went with it to her husband's study, and laid it
open upon the desk before which he sat. She was like a stone image: silent, white, motionless
after she placed it there.
In silence he ran his cold eyes over the written words.
He said nothing. "Shall I go, Armand?" she asked in tones sharp with agonized
suspense.
"Yes, go."
"Do you want me to go?"
"Yes, I want you to go."
He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow,
that he was paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife's soul. Moreover he
no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his
name.
She turned away like one stunned by a blow, and walked slowly towards the door,
hoping he would call her back.
"Good-by, Armand," she moaned.
He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate.
Desiree went in search of her child. Zandrine was pacing the sombre gallery with it.
She took the little one from the nurse's arms with no word of explanation, and descending the
steps, walked away, under the live-oak branches.
It was an October afternoon; the sun was just sinking. Out in the still fields the negroes
were picking cotton.
Desiree had not changed the thin white garment nor the slippers which she wore. Her
hair was uncovered and the sun's rays brought a golden gleam from its brown meshes. She did
not take the broad, beaten road which led to the far-off plantation of Valmonde. She walked
across a deserted field, where the stubble bruised her tender feet, so delicately shod, and tore
her thin gown to shreds.
She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the banks of the
deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come back again.
Some weeks later there was a curious scene enacted at L'Abri. In the centre of the
smoothly swept back yard was a great bonfire. Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hallway that
commanded a view of the spectacle; and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the
material which kept this fire ablaze.
A graceful cradle of willow, with all its dainty furbishings, was laid upon the pyre,
which had already been fed with the richness of a priceless layette. Then there were silk
gowns, and velvet and satin ones added to these; laces, too, and embroideries; bonnets and
gloves; for the corbeille had been of rare quality.
The last thing to go was a tiny bundle of letters; innocent little scribblings that Desiree
had sent to him during the days of their espousal. There was the remnant of one back in the
drawer from which he took them. But it was not Desiree's; it was part of an old letter from his
mother to his father. He read it. She was thanking God for the blessing of her husband's love:"But above all," she wrote, "night and day, I thank the good God for having so
arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him,
belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery."
1982
4. Elements of narrative fiction (1) WHAT and WHO: story/plot and
character
MARGARET ATWOOD
Happy Endings [1983]
John and Mary meet.
What happens next?
If you want a happy ending, try A.
A
John and Mary fall in love and get married. They both have worthwhile and
remunerative jobs which they find stimulating and challenging. They buy a
charming house. Real estate values go up. Eventually, when they can afford
live-in help, they have two children, to whom they are devoted. The children
turn out well. John and Mary have a stimulating and challenging sex
life and worthwhile friends. They go on fun vacations together. They retire.
They both have hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging.
Eventually they die. This is the end of the story.
B
Mary falls in love with John but John doesn’t fall in love with Mary. He
merely uses her body for selfish pleasure and ego gratification of a tepid
kind. He comes to her apartment twice a week and she cooks him dinner,
you’ll notice that he doesn’t even consider her worth the price of a dinner
out, and after he’s eaten the dinner he fucks her and after that he falls
asleep, while she does the dishes so he won’t think she’s untidy, having all
those dirty dishes lying around, and puts on fresh lipstick so she’ll look good
when he wakes up, but when he wakes up he doesn’t even notice, he puts
on his socks and his shorts and his pants and his shirt and his tie and his
shoes, the reverse order from the one in which he took them off. He doesn’t
take off Mary’s clothes, she takes them off herself, she acts as if she’s dying
for it every time, not because she likes sex exactly, she doesn’t, but she
wants John to think she does because if they do it often enough surely he’ll
get used to her, he’ll come to depend on her and they will get married, but
John goes out the door with hardly so much as a good-night and three days
later he turns up at six o’clock and they do the whole thing over again.
Mary gets run-down. Crying is bad for your face, everyone knows that
and so does Mary but she can’t stop. People at work notice. Her friends tell
her John is a rat, a pig, a dog, he isn’t good enough for her, but she can’t believe
it. Inside John, she thinks, is another John who is much nicer. This other
John will emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon, a Jack from a box, a pit from
a prune, if the first John is only squeezed enough.
One evening John complains about the food. He has never complained
about the food before. Mary is hurt.
Her friends tell her they’ve seen him in a restaurant with another
woman, whose name is Madge. It’s not even Madge that finally gets to Mary;
it’s the restaurant. John has never taken Mary to a restaurant. Mary collects
all the sleeping pills and aspirins she can find, and takes them and half a bottle
of sherry. You can see what kind of a woman she is by the fact that it’s
not even whiskey. She leaves a note for John. She hopes he’ll discover her
and get her to the hospital in time and repent and then they can get married,
but this fails to happen and she dies.
John marries Madge and everything continues as in A.
C
John, who is an older man, falls in love with Mary, and Mary, who is only
twenty-two, feels sorry for him because he’s worried about his hair falling
out. She sleeps with him even though she’s not in love with him. She met
him at work. She’s in love with someone called James, who is twenty-two
also and not yet ready to settle down.
John on the contrary settled down long ago: this is what is bothering
him. John has a steady, respectable job and is getting ahead in his field, but
Mary isn’t impressed by him, she’s impressed by James, who has a motorcycle
and a fabulous record collection. But James is often away on his motorcycle,
being free. Freedom isn’t the same for girls, so in the meantime Mary spends
Thursday evenings with John. Thursdays are the only days John can get away.
John is married to a woman called Madge and they have two children, a
charming house which they bought just before the real estate values went
up, and hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging, when they
have the time. John tells Mary how important she is to him, but of course he
can’t leave his wife because a commitment is a commitment. He goes on
about this more than is necessary and Mary finds it boring, but older men
can keep it up longer so on the whole she has a fairly good time.
One day James breezes in on his motorcycle with some top-grade California
hybrid and James and Mary get higher than you’d believe possible and
they climb into bed. Everything becomes very underwater, but along comes
John, who has a key to Mary’s apartment. He finds them stoned and entwined.
He’s hardly in any position to be jealous, considering Madge, but
nevertheless he’s overcome with despair. Finally he’s middle-aged, in two
years he’ll be bald as an egg and he can’t stand it. He purchases a handgun,
saying he needs it for target practice—this is the thin part of the plot, but it
can be dealt with later—and shoots the two of them and himself.
Madge, after a suitable period of mourning, marries an understanding
man called Fred and everything continues as in A, but under different names.
D
Fred and Madge have no problems. They get along exceptionally well
and are good at working out any little difficulties that may arise. But
their charming house is by the seashore and one day a giant tidal wave
approaches. Real estate values go down. The rest of the story is about
what caused the tidal wave and how they escape from it.They do, though
thousands drown, but Fred and Madge are virtuous and lucky. Finally on
high ground they clasp each other, wet and dripping and grateful, and
continue as in A.
E
Yes, but Fred has a bad heart.The rest of the story is about how kind and
understanding they both are until Fred dies.Then Madge devotes herself
to charity work until the end of A. If you like, it can be “Madge,” “cancer,”
“guilty and confused,” and “bird watching.”
F
If you think this is all too bourgeois, make John a revolutionary and Mary a
counterespionage agent and see how far that gets you. Remember, this is
Canada.You’ll still end up with A, though in between you may get a lustful
brawling saga of passionate involvement, a chronicle of our times, sort of.
You’ll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it.
Don’t be deluded by any other endings, they're all fake, either deliberately
fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism
if not by downright sentimentality.
The only authentic ending is the one provided here:
John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.
