Just leave the keys in, sir
Stan Murch, in a uniform-like blue jacket, stood on the sidewalk in front of the Hilton and watched cab after cab make the loop in to the main entrance. Doesn’t anybody travel in their own car any more? Then at last a Chrysler Imperial with Michigan plates came hesitantly up Sixth Avenue, made the left-hand loop into the Hilton driveway and stopped at the entrance. As a woman and several children got out of the doors on the right of the car, toward the hotel entrance, the driver climbed heavily out on the left. He was a big man with a cigar and a camel’s-hair coat.
Murch was at the door before it was halfway open, pulling it the rest of the way and saying, “Just leave the keys in it, sir.”
“Right,” the man said around his cigar. He got out and sort of shook himself inside the coat. Then, as Murch was about to get behind the wheel, the driver said, “Wait.”
Murch looked at him, “Sir?”
“Here you go, boy,” the man said and pulled a folded dollar bill from his pants pocket and handed it across.
“Thank you, sir,” Murch said. He saluted with the hand holding the dollar, climbed behind the wheel, and drove away. He was smiling as he made the right turn into 53rd Street; it wasn’t every day a man gave you a tip for stealing his car.
Exercise 3.
Make a summary of an examination short-story on your choice. In pairs, make a peer correction of your summaries.
UNIT 2
PLOT AND ITS STRUCTURE
Plot is a chain of fictional events arranged in a meaningful pattern. Each link in this chain helps to build suspense and to solve the problems that the characters face. We can often gain much insight into the meaning of a story by looking at the shape of its plot.
Components of the plot (traditional model of plot development):
Exposition — usually includes the establishment of the setting, the introduction of the theme and characters;
Complications — follow the exposition and, as a rule, consist of several events which become tenser (the rising action) as the plot moves toward the moment of decision — the climax;
Climax — the moment of the highest intensity (the peak of intensity), the crucial event in the story;
Denouement — the unwinding of the action (the falling action). At this point the fate of the main character is clarified. The conflict is resolved.
Many authors introduce certain deviations from the traditional pattern of plot development, i.e. the author may leave out one or several of the components (e.g. exposition or denouement) or rearrange the components of the plot structure (e.g. a story may open up with the climax).
A fictional plot is usually based on a conflict — a situation or problem which a character tries to resolve. A conflict can be external — a conflict between a character and outside forces (a person against another person, a person against nature, a person against society, etc.) or internal — a conflict within the character him/herself (an individual conflict revealed through the character’s thoughts, feelings, etc.). The largest part of the story will deal with the main character’s struggle to resolve this problem or conflict hence he seeks a solution.
Although the typical fictional plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end, authors may vary their patterns of narration.
Patterns of narration:
1) a straight line narrative (chronological sequence);
2) a complex structure (events are not arranged in chronological order and flashbacks are used to bring the past of the characters into the story);
3) a frame structure (there is a story within the story; the two stories contrast or parallel);
4) a circular structure (the closing event of the story returns the reader to the introductory part).
The author often uses certain techniques to creatively unfold the plot:
Flashback: A move back in time to an earlier incident, a scene from the past inserted in the narration.
Foreshadowing: A hint or allusion to events which will develop later in the story.
Retardation: The withholding of information (the author holds some facts back and keeps the reader guessing).
Trick ending: The end of a short story comes out as a complete surprise.
Read the short-story and answer the questions that follow it.
J. Joyce
Eveline
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clicking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people’s children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it — not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field — the Devines, the Caters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then, and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.
She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found our the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the colored print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:
— He is in Melbourne now.
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she had to work hard both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.
— Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?
— Look lively, Miss HiII, please.
She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married — she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her, like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages — seven shillings — and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad of a Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work — a hard life — but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.
She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found our the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.
— I know these sailor chaps, he said.
One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.
The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest had been her favorite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mother’s bonnet to make the children laugh.
Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odor of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air. Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother's illness; she was again in the close dark room at the other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into the sickroom saying:
— Damned Italians! coming over here!
As she mused, the pitiful vision of her mother’s life laid its spell on the very quick of her being — that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziess. She trembled, as she heard again her mother’s voice saying constantly with foolish insistence:
— Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!
She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.
She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer.
A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:
— Come!
All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.
— Come!
No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish!
— Eveline! Evvy!
He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.
1. How
would you define the type of the story? What type of conflict is at
the basis of the story?
2. Does the plot-structure seem traditional to you? Which pattern does the plot of the story take?
3. Introduce the protagonist of the story: age, background, the situation she finds herself in.
4. Analyze Eveline’s definition of the word home. To what extent does her idea of home differ or contrast with her idea of new home?