So much for endings. Beginnings are almost more fun. True connoisseurs,
however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the
hardest to do anything with.
That’s about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one
thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
Now try How and Why.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
The Use of Force [1938]
They were new patients to me, all I had was the name, Olson. Please come
down as soon as you can, my daughter is very sick.
When I arrived I was met by the mother, a big startled looking woman,
very clean and apologetic who merely said, Is this the doctor? and let me in. In
the back, she added. You must excuse us, doctor, we have her in the kitchen
where it is warm. It is very damp here sometimes.
The child was fully dressed and sitting on her father’s lap near the
kitchen table. He tried to get up, but I motioned for him not to bother, took
off my overcoat and started to look things over. I could see that they were all
very nervous, eyeing me up and down distrustfully. As often, in such cases,
they weren’t telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them;
that’s why they were spending three dollars on me.
The child was fairly eating me up with her cold, steady eyes, and no
expression to her face whatever. She did not move and seemed, inwardly,
quiet; an unusually attractive little thing, and as strong as a heifer in appearance.
But her face was flushed, she was breathing rapidly, and I realized that
she had a high fever. She had magnificent blond hair, in profusion. One
of those picture children often reproduced in advertising leaflets and the
photogravure sections of the Sunday papers.
5 She’s had a fever for three days, began the father and we don’t know
what it comes from. My wife has given her things, you know, like people do,
but it don’t do no good. And there’s been a lot of sickness around. So we
tho’t you’d better look her over and tell us what is the matter.
As doctors often do I took a trial shot at it as a point of departure. Has
she had a sore throat?
Both parents answered me together, No . . . No, she says her throat don’t
hurt her.
Does your throat hurt you? added the mother to the child. But the little
girl’s expression didn’t change nor did she move her eyes from my face.
Have you looked?
10 I tried to, said the mother, but I couldn’t see.
As it happens we had been having a number of cases of diphtheria in the
school to which this child went during that month and we were all, quite
apparently, thinking of that, though no one had as yet spoken of the thing.
Well, I said, suppose we take a look at the throat first. I smiled in my
best professional manner and asking for the child’s first name I said, come
on, Mathilda, open your mouth and let’s take a look at your throat.
Nothing doing.
Aw, come on, I coaxed, just open your mouth wide and let me take a
look. Look, I said opening both hands wide, I haven’t anything in my hands.
Just open up and let me see.
Such a nice man, put in the mother. Look how kind he is to you. Come
on, do what he tells you to, he won’t hurt you.
At that I ground my teeth in disgust. If only they wouldn’t use the word
“hurt” I might be able to get somewhere. But I did not allow myself to be
hurried or disturbed but speaking quietly and slowly I approached the child
again.
As I moved my chair a little nearer suddenly with one catlike movement
both her hands clawed instinctively for my eyes and she almost reached
them too. In fact she knocked my glasses flying and they fell, though unbroken,
several feet away from me on the kitchen floor.
Both the mother and father almost turned themselves inside out in embarrassment
and apology. You bad girl, said the mother, taking her and shaking
her by one arm. Look what you’ve done. The nice man . . .
For heaven’s sake, I broke in. Don’t call me a nice man to her. I’m here
to look at her throat on the chance that she might have diphtheria and possibly
die of it. But that’s nothing to her. Look here, I said to the child, we’re
going to look at your throat. You’re old enough to understand what I’m saying.
Will you open it now by yourself or shall we have to open it for you?
20 Not a move. Even her expression hadn’t changed. Her breaths however
were coming faster and faster. Then the battle began. I had to do it. I had to
have a throat culture for her own protection. But first I told the parents that
it was entirely up to them. I explained the danger but said that I would not
insist on a throat examination so long as they would take the responsibility.
If you don’t do what the doctor says you’ll have to go to the hospital,
the mother admonished her severely.
Oh yeah? I had to smile to myself. After all, I had already fallen in love
with the savage brat, the parents were contemptible to me. In the ensuing
struggle they grew more and more abject, crushed, exhausted while she
surely rose to magnificent heights of insane fury of effort bred of her terror
of me.
The father tried his best, and he was a big man but the fact that she was
his daughter, his shame at her behavior and his dread of hurting her made
him release her just at the critical moment several times when I had almost
achieved success, till I wanted to kill him. But his dread also that she might
have diphtheria made him tell me to go on, go on though he himself was almost
fainting, while the mother moved back and forth behind us raising and
lowering her hands in an agony of apprehension.
Put her in front of you on your lap, I ordered, and hold both her wrists.
25 But as soon as he did the child let out a scream. Don’t, you’re hurting
me. Let go of my hands. Let them go I tell you. Then she shrieked terrifyingly,
hysterically. Stop it! Stop it! You’re killing me!
Do you think she can stand it, doctor! said the mother.
You get out, said the husband to his wife. Do you want her to die of
diphtheria?
Come on now, hold her, I said.
Then I grasped the child’s head with my left hand and tried to get the
wooden tongue depressor between her teeth. She fought, with clenched
teeth, desperately! But now I also had grown furious—at a child. I tried to
hold myself down but I couldn’t. I know how to expose a throat for inspection.
And I did my best. When finally I got the wooden spatula behind the
last teeth and just the point of it into the mouth cavity, she opened up for an
instant but before I could see anything she came down again and gripping
the wooden blade between her molars she reduced it to splinters before I
could get it out again.
30 Aren’t you ashamed, the mother yelled at her. Aren’t you ashamed to act
like that in front of the doctor?
Get me a smooth-handled spoon of some sort, I told the mother.We’re
going through with this. The child’s mouth was already bleeding. Her tongue
was cut and she was screaming in wild hysterical shrieks. Perhaps I should
have desisted and come back in an hour or more. No doubt it would have
been better. But I have seen at least two children lying dead in bed of neglect
in such cases, and feeling that I must get a diagnosis now or never I went at it
again. But the worst of it was that I too had got beyond reason. I could have
torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to attack
her. My face was burning with it.
The damned little brat must be protected against her own idiocy, one
says to one’s self at such times. Others must be protected against her. It is
social necessity. And all these things are true. But a blind fury, a feeling of
adult shame, bred of a longing for muscular release are the operatives. One
goes on to the end.
In a final unreasoning assault I overpowered the child’s neck and jaws.
I forced the heavy silver spoon back of her teeth and down her throat till
she gagged. And there it was—both tonsils covered with membrane. She
had fought valiantly to keep me from knowing her secret. She had been hiding
that sore throat for three days at least and lying to her parents in order to
escape just such an outcome as this.
Now truly she was furious. She had been on the defensive before but
now she attacked. Tried to get off her father’s lap and fly at me while tears of
defeat blinded her eyes.
5. Elements of narrative fiction (2) WHEN and WHERE: setting and
time
“Araby”
by James Joyce
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the
Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the
blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street,
conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty from
having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was
littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of
which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant, and The
Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden
behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of
which I found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his
will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.
When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we
met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of
ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The
cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street.
The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we
ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping
gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman
smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned
to the street, light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning
the corner, we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan's sister
came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea, we watched her from our shadow
peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she
remained, we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan's steps resignedly. She was waiting
for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased
her before he obeyed, and I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she
moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled
down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the
doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her
brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways
diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had
never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to
all my foolish blood.
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings
when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through
the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of
labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks,
the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a
ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of
life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name
sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not
understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from
my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know
whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my
confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers
running upon the wires.
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark
rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard
the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden
beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see
so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip
from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: 'O love!
O love!' many times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did
not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered
yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar; she said she would love to go.
'And why can't you?' I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go, she
said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother and two other
boys were fighting for their caps, and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes,
bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white
curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing.
It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she
stood at ease.
'It's well for you,' she said.
'If I go,' I said, 'I will bring you something.'
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I
wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school. At
night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I
strove to read. The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which
my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the
bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised, and hoped it was not some Freemason
affair. I answered few questions in class. I watched my master's face pass from amiability to
sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts
together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood
between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play.
On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the evening.
He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush, and answered me curtly:
'Yes, boy, I know.'
As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at the window. I felt the
house in bad humour and walked slowly towards the school. The air was pitilessly raw and
already my heart misgave me.
When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was early. I sat staring
at the clock for some time and, when its ticking began to irritate me, I left the room. I
mounted the staircase and gained the upper part of the house. The high, cold, empty, gloomy
rooms liberated me and I went from room to room singing. From the front window I saw my
companions playing below in the street. Their cries reached me weakened and indistinct and,
leaning my forehead against the cool glass, I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I
may have stood there for an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my
imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the
railings and at the border below the dress.
When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire. She was an old,
garrulous woman, a pawnbroker's widow, who collected used stamps for some pious purpose.
I had to endure the gossip of the tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still
my uncle did not come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry she couldn't wait any
longer, but it was after eight o'clock and she did not like to be out late, as the night air was
bad for her. When she had gone I began to walk up and down the room, clenching my fists.
My aunt said:
'I'm afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.'
At nine o'clock I heard my uncle's latchkey in the hall door. I heard him talking to himself and
heard the hallstand rocking when it had received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret
these signs. When he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money to go
to the bazaar. He had forgotten.
'The people are in bed and after their first sleep now,' he said.
I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:
'Can't you give him the money and let him go? You've kept him late enough as it is.'
My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed in the old saying: 'All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' He asked me where I was going and, when I told
him a second time, he asked me did I know The Arab's Farewell to his Steed. When I left the
kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my aunt.
I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street towards the station. The
sight of the streets thronged with buyers and glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of
my journey. I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable
delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept onward among ruinous houses and
over the twinkling river. At Westland Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage
doors; but the porters moved them back, saying that it was a special train for the bazaar. I
remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes the train drew up beside an improvised
wooden platform. I passed out on to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was
ten minutes to ten. In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical name.
I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar would be closed, I passed
in quickly through a turnstile, handing a shilling to a weary-looking man. I found myself in a
big hall girded at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater
part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after
a service. I walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the
stalls which were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words Café Chantant were
written in coloured lamps, two men were counting money on a salver. I listened to the fall of
the coins.
Remembering with difficulty why I had come, I went over to one of the stalls and examined
porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young lady was talking and
laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to
their conversation.
'O, I never said such a thing!'
'O, but you did!'
'O, but I didn't!'
'Didn't she say that?'
'Yes. I heard her.'
'O, there's a... fib!'
Observing me, the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone
of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I
looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark
entrance to the stall and murmured:
'No, thank you.'
The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to the two young men.
They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young lady glanced at me over her
shoulder.
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her
wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the
bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice
call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now
completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my
eyes burned with anguish and anger.
1914
6. Elements of narrative fiction (3) HOW: style, tone, narrative voice
and perspective
JOHN UPDIKE
A & P [1962]
In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I’m in the third
checkout slot, with my back to the door, so I don’t see them until they’re
over by the bread. The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid
green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad
soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the
sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with
my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or
not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell. She’s one of
these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones
and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. She’d
been watching cash registers for fifty years and probably never seen a mistake
before.
By the time I got her feathers smoothed and her goodies into a bag—
she gives me a little snort in passing, if she’d been born at the right time
they would have burned her over in Salem—by the time I get her on her
way the girls had circled around the bread and were coming back, without a
pushcart, back my way along the counters, in the aisle between the checkouts
and the Special bins. They didn’t even have shoes on. There was this
chunky one, with the two-piece—it was bright green and the seams on the
bra were still sharp and her belly was still pretty pale so I guessed she just
got it (the suit)—there was this one, with one of those chubby berry-faces,
the lips all bunched together under her nose, this one, and a tall one, with
black hair that hadn’t quite frizzed right, and one of these sunburns right
across under the eyes, and a chin that was too long—you know, the kind of
girl other girls think is very “striking” and “attractive” but never quite makes
it, as they very well know, which is why they like her so much—and then
the third one, that wasn’t quite so tall. She was the queen. She kind of led
them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She
didn’t look around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on
these long white prima-donna legs. She came down a little hard on her
heels, as if she didn’t walk in her bare feet that much, putting down her
heels and then letting the weight move along to her toes as if she was testing
the floor with every step, putting a little deliberate extra action into it.
You never know for sure how girls’ minds work (do you really think it’s a
mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?) but you got the
idea she had talked the other two into coming in here with her, and now she
was showing them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.
She had on a kind of dirty-pink—beige maybe, I don’t know—bathing
suit with a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down.
They were off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms,
and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all around the top
of the cloth there was this shining rim. If it hadn’t been there you wouldn’t
have known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders.
With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit
and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of
her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in
the light. I mean, it was more than pretty.
She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in
a bun that was unravelling, and a kind of prim face. Walking into the A & P
with your straps down, I suppose it’s the only kind of face you can have. She
held her head so high her neck, coming up out of those white shoulders,
looked kind of stretched, but I didn’t mind. The longer her neck was, the
more of her there was.
5 She must have felt in the corner of her eye me and over my shoulder
Stokesie in the second slot watching, but she didn’t tip. Not this queen.
She kept her eyes moving across the racks, and stopped, and turned so
slow it made my stomach rub the inside of my apron, and buzzed to the
other two, who kind of huddled against her for relief, and then they all three
of them went up the cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-riceraisinsseasoningsspreads-spaghetti-soft-drinks-crackers-and-cookies aisle. From the
third slot I look straight up this aisle to the meat counter, and I watched
them all the way. The fat one with the tan sort of fumbled with the cookies,
but on second thought she put the package back. The sheep pushing their
carts down the aisle—the girls were walking against the usual traffic (not
that we have one-way signs or anything)—were pretty hilarious. You could
see them, when Queenie’s white shoulders dawned on them, kind of jerk, or
hop, or hiccup, but their eyes snapped back to their own baskets and on
they pushed. I bet you could set off dynamite in an A & P and the people
would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists and
muttering “Let me see, there was a third thing, began with A, asparagus, no,
ah, yes, applesauce!” or whatever it is they do mutter. But there was no
doubt, this jiggled them. A few houseslaves in pin curlers even look around
after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was correct.
You know, it’s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the
beach, where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway,
and another thing in the cool of the A & P, under the fluorescent lights,
against all those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along naked over
our checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor.
“Oh, Daddy,” Stokesie said beside me.“I feel so faint.”
“Darling,” I said. “Hold me tight.” Stokesie’s married, with two babies
chalked up on his fuselage already, but as far as I can tell that’s the only difference.
He’s twenty-two, and I was nineteen this April.
“Is it done?” he asks, the responsible married man finding his voice. I
forgot to say he thinks he’s going to be a manager some sunny day, maybe in
1990 when it’s called the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or
something.
10 What he meant was, our town is five miles from a beach, with a big summer
colony out on the Point, but we’re right in the middle of town, and the
women generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they get out
of the car into the street. And anyway these are usually women with six children
and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them,
could care less. As I say, we’re right in the middle of town, and if you stand at
our front doors you can see two banks and the Congregational church and
the newspaper store and three real estate offices and about twenty-seven
old freeloaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again. It’s
not as if we’re on the Cape; we’re north of Boston and there’s people in this
town haven’t seen the ocean for twenty years.