5. What is the role of religion and romance in Eveline? Analyze the extent to which both issues represent different ways of responding to the patriarchal structure of families like Eveline’s.
6. What factors might have influenced Eveline’s decision to stay home, in your opinion? Does the open ending of the story allow a variety of explanations?
UNIT 3
SETTING
The setting can be defined as the place where the story happens, the time when it happens and the conditions under which the story is told. The setting of a novel or a short story is crucial to the creation of a complete work as it has a definite impact on the character development and plot. The setting is often found in the exposition of the plot and readily establishes time and place. Frequently it plays an important role in the conflict giving credence to the rising action as a climax or turning point is approached.
Possible elements of the setting:
1. Physical objects (e.g. elements of domestic interiors). Some writers provide a great amount of detail when describing their novels’/short-stories’ settings, and they do so for specific reasons. In Fathers and Sons, Turgenev distinguishes between two kinds of country families by contrasting the elegance and the earthiness of their respective households. The ominousness of Great Expectations by Dickens proceeds as much from the bleak marshes and the Gothic house owned by the character Miss Havisham as from anything the characters say or do.
2. Social and cultural environment. Some writers pay less attention to specific physical objects, but this does not mean they are not concerned with social environment. For instance, in focusing on details such as Mr. Bennet’s income in Pride and Prejudice or Mr. Eliot’s background in Persuasion, Jane Austen creates an atmosphere in which a character’s background and hometown — whether London, the town of Meryton, or somewhere in northern England — becomes central to the story.
3. Geographical location and landscape. Sometimes authors make time and place so essential to the narrative that they become as important as the characters themselves. For example, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy are inconceivable without their settings of Stonehenge, colonial New England, and the Yorkshire moors, respectively.
4. Historical period. The novel Jazz by Toni Morrison is set in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. This cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s featured innovations in literature, theater, art and music. The setting Morrison creates is integral to the book, whose narrative voice echoes the loose, unpredictable rhythms of the jazz music of the time.
Possible functions of the setting:
1. Setting the story in a particular environment the author creates the necessary atmosphere.
2. Setting the story in a true-to-life environment the author increases the credibility of the characters and events in the story.
3. The setting, e.g. descriptions of nature, may function as means of expressing the emotional state of the character.
4. The setting may also enhance characterization by paralleling the characters’ mood and behavior.
5. The main function of the domestic interior as an element of the setting is individualization of the character, revealing certain features of his or her personality.
6. The setting may serve as contrasting background to the action of the story. Descriptions of peaceful and undisturbed nature may precede stormy violent action in the story, and thus help the author to take the reader by surprise.
7. The setting may function as a main force opposing the character (protagonist), if the story is based on the man-versus-nature conflict.
8. The setting often acquires a symbolic meaning and helps to reveal the central idea(s) of the story.
The setting is usually given in the exposition of the story, but very often the descriptions of the setting may be scattered throughout the whole story.
Exercise 1.
Read the passages given below. Point out the elements of the setting and comment on their function.
1.
O. Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
2.
Ch. Bronte
Jane Eyre
The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely. I walked fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyze the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was three o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield; in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made no sound here. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten to drop.
On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon: pale yet as a cloud, but brightening momentarily, she looked over Hay, which, half lost in trees, sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys. It was yet a mile distant, but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs of life.
A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so far away and so clear — a positive tramp, tramp, a metallic clatter, which effaced the soft wave-wanderings as, in a picture, the solid mass of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and strong on the foreground, efface the aerial distance of azure hill, sunny horizon, and blended clouds where tint melts into tint.
3.
E. A. Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The apartment (the door of which, being found locked, with the key inside, was forced open) was in the wildest disorder — the furniture broken and thrown about in all directions. There was only one bedstead; and from this the bed had been removed, and thrown in the middle of the floor. On a chair lay a razor, besmeared with blood. On the hearth were two or three long and thick tresses of human hair, also dabbled with blood, and seeming to have been pulled out by the roots. Upon the floor were found four Napoleons, an ear-ring of topaz, three large silver spoons, and two bags, containing nearly four thousand franks in gold. The drawers of a bureau, which stood in one corner, were open, and had been, apparently, rifled, although many articles still remained in them. A small iron safe was discovered under the bed. It was open, with the key still in the door. It had no contents, beyond a few old letters, and other papers of little consequence.
Read the short-story and answer the questions that follow it.
R. Bradbury
The Smile
In the town square the queue had formed at five in the morning while cocks were crowing far out in the rimed country and there were no fires. All about, among the ruined buildings, bits of mist had clung at first, but now with the new light of seven o’clock it was beginning to disperse. Down the road, in twos and threes, more people were gathering in for the day of marketing, the day of festival.