The girls had reached the meat counter and were asking McMahon
something. He pointed, they pointed, and they shuffled out of sight behind a
pyramid of Diet Delight peaches. All that was left for us to see was old
McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints.
Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn’t help it.
Now here comes the sad part of the story, at least my family says it’s sad, but I
don’t think it’s so sad myself. The store’s pretty empty, it being Thursday afternoon,
so there was nothing much to do except lean on the register and wait
for the girls to show up again. The whole store was like a pinball machine and
I didn’t know which tunnel they’d come out of. After a while they come
around out of the far aisle, around the light bulbs, records at discount of the
Caribbean Six or Tony Martin Sings or some such gunk you wonder they
waste the wax on, six-packs of candy bars, and plastic toys done up in cellophane
that fall apart when a kid looks at them anyway. Around they come,
Queenie still leading the way, and holding a little gray jar in her hand. Slots
Three through Seven are unmanned and I could see her wondering between
Stokes and me, but Stokesie with his usual luck draws an old party in baggy
gray pants who stumbles up with four giant cans of pineapple juice (what do
these bums do with all that pineapple juice? I’ve often asked myself) so the
girls come to me. Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into my fingers icy
cold. Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream: 49¢.Now her hands
are empty, not a ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder
where the money’s coming from. Still with that prim look she lifts a folded
dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top. The jar
went heavy in my hand. Really, I thought that was so cute.
Then everybody’s luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling
with a truck full of cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into the door
marked MANAGER behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye.
Lengel’s pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the rest, but he doesn’t
miss that much. He comes over and says, “Girls, this isn’t the beach.”
Queenie blushes, though maybe it’s just a brush of sunburn I was noticing
for the first time, now that she was so close.“My mother asked me to
pick up a jar of herring snacks.”Her voice kind of startled me, the way voices
do when you see the people first, coming out so flat and dumb yet kind of
tony, too, the way it ticked over “pick up” and “snacks.”All of a sudden I slid
right down her voice into her living room. Her father and the other men
were standing around in ice-cream coats and bow ties and the women were
in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big glass plate and
they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of
mint in them. When my parents have somebody over they get lemonade and
if it’s a real racy affair Schlitz in tall glasses with “They’ll Do It Every Time”
cartoons stencilled on.
15 “That’s all right,” Lengel said. “But this isn’t the beach.” His repeating
this struck me as funny, as if it had just occurred to him, and he had been
thinking all these years the A & P was a great big dune and he was the head
lifeguard. He didn’t like my smiling—as I say he doesn’t miss much—but he
concentrates on giving the girls that sad Sunday-school-superintendent
stare.
Queenie’s blush is no sunburn now, and the plump one in plaid, that I
liked better from the back—a really sweet can—pipes up, “We weren’t doing
any shopping. We just came in for the one thing.”
“That makes no difference,” Lengel tells her, and I could see from the
way his eyes went that he hadn’t noticed she was wearing a two-piece before.“
We want you decently dressed when you come in here.”
“We are decent,” Queenie says suddenly, her lower lip pushing, getting
sore now that she remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that
runs the A & P must look pretty crummy. Fancy Herring Snacks flashed in
her very blue eyes.
“Girls, I don’t want to argue with you. After this come in here with
your shoulders covered. It’s our policy.” He turns his back. That’s policy for
you. Policy is what the kingpins want. What the others want is juvenile
delinquency.
20 All this while, the customers had been showing up with their carts but,
you know, sheep, seeing a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie, who
shook open a paper bag as gently as peeling a peach, not wanting to miss a word.
I could feel in the silence everybody getting nervous, most of all
Lengel, who asks me,“Sammy, have you rung up this purchase?”
I thought and said “No” but it wasn’t about that I was thinking. I go
through the punches, 4, 9, GROC,TOT—it’s more complicated than you think,
and after you do it often enough, it begins to make a little song, that you
hear words to, in my case “Hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap-py peepul
(splat)!”—the splat being the drawer flying out. I uncrease the bill, tenderly
as you may imagine, it just having come from between the two smoothest
scoops of vanilla I had ever known were there, and pass a half and a penny
into her narrow pink palm, and nestle the herrings in a bag and twist its
neck and hand it over, all the time thinking.
The girls, and who’d blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say “I
quit” to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch
me, their unsuspected hero. They keep right on going, into the electric eye;
the door flies open and they flicker across the lot to their car, Queenie and
Plaid and Big Tall Goony-Goony (not that as raw material she was so bad),
leaving me with Lengel and a kink in his eyebrow.
“Did you say something, Sammy?”
“I said I quit.”
“I thought you did.”
25 “You didn’t have to embarrass them.”
“It was they who were embarrassing us.”
I started to say something that came out “Fiddle-de-doo.” It’s a saying of
my grandmother’s, and I know she would have been pleased.
“I don’t think you know what you’re saying,” Lengel said.
30 “I know you don’t,” I said.“But I do.” I pull the bow at the back of my
apron and start shrugging it off my shoulders. A couple customers that had
been heading for my slot begin to knock against each other, like scared pigs
in a chute.
Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray. He’s been
a friend of my parents for years.“Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your
Mom and Dad,” he tells me. It’s true, I don’t. But it seems to me that once you
begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it. I fold the apron, “Sammy”
stitched in red on the pocket, and put it on the counter, and drop the bow
tie on top of it. The bow tie is theirs, if you’ve ever wondered. “You’ll feel
this for the rest of your life,” Lengel says, and I know that’s true, too, but
remembering how he made that pretty girl blush makes me so scrunchy inside
I punch the No Sale tab and the machine whirs “pee-pul” and the
drawer splats out. One advantage to this scene taking place in summer, I can
follow this up with a clean exit, there’s no fumbling around getting your
coat and galoshes, I just saunter into the electric eye in my white shirt that
my mother ironed the night before, and the door heaves itself open, and outside
the sunshine is skating around on the asphalt.
I look around for my girls, but they’re gone, of course. There wasn’t anybody
but some young married screaming with her children about some
candy they didn’t get by the door of a powder-blue Falcon station wagon.
Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum
lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in
the slot, checking the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back
stiff, as if he’d just had an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I
felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.
THE TELL-TALE HEART
by Edgar Allan Poe
1843
TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you
say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them.
Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I
heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how
calmly I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it
haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old
man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I
think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film
over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I
made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should
have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what
foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than
during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch
of his door and opened it --oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for
my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in
my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly -very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place
my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha!
would a madman have been so wise as this, And then, when my head was well in the room, I
undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously --cautiously (for the hinges creaked) --I undid it
just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long
nights --every night just at midnight --but I found the eye always closed; and so it was
impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And
every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously
to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So
you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just
at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's
minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent
of my own powers --of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think
that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds
or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed
suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back --but no. His room was as black
as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of
robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on
steadily, steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the
tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?"
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in
the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as
I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was
not a groan of pain or of grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that arises from the
bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at
midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its
dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man
felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever
since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since
growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been
saying to himself --"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the
floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to
comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because
Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the
victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel -although he neither saw nor heard --to feel the presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I
resolved to open a little --a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it --you cannot
imagine how stealthily, stealthily --until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the
spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye.
It was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with
perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in
my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the
ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.
And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of
the sense? --now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch
makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old
man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern
motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish
tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant.
The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! -do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of
the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to
uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating
grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the
sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I
threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once --once only. In an instant I
dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the
deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This,
however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old
man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I
placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He
was stone dead. His eve would trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise
precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily,
but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the
legs.
I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all
between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human
eye --not even his --could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out --no
stain of any kind --no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all
--ha! ha!
When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock --still dark as midnight.
As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it
with a light heart, --for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced
themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a
neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been
lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.
I smiled, --for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said,
was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my
visitors all over the house. I bade them search --search well. I led them, at length, to his
chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my
confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues,
while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very
spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease.
They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt
myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears:
but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct: --It continued and
became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and
gained definiteness --until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.
No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened
voice. Yet the sound increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound --much
such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath --and yet the
officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more vehemently; but the noise steadily
increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but
the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with
heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily
increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon
which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and
continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly,
and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they
suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I
think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this
derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and
now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks!
here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"
-THE END-
7. Elements of narrative fiction (4): theme, thesis, morale
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)
FEUILLE D'ALBUM
HE really was an impossible person. Too shy altogether. With absolutely nothing to
say for himself. And such a weight. Once he was in your studio he never knew when to go,
but would sit on and on until you nearly screamed, and burned to throw something enormous
after him when he did finally blush his way out–something like the tortoise stove. The strange
thing was that at first sight he looked most interesting. Everybody agreed about that. You
would drift into the café one evening and there you would see, sitting in a corner, with a glass
of coffee in front of him, a thin dark boy, wearing a blue jersey with a little grey flannel jacket
buttoned over it. And somehow that blue jersey and the grey jacket with the sleeves that were
too short gave him the air of a boy that has made up his mind to run away to sea. Who has run
away, in fact, and will get up in a moment and sling a knotted handkerchief containing his
nightshirt and his mother's picture on the end of a stick, and walk out into the night and be
drowned. . . . Stumble over the wharf edge on his way to the ship, even. . . . He had black
close-cropped hair, grey eyes with long [Page 219] lashes, white cheeks and a mouth pouting
as though he were determined not to cry. . . . How could one resist him? Oh, one's heart was
wrung at sight. And, as if that were not enough, there was his trick of blushing. . . . Whenever
the waiter came near him he turned crimson–he might have been just out of prison and the
waiter in the know. . . .
"Who is he, my dear? Do you know?"
"Yes. His name is Ian French. Painter. Awfully clever, they say. Someone started by
giving him a mother's tender care. She asked him how often he heard from home, whether he
had enough blankets on his bed, how much milk he drank a day. But when she went round to
his studio to give an eye to his socks, she rang and rang, and though she could have sworn she
heard someone breathing inside, the door was not answered. . . . Hopeless!"
Someone else decided that he ought to fall in love. She summoned him to her side,
called him "boy," leaned over him so that he might smell the enchanting perfume of her hair,
took his arm, told him how marvellous life could be if one only had the courage, and went
round to his studio one evening and rang and rang. . . . Hopeless.
"What the poor boy really wants is thoroughly rousing," said a third. So off they went
to café's and cabarets, little dances, places where you drank something that tasted like tinned
apricot juice, but [Page 220] cost twenty-seven shillings a bottle and was called champagne,
other places, too thrilling for words, where you sat in the most awful gloom, and where
someone had always been shot the night before. But he did not turn a hair. Only once he got
very drunk, but instead of blossoming forth, there he sat, stony, with two spots of red on his
cheeks, like, my dear, yes, the dead image of that rag-time thing they were playing, like a
"Broken Doll." But when she took him back to his studio he had quite recovered, and said
"good night" to her in the street below, as though they had walked home from church
together. . . . Hopeless.
After heaven knows how many more attempts–for the spirit of kindness dies very hard
in women–they gave him up. Of course, they were still perfectly charming, and asked him to
their shows, and spoke to him in the café but that was all. When one is an artist one has no
time simply for people who won't respond. Has one?
"And besides I really think there must be something rather fishy somewhere . . . don't
you? It can't all be as innocent as it looks! Why come to Paris if you want to be a daisy in the
field? No, I'm not suspicious. But –"
He lived at the top of a tall mournful building overlooking the river. One of those
buildings that look so romantic on rainy nights and moonlight nights, when the shutters are
shut, and the heavy door, and the sign advertising "a little apartment [Page 221] to let
immediately" gleams forlorn beyond words. One of those buildings that smell so unromantic
all the year round, and where the concierge lives in a glass cage on the ground floor, wrapped
up in a filthy shawl, stirring something in a saucepan and ladling out tit-bits to the swollen old
dog lolling on a bead cushion. . . . Perched up in the air the studio had a wonderful view. The
two big windows faced the water; he could see the boats and the barges swinging up and
down, and the fringe of an island planted with trees, like a round bouquet. The side window
looked across to another house, shabbier still and smaller, and down below there was a flower
market. You could see the tops of huge umbrellas, with frills of bright flowers escaping from
them, booths covered with striped awning where they sold plants in boxes and clumps of wet
gleaming palms in terra-cotta jars. Among the flowers the old women scuttled from side to
side, like crabs. Really there was no need for him to go out. If he sat at the window until his
white beard fell over the sill he still would have found something to draw. . . .
How surprised those tender women would have been if they had managed to force the
door. For he kept his studio as neat as a pin. Everything was arranged to form a pattern, a little
"still life" as it were–the saucepans with their lids on the wall behind the gas stove, the bowl
of eggs, milk jug and teapot on the shelf, the books and the lamp [Page 222] with the crinkly
paper shade on the table. An Indian curtain that had a fringe of red leopards marching round it
covered his bed by day, and on the wall beside the bed on a level with your eyes when you
were lying down there was a small neatly printed notice: GET UP AT ONCE.
Every day was much the same. While the light was good he slaved at his painting, then
cooked his meals and tidied up the place. And in the evenings he went off to the café, or sat at
home reading or making out the most complicated list of expenses headed: "What I ought to
be able to do it on," and ending with a sworn statement. . . "I swear not to exceed this amount
for next month. Signed, Ian French."
Nothing very fishy about this; but those far-seeing women were quite right. It wasn't
all.
One evening he was sitting at the side window eating some prunes and throwing the
stones on to the tops of the huge umbrellas in the deserted flower market. It had been raining
– the first real spring rain of the year had fallen–a bright spangle hung on everything, and the
air smelled of buds and moist earth. Many voices sounding languid and content rang out in the
dusky air, and the people who had come to close their windows and fasten the shutters leaned
out instead. Down below in the market the trees were peppered with new green. What kind of
trees were they? he wondered. And now came the lamplighter. He [Page 223] stared at the
house across the way, the small, shabby house, and suddenly, as if in answer to his gaze, two
wings of windows opened and a girl came out on to the tiny balcony carrying a pot of
daffodils. She was a strangely thin girl in a dark pinafore, with a pink handkerchief tied over
her hair. Her sleeves were rolled up almost to her shoulders and her slender arms shone
against the dark stuff.
"Yes, it is quite warm enough. It will do them good," she said, puffing down the pot
and turning to someone in the room inside. As she turned she put her hands up to the
handkerchief and tucked away some wisps of hair. She looked down at the deserted market
and up at the sky, but where he sat there might have been a hollow in the air. She simply did
not see the house opposite. And then she disappeared.