The small boy stood immediately behind two men who had been talking loudly in the clear air, and all of the sounds they made seemed twice as loud because of the cold. The small boy stomped his feet and blew on his red, chapped hands, and looked up at the soiled gunny-sack clothing of the men and down the long line of men and women ahead.
“Here, boy, what’re you doing out so early?” said the man behind him.
“Got my place in line, I have,” said the boy.
“Whyn’t you run off, give your place to someone who appreciates?”
“Leave the boy alone,” said the man ahead, suddenly turning.
“I was joking.” The man behind put his hand on the boy’s head. The boy shook it away coldly. “I just thought it strange, a boy out of bed so early.”
“This boy’s an appreciator of arts, I’ll have you know,” said the boy’s defender, a man named Grigsby. “What’s your name, lad?”
“Tom.”
“Tom here is going to spit clean and true, right, Tom?”
“I sure am!”
Laughter passed down the line.
A man was selling cracked cups of hot coffee up ahead. Tom looked and saw the little hot fire and the brew bubbling in a rusty pan. It wasn’t really coffee. It was made from some berry that grew on the meadowlands beyond town, and it sold a penny a cup to warm their stomachs; but not many were buying, not many had the wealth.
Tom stared ahead to the place where the line ended, beyond a bombed-out stone wall.
“They say she smiles,” said the boy.
“Aye, she does,” said Grigsby.
“They say she’s made of oil and canvas.”
“True. And that’s what makes me think she’s not the original one. The original, now, I’ve heard, was painted on wood a long time ago.”
“They say she’s four centuries old.”
“Maybe more. No one knows what year this is, to be sure.”
“It’s 2061!” “That’s what they say, boy, yes. Liars. Could be 3000 or 5000, for all we know. Things were in a fearful mess there for a while. All we got now is bits and pieces.”
They shuffled along the cold stones of the street.
“How much longer before we see her?” asked Tom uneasily.
“Just a few more minutes. They got her set up with four brass poles and velvet rope, all fancy, to keep folks back. Now mind, no rocks, Tom; they don’t allow rocks thrown at her.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sun rose higher in the heavens, bringing heat which made the men shed their grimy coats and greasy hats.
“Why’re we all here in line?” asked Tom at last. “Why’re we all here to spit?”
Grigsby did not glance down at him, but judged the sun. “Well, Tom, there’s lots of reasons.” He reached absently for a pocket that was long gone, for a cigarette that wasn’t there. Tom had seen the gesture a million times. “Tom, it has to do with hate. Hate for everything in the Past. I ask you, Tom, how did we get in such a state, cities all junk, roads like jigsaws from bombs, and half the cornfields glowing with radio-activity at night? Ain’t that a lousy stew, I ask you?”
“Yes, sir, I guess so.”
“It’s this way, Tom. You hate whatever it was that got you all knocked down and ruined. That’s human nature. Unthinking, maybe, but human nature anyway.”
“There’s hardly nobody or nothing we don’t hate,” said Tom.
“Right! The whole blooming caboodle of them people in the Past who run the world. So here we are on a Thursday morning with our guts plastered to our spines, cold, live in caves and such, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t nothing except have our festivals, Tom, our festivals.” And Tom thought of the festivals in the past few years. The year they tore up all the books in the square and burned them and everyone was drunk and laughing. And the festival of science a month ago when they dragged in the last motorcar and picked lots and each lucky man who won was allowed one smash of a sledge hammer at the car.
“Do I remember that; Tom? Do I remember? Why, I got to smash the front window, the window, you hear? My God, it made a lovely sound! Crash!”
Tom could hear the glass fall in glittering heaps. “And Bill Henderson, he got to bash the engine. Oh, he did a smart job of it, with great efficiency. Wham!
“But best of all,” recalled Grigsby, “there was the time they smashed a factory that was still trying to turn out airplanes. Lord, did we feel good blowing it up! And then we found that newspaper plant and the munitions depot and exploded them together. Do you understand, Tom?”
Tom puzzled over it. “I guess.”
It was high noon. Now the odors of the ruined city stank on the hot air and things crawled among the tumbled buildings.
“Won’t it ever come back, mister?”
“What, civilization? Nobody wants it. Not me!”
“I could stand a bit of it,” said the man behind another man. “There were a few spots of beauty in it.”
“Don’t worry your heads,” shouted Grigsby. “There’s no room for that, either.”