His heart fell out of the side window of his studio, and down to the balcony of the
house opposite–buried itself in the pot of daffodils under the half-opened buds and spears of
green.. . . That room with the balcony was the sitting-room, and the one next door to it was
the kitchen. He heard the clatter of the dishes as she washed up after supper, and then she
came to the window, knocked a little mop against the ledge, and hung it on a nail to dry. She
never sang or unbraided her hair, or held out her arms to the moon as young girls are
supposed to do. And she always wore the same [Page 224] dark pinafore and the pink
handkerchief over her hair. . . . Whom did she live with? Nobody else came to those two
windows, and yet she was always talking to someone in the room. Her mother, he decided,
was an invalid. They took in sewing. The father was dead. . . . He had been a journalist–very
pale, with long moustaches, and a piece of black hair falling over his forehead.
By working all day they just made enough money to live on, but they never went out
and they had no friends. Now when he sat down at his table he had to make an entirely new
set of sworn statements. . . . Not to go to the side window before a certain hour: signed, Ian
French. Not to think about her until he had put away his painting things for the day: signed,
Ian French.
It was quite simple. She was the only person he really wanted to know, because she
was, he decided, the only other person alive who was just his age. He couldn't stand giggling
girls, and he had no use for grown-up women. . . . She was his age, she was–well, just like
him. He sat in his dusky studio, tired, with one arm hanging over the back of his chair, staring
in at her window and seeing himself in there with her. She had a violent temper; they
quarrelled terribly at times, he and she. She had a way of stamping her foot and twisting her
hands in her pinafore . . . furious. And she very rarely laughed. Only when she told him about
an absurd little kitten she once had who [Page 225] used to roar and pretend to be a lion
when it was given meat to eat. Things like that made her laugh. . . . But as a rule they sat
together very quietly; he, just as he was sitting now, and she with her hands folded in her lap
and her feet tucked under, talking in low tones, or silent and tired after the day's work. Of
course, she never asked him about his pictures, and of course he made the most wonderful
drawings of her which she hated, because he made her so thin and so dark. . . . But how could
he get to know her? This might go on for years. . . .
Then he discovered that once a week, in the evenings, she went out shopping. On two
successive Thursdays she came to the window wearing an old-fashioned cape over the
pinafore, and carrying a basket. From where he sat he could not see the door of her house, but
on the next Thursday evening at the same time he snatched up his cap and ran down the stairs.
There was a lovely pink light over everything. He saw it glowing in the river, and the people
walking towards him had pink faces and pink hands.
He leaned against the side of his house waiting for her and he had no idea of what he
was going to do or say. "Here she comes," said a voice in his head. She walked very quickly,
with small, light steps; with one hand she carried the basket, with the other she kept the cape
together. . . . What could he do? He could only follow. . . . First she went into [Page 226] the
grocer's and spent a long time in there, and then she went into the butcher's where she had to
wait her turn. Then she was an age at the draper's matching something, and then she went to
the fruit shop and bought a lemon. As he watched her he knew more surely than ever he must
get to know her, now. Her composure, her seriousness and her loneliness, the very way she
walked as though she was eager to be done with this world of grown-ups all was so natural to
him and so inevitable.
"Yes, she is always like that," he thought proudly. "We have nothing to do with–these
people."
But now she was on her way home and he was as far off as ever. . . . She suddenly
turned into the dairy and he saw her through the window buying an egg. She picked it out of
the basket with such care–a brown one, a beautifully shaped one, the one he would have
chosen. And when she came out of the dairy he went in after her. In a moment he was out
again, and following her past his house across the flower market, dodging among the huge
umbrellas and treading on the fallen flowers and the round marks where the pots had stood. . .
. Through her door he crept, and up the stairs after, taking care to tread in time with her so that
she should not notice. Finally, she stopped on the landing, and took the key out of her purse.
As she put it into the door he ran up and faced her. [Page 227]
Blushing more crimson than ever, but looking at her severely he said, almost angrily:
"Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you dropped this."
And he handed her an egg.
The Fly
by Katherine Mansfield
"Y'are very snug in here," piped old Mr. Woodifield, and he peered out of the great,
green-leather armchair by his friend the boss's desk as a baby peers out of its pram. His talk
was over; it was time for him to be off. But he did not want to go. Since he had retired, since
his...stroke, the wife and the girls kept him boxed up in the house every day of the week
except Tuesday. On Tuesday he was dressed and brushed and allowed to cut back to the City
for the day. Though what he did there the wife and girls couldn't imagine. Made a nuisance of
himself to his friends, they supposed....Well, perhaps so. All the same, we cling to our last
pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves. So there sat old Woodifield, smoking a cigar and
staring almost greedily at the boss, who rolled in his office chair, stout, rosy, five years older
than he, and still going strong, still at the helm. It did one good to see him.
Wistfully, admiringly, the old voice added, "It's snug in here, upon my word!"
"Yes, it's comfortable enough," agreed the boss, and he flipped the Financial Times
with a paper-knife. As a matter of fact he was proud of his room; he liked to have it admired,
especially by old Woodifield. It gave him a feeling of deep, solid satisfaction to be planted
there in the midst of it in full view of that frail old figure in the muffler.
"I've had it done up lately," he explained, as he had explained for the past -- how
many? -- weeks. "New carpet," and he pointed to the bright red carpet with a pattern of large
white rings. "New furniture," and he nodded towards the massive bookcase and the table with
legs like twisted treacle. "Electric heating!" He waved almost exultantly towards the five
transparent, pearly sausages glowing so softly in the tilted copper pan.
But he did not draw old Woodifield's attention to the photograph over the table of a
grave-looking boy in uniform standing in one of those spectral photographers' parks with
photographers' storm-clouds behind him. It was not new. It had been there for over six years.
"There was something I wanted to tell you," said old Woodifield, and his eyes grew
dim remembering. "Now what was it? I had it in my mind when I started out this morning."
His hands began to tremble, and patches of red showed above his beard.
Poor old chap, he's on his last pins, thought the boss. And, feeling kindly, he winked at
the old man, and said jokingly, "I tell you what. I've got a little drop of something here that'll
do you good before you go out into the cold again. It's beautiful stuff. It wouldn't hurt a
child." He took a key off his watch-chain, unlocked a cupboard below his desk, and drew
forth a dark, squat bottle. "That's the medicine," said he. "And the man from whom I got it
told me on the strict Q.T. it came from the cellars at Windor Castle."
Old Woodifield's mouth fell open at the sight. He couldn't have looked more surprised
if the boss had produced a rabbit.
"It's whisky, ain't it?" he piped feebly.
The boss turned the bottle and lovingly showed him the label. Whisky it was.
"D'you know," said he, peering up at the boss wonderingly, "they won't let me touch it
at home." And he looked as though he was going to cry.
"Ah, that's where we know a bit more than the ladies," cried the boss, swooping across
for two tumblers that stood on the table with the water-bottle, and pouring a generous finger
into each. "Drink it down. It'll do you good. And don't put any water with it. It's sacrilege to
tamper with stuff like this. Ah!" He tossed off his, pulled out his handkerchief, hastily wiped
his moustaches, and cocked an eye at old Woodifield, who was rolling his in his chaps.
The old man swallowed, was silent a moment, and then said faintly, "It's nutty!"
But it warmed him; it crept into his chill old brain -- he remembered.
"That was it," he said, heaving himself out of his chair. "I thought you'd like to know.
The girls were in Belgium last week having a look at poor Reggie's grave, and they happened
to come across your boy's. They're quite near each other, it seems."
Old Woodifield paused, but the boss made no reply. Only a quiver in his eyelids
showed that he heard.
"The girls were delighted with the way the place is kept," piped the old voice.
"Beautifully looked after. Couldn't be better if they were at home. You've not been across,
have yer?"
"No, no!" For various reasons the boss had not been across.
"There's miles of it," quavered old Woodifield, "and it's all as neat as a garden.
Flowers growing on all the graves. Nice broad paths." It was plain from his voice how much
he liked a nice broad path.
The pause came again. Then the old man brightened wonderfully.
"D'you know what the hotel made the girls pay for a pot of jam?" he piped. "Ten
francs! Robbery, I call it. It was a little pot, so Gertrude says, no bigger than a half-crown.
And she hadn't taken more than a spoonful when they charged her ten francs. Gertrude
brought the pot away with her to teach 'em a lesson. Quite right, too; it's trading on our
feelings. They think because we're over there having a look round we're ready to pay
anything. That's what it is." And he turned towards the door.
"Quite right, quite right!" cried the boss, though what was quite right he hadn't the
least idea. He came round by his desk, followed the shuffling footsteps to the door, and saw
the old fellow out. Woodifield was gone.
For a long moment the boss stayed, staring at nothing, while the grey-haired office
messenger, watching him, dodged in and out of his cubby-hole like a dog that expects to be
taken for a run. Then: "I'll see nobody for half an hour, Macey," said the boss. "Understand?
Nobody at all."
"Very good, sir."
The door shut, the firm heavy steps recrossed the bright carpet, the fat body plumped
down in the spring chair, and leaning forward, the boss covered his face with his hands. He
wanted, he intended, he had arranged to weep....
It had been a terrible shock to him when old Woodifield sprang that remark upon him
about the boy's grave. It was exactly as though the earth had opened and he had seen the boy
lying there with Woodifield's girls staring down at him. For it was strange. Although over six
years had passed away, the boss never thought of the boy except as lying unchanged,
unblemished in his uniform, asleep for ever. "My son!" groaned the boss. But no tears came
yet. In the past, in the first few months and even years after the boy's death, he had only to say
those words to be overcome by such grief that nothing short of a violent fit of weeping could
relieve him. Time, he had declared then, he had told everybody, could make no difference.
Other men perhaps might recover, might live their loss down, but not he. How was it
possible? His boy was an only son. Ever since his birth the boss had worked at building up
this business for him; it had no other meaning if it was not for the boy. Life itself had come to
have no other meaning. How on earth could he have slaved, denied himself, kept going all
those years without the promise for ever before him of the boy's stepping into his shoes and
carrying on where he left off?
And that promise had been so near being fulfilled. The boy had been in the office
learning the ropes for a year before the war. Every morning they had started off together; they
had come back by the same train. And what congratulations he had received as the boy's
father! No wonder; he had taken to it marvellously. As to his popularity with the staff, every
man jack of them down to old Macey couldn't make enough of the boy. And he wasn't the
least spoilt. No, he was just his bright natural self, with the right word for everybody, with
that boyish look and his habit of saying, "Simply splendid!"
But all that was over and done with as though it never had been. The day had come
when Macey had handed him the telegram that brought the whole place crashing about his
head. "Deeply regret to inform you..." And he had left the office a broken man, with his life in
ruins.
Six years ago, six years....How quickly time passed! It might have happened
yesterday. The boss took his hands from his face; he was puzzled. Something seemed to be
wrong with him. He wasn't feeling as he wanted to feel. He decided to get up and have a look
at the boy's photograph. But it wasn't a favourite photograph of his; the expression was
unnatural. It was cold, even stern-looking. The boy had never looked like that.
At that moment the boss noticed that a fly had fallen into his broad inkpot, and was
trying feebly but deperately to clamber out again. Help! help! said those struggling legs. But
the sides of the inkpot were wet and slippery; it fell back again and began to swim. The boss
took up a pen, picked the fly out of the ink, and shook it on to a piece of blotting-paper. For a
fraction of a second it lay still on the dark patch that oozed round it. Then the front legs
waved, took hold, and, pulling its small, sodden body up, it began the immense task of
cleaning the ink from its wings. Over and under, over and under, went a leg along a wing, as
the stone goes over and under the scythe. Then there was a pause, while the fly, seeming to
stand on the tips of its toes, tried to expand first one wing and then the other. It succeeded at
last, and, sitting down, it began, like a minute cat, to clean its face. Now one could imagine
that the little front legs rubbed against each other lightly, joyfully. The horrible danger was
over; it had escaped; 1t was ready for life again.
But just then the boss had an idea. He plunged his pen back into the ink, leaned his
thick wrist on the blotting-paper, and as the fly tried its wings down came a great heavy blot.
What would it make of that? What indeed! The little beggar seemed absolutely cowed,
stunned, and afraid to move because of what would happen next. But then, as if painfully, it
dragged itself forward. The front legs waved, caught hold, and, more slowly this time, the task
began from the beginning.
He's a plucky little devil, thought the boss, and he felt a real admiration for the fly's
courage. That was the way to tackle things; that was the right spirit. Never say die; it was only
a question of...But the fly had again finished its laborious task, and the boss had just time to
refill his pen, to shake fair and square on the new-cleaned body yet another dark drop. What
about it this time? A painful moment of suspense followed. But behold, the front legs were
again waving; the boss felt a rush of relief. He leaned over the fly and said to it tenderly, "You
artful little b..." And he actually had the brilliant notion of breathing on it to help the drying
process. All the same, there was something timid and weak about its efforts now, and the boss
decided that this time should be the last, as he dipped the pen deep into the inkpot.
It was. The last blot fell on the soaked blotting-paper, and the draggled fly lay in it and
did not stir. The back legs were stuck to the body; the front legs were not to be seen.
"Come on," said the boss. "Look sharp!" And he stirred it with his pen -- in vain.
Nothing happened or was likely to happen. The fly was dead.
The boss lifted the corpse on the end of the paper-knife and flung it into the wastepaper basket. But such a grinding feeling of wretchedness seized him that he felt positively
frightened. He started forward and pressed the bell for Macey.
"Bring me some fresh blotting-paper," he said sternly,"and look sharp about it." And
while the old dog padded away he fell to wondering what it was he had been thinking about
before. What was it? It was...He took out his handkerchief and passed it inside his collar. For
the life of him he could not remember.
8. Poetry, prosody, metrical systems, feet and rhyme patterns, rhythm,
sound effects
William Shakespeare
From the Sonnets
XII
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
XVIII
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
XXIV
Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd,
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
And perspective it is best painter's art.
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictur'd lies,
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
The Wreck of the Deutschland (excerpt)
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
To the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns, exiles by the Falk Laws, drowned
between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th, 1875
I
Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World's strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones & veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod
Hard down with a horror of height:
And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.
The frown of his face
Before me, the hurtle of hell
Behind, where, where was a, where was a place?
I whirled out wings that spell
And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host.
My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell,
Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,
To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace to the grace.
Song of Myself (excerpt)
By Walt Whitman
1819-1892
1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven
[First published in 1845]
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; This it is, and nothing more,'
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; 'Tis the wind and nothing more!'
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'
But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting `Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
John Betjeman
Harrow on the Hill
When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley
And electric trains are lighted after tea
The poplars near the stadium are trembly
With their tap and tap and whispering to me,
Like the sound of little breakers
Spreading out along the surf-line
When the estuary’s filling
With the sea.