“Ah,” said the man behind the man. “Someone’ll come along someday with imagination and patch it up. Mark my words. Someone with a heart.” “No,” said Grigsby.
“I say yes. Someone with a soul for pretty things. Might give us back a kind of limited sort of civilization, the kind we could live in in peace.”
“First thing you know there’s war!”
“But maybe next time it’d be different.”
At last they stood in the main square. A man on horseback was riding from the distance into the town. He had a piece of paper in his hand. In the center of the square was the roped-off area. Tom, Grigsby, and the others were collecting their spittle and moving forward — moving forward prepared and ready, eyes wide. Tom felt his heart beating very strongly and excitedly, and the earth was hot under his bare feet.
“Here we go, Tom, let fly!”
Four policemen stood at the corners of the roped area, four men with bits of yellow twine on their wrists to show their authority over other men. They were there to prevent rocks being hurled.
“This way,” said Grigsby at the last moment, “everyone feels he’s had his chance at her, you see, Tom? Go on, now!”
Tom stood before the painting and looked at it for a long time.
“Tom, spit!”
His mouth was dry.
“Get on, Tom! Move!”
“But,” said Tom, slowly, “she’s beautiful!”
“Here, I’ll spit for you!” Grigsby spat and the missile flew in the sunlight. The woman in the portrait smiled serenely, secretly, at Tom, and he looked back at her, his heart beating, a kind of music in his ears.
“She’s beautiful,” he said. “Now get on before the police — “
“Attention!”
The line fell silent. One moment they were berating Tom for not moving forward, now they were turning to the man on horseback.
“What do they call it, sir?” asked Tom, quietly.
“The picture? Mona Lisa, Tom, I think. Yes, the Mona Lisa.”
“I have an announcement,” said the man on horseback. “The authorities have decreed that as of high noon today the portrait in the square is to be given over into the hands of the populace there, so they may participate in the destruction of — “
Tom hadn’t even time to scream before the crowd bore him, shouting and pummeling about, stampeding toward the portrait. There was a sharp ripping sound. The police ran to escape. The crowd was in full cry, their hands like so many hungry birds pecking away at the portrait. Tom felt himself thrust almost through the broken thing. Reaching out in blind imitation of the others, he snatched a scrap of oily canvas, yanked, felt the canvas give, then fell, was kicked, sent rolling to the outer rim of the mob. Bloody, his clothing torn, he watched old women chew pieces of canvas, men break the frame, kick the ragged cloth, and rip it into confetti. Only Tom stood apart, silent in the moving square. He looked down at his hand. It clutched the piece of canvas close to his chest, hidden.
“Hey there, Tom!” cried Grigsby.
Without a word, sobbing, Tom ran. He ran out and down the bomb-pitted road, into a field, across a shallow stream, not looking back, his hand clenched tightly, tucked under his coat.
At sunset he reached the small village and passed on through. By nine o’clock he came to the ruined farm dwelling. Around back, in the half silo, in the part that still remained upright, tented over, he heard the sounds of sleeping, the family — his mother, father, and brother. He slipped quickly, silently, through the small door and lay down panting.
“Tom?” called his mother in the dark. “Yes.”
“Where’ve you been?” snapped his father. “I’ll beat you in the morning.”
Someone kicked him. His brother, who had been left behind to work their little patch of ground.
“Go to sleep,” cried his mother, faintly.
Another kick.
Tom lay getting his breath. All was quiet. His hand was pushed to his chest, tight, tight. He lay for half an hour this way, eyes closed.
Then he felt something, and it was a cold white light. The moon rose very high and the little square of light moved in the silo and crept slowly over Tom’s body. Then, and only then, did his hand relax. Slowly, carefully, listening to those who slept about him, Tom drew his hand forth. He hesitated, sucked in his breath, and then, waiting, opened his hand and uncrumpled the tiny fragment of painted canvas.
All the world was asleep in the moonlight. And there on his hand was the Smile. He looked at it in the white illumination from the midnight sky. And he thought, over and over to himself, quietly, the Smile, the lovely Smile.
An hour later he could still see it, even after he had folded it carefully and hidden it. He shut his eyes and the Smile was there in the darkness. And it was still there, warm and gentle, when he went to sleep and the world was silent and the moon sailed up and then down the cold sky toward morning.
1.
Define the genre of the story.
2. Which method is employed by the author to relate the story?
3. Where and when is the story set?
4. Which elements of the setting can you point out? What part do they play in the operation of the story?
5. What is the main reason for the author’s telling the story? Do you think the society described in the story is a likely future, or is the picture far too pessimistic?
6. How do you think the author intends us to interpret the end of the story?
UNIT 4