Then Harrow-on-the-Hill’s a rocky island
And Harrow churchyard full of sailor’s graves
And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing
Is the level of the Wealdstone turned to waves
And the rumble of the railway
Is the thunder of the rollers
As they gather for the plunging
Into caves
There’s a storm cloud to the westward over Kenton,
There’s a line of harbour lights at Perivale,
Is it rounding rough Pentire in a flood of sunset fire
The little fleet of trawlers under sail?
Can those boats be only roof tops
As they stream along the skyline
In a race for port and Padstow
With the gale?
Five O'Clock Shadow
This is the time of day when we in the Men's ward
Think "one more surge of the pain and I give up the fight."
When he who struggles for breath can struggle less strongly:
This is the time of day which is worse than night.
A haze of thunder hangs on the hospital rose-beds,
A doctors' foursome out of the links is played,
Safe in her sitting-room Sister is putting her feet up:
This is the time of day when we feel betrayed.
Below the windows, loads of loving relations
Rev in the car park, changing gear at the bend,
Making for home and a nice big tea and the telly:
"Well, we've done what we can. It can't be long till the end."
This is the time of day when the weight of bedclothes
Is harder to bear than a sharp incision of steel.
The endless anonymous croak of a cheap transistor
Intensifies the lonely terror I feel.
9. The speaker in the poem
Dulce et Decorum Est
By Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
1921
CAROL ANN DUFFY
ADULTERY
Wear dark glasses in the rain.
Regard what was unhurt
as though through a bruise.
Guilt. A sick, green tint.
New gloves, money tucked in the palms,
the handshake crackles. Hands
can do many things. Phone.
Open the wine. Wash themselves. Now
you are naked under your clothes all day,
slim with deceit. Only the once
brings you alone to your knees,
miming, more, more, older and sadder,
creative. Suck a lie with a hole in it
on the way home from a lethal, thrilling night
up against a wall, faster. Language
unpeels a lost cry. You're a bastard.
Do it do it do it. Sweet darkness
in the afternoon; a voice in your ear
telling you how you are wanted,
which way, now. A telltale clock
wiping the hours from its face, your face
on a white sheet, gasping, radiant, yes.
Pay for it in cash, fiction, cab-fares back
to the life which crumbles like a wedding-cake.
Paranoia for lunch; too much
to drink, as a hand on your thigh
tilts the restaurant. You know all about love,
don't you. Turn on your beautiful eyes
for a stranger who's dynamite in bed, again
and again; a slow replay in the kitchen
where the slicing of innocent onions
scalds you to tears. Then, selfish autobiographical sleep
in a marital bed, the tarnished spoon of your body
stirring betrayal, your heart over-ripe at the core.
You're an expert, darling; your flowers
dumb and explicit on nobody's birthday.
So write the script - illness and debt,
a ring thrown away in a garden
no moon can heal, your own words
commuting to bile in your mouth, terror and all for the same thing twice. And all
for the same thing twice. You did it.
What. Didn't you. Fuck. Fuck. No. That was
the wrong verb. This is only an abstract noun.
e. e. cummings
next to of course god america i
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beautiful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
Dire Straits: Money for Nothing
From the Brothers In Arms Album
I want my MTV
Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Money for nothin' and your chicks for free
Now that ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them guys ain't dumb
Maybe get a blister on your little finger
Maybe get a blister on your thumb
We gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these colour TV's
(See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy that’s his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot he’s a millionaire)
Gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
Gotta move these colour TV's
I shoulda learned to play the guitar
I shoulda learned to play them drums
Look at that mama, she got it stickin' in the camera
Man we could have some
And he's up there, what's that? Hawaiian noises?
Bangin' on the bongoes like a chimpanzee
That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Get your money for nothin' get your chicks for free
We gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchens deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these colour TV's
Look a' here
That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
You play the guitar on your MTV
That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Money for nothin' and your chicks for free
Money for nothin' and chicks for free
Money for nothin' and your chicks for free
Look at that, look at that
Money for nothin' and your chicks for free
I want my, I want my, I want my MTV
Money for nothin' and chicks for free
10. Rhetoric, figures of thought (tropes) and figures of speech
Dolly Parton: The Bargain Store
My life is like unto a bargain store
And I may have just what you're lookin' for
If you don't mind the fact that all the merchandise is used
But with a little mending it could be as good as new
Why you take for instance this old broken heart
If you will just replace the missing parts
You would be surprised to find how good it really is
Take it and you never will be sorry that you did
The bargain store is open come inside
You can easily afford the price
Love is all you need to purchase all the merchandise
And I will guarantee you'll be completely satisfied
Take these old used memories from the past
And these broken dreams and plans that didn't last
I'll trade them for a future, I can't use them anymore
I've wasted love but I still have some more
The bargain store is open come inside
You can easily afford the price
Love is all you need to purchase all the merchandise
And I can guarantee you'll be completely satisfied
My life is like unto a bargain store
And I may have just what you're lookin' for
If you don't mind the fact that all the merchandise is used
With a little mendin' it could be as good as new
The bargain store is open, come inside
The bargain store is open, come inside
THE BEATLES
"Savoy Truffle"
(Harrison)
Creme tangerine and montelimat
A ginger sling with a pineapple heart
A coffee dessert, yes, you know it's good news
But you'll have to have them all pulled out
After the Savoy truffle
Cool cherry cream and a nice apple tart
I feel your taste all the time we're apart
Coconut fudge really blows down those blues
But you'll have to have them all pulled out
After the Savoy truffle
You might not feel it now
But when the pain cuts through
You're going to know and how
The sweat is going to fill your head
When it becomes too much
You're going to shout aloud
But you'll have to have them all pulled out
After the Savoy truffle.
You know that what you eat you are
But what is sweet now, turns so sour
We all know Ob-La-Di-Bla-Da
But can you show me, where you are?
Creme tangerine and montelimat
A ginger sling with a pineapple heart
A coffee dessert--yes you know its good news
But you'll have to have them all pulled out
After the Savoy truffle
Yes you'll have to have them all pulled out
After the Savoy truffle
The Beatles (Lennon-McCartney)
Happiness is a Warm Gun
She's not a girl who misses much
Do do do do do do, oh, yeah
She's well acquainted
With the touch of the velvet hand
Like a lizard on a window pane
The man in the crowd with the
Multicolored mirrors on his hobnail boots
Lying with his eyes
While his hands are busy working overtime
A soap impression of his wife
Which he ate and donated to the National Trust
I need a fix cause I'm going down
Down to the bits that I left uptown
I need a fix cause I'm going down
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Happiness is a warm gun
(Bang bang, shoot shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun mama
(Bang bang, shoot shoot)
When I hold you in my arms
(Oh yeah)
And I feel my finger on your trigger
(Ooo, oh yeah)
I know nobody can do me no harm
(Ooo, oh yeah)
Because happiness is a warm gun mama
(Bang bang, shoot shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is
(Bang bang, shoot shoot)
Happiness is a warm, yes it is, gun
(Happiness, bang bang, shoot shoot)
Well, don't you know that happiness is a warm gun mama
(Happiness is a warm gun yeah)
Craig Raine
A Martian Sends A Postcard Home
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings -they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock inside -a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.
At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves -in colour, with their eyelids shut.
11. Symbolism, allegory, conceits
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Kubla Khan (or, a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ode to the West Wind
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being—
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes!—O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill—
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere—
Destroyer and Preserver—hear, O hear!
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Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 15
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! they are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
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Of some fierce Mænad, ev'n from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height—
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
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Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst:—O hear!
Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
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Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear
And tremble and despoil themselves:—O hear!
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable!—if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision,—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
Make me thy lyre, ev'n as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
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