The Cyclops, by Homer

Emily Wilson about Odyssey's translation by a woman

Film (1954. Starring Kirk Douglas. Minute 34 on)

Homer (according to the tradition, a bind man from the 8th century BC) is considered to be the author of The Iliad, The Odyssey, and some other works as the comic epic, The Frogs-Mice War.
But scholars think that the poems follow different oral traditions and that only in the 8^th century they were written down; before that, they were transmitted by generation to generation orally; this is why these narratives are in verse, so this way they were easier to remember. Another curious thing about these epics it that they were composed in an artificial language, a kind of mixture of different Greek dialects belonging to different periods.
 
The Odyssey tells us the adventures of Odysseus (Ulysses in Latin), after defeating the city of Troy, in his travels through the Mediterranean Sea to reach his home on the island of Ithaca, where his son Telemachus and his wife Penelope had been waiting for him while rejecting a crowd of suitors.
In his adventures he meets beautiful women who are almost witches, as Circe and Calypso, cannibals, lotus-eaters, giants, mermaids, dangerous straits, different gods, etc. Finally, he arrives alone home, only to have to deal with his wife's suitors.
Our episode is well-known to everybody. Ulysses arrives in Thrinnacia (Greek name for Sicily) and wants to know about the cyclopes, the singular people that live there: what kind of life they lead and how they organize their society; and he discovers that they are brutal giants without law or civilization. He and his men get trapped in Polyphemus’s cave (whose gate is closed with a huge rock) where the one-eye monster makes a feast of them. However, the cunning Ulysses (who introduces himself to the cyclops as "Noman") devises a scheme to save the rest of his men and escape. They blind the giant and tied themselves under the bellies of the cyclops's lambs when he sends them out to graze. Safe and sound, and from a certain distance of the shore, Ulysses mocks the monster and tells him his real name. Polyphemus throws them a big rock that almost sinks their ship, and he curses him telling him he is going to lose all his men and that he will get home only after a lot of suffering, for he’s the Poseidon’s son and this god is going to make him have a rough time.

QUESTIONS

-Ulysses tells Polyphemus his name is "No man", or "Noman", as a way to deceive him. Some writers decide to write under a pseudonym, and, in spy novels and films, any agent has to have an alias. What is your favourite alias? What alias/pseudonym/nickname would you choose for you?

-Hospitality is generosity to strangers who come to one's home. It was something sacred for ancient cultures. Why do you think it was so important then, and now it isn't so?

-Polyphemus is a one-eyed monster. According to you, what can symbolize this singularity?

-Cyclopes lived without laws or government, and each one was independent or free, so they live in a kind of anarchy. For a lot of people, anarchy is a kind of utopian society, a paradise. We can see that, for Ulysses, it was a badly organized society. What is your opinion about the opposition "anarchy-civilization", as it appears in the story?

VOCABULARY

tillage, over-run, sportsmen, poplars, breakers, run out, stubble, hawsers, outlaw, crag, took stock, pens, whey, strainers, rovers, vouchsafed, vitals, quiver, club, dung, cast lots, ramping, raving, auger, fleece, withies, wont, jeer, rudder, weakling, plight

Macbeth, by Shakespeare / Charles & Mary Lamb

 

Film (2015. Starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard)

Film (1979. Starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench)

Film (1961. Starring Sean Connery)

About Shakespeare: Shakespeare in Love

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was the son of a Stratford-on-Avon wealthy tradesman. He was probably educated at Stratford Grammar School, and at the age of eighteen, married Anne Hathaway, a woman of twenty-six. They had three children; one of them (Hamnet) died in childhood. Shakespeare later left home and went to London. There he joined the theatrical company known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, working as a handyman, actor and finally, playwright.
In 1599, he and other members of this company built the Globe Theatre and made it the outstanding theatre of the time. In 1603, the company became the King’s Men and continued to dominate the London theatrical life. His share in this company and its theatres made Shakespeare wealthy enough to buy a house in Stratford. In 1608, the King’s Men took over another theatre, Blackfriars. When he was 47, he retired to Stratford, where, five years later, he died, according to a tradition, of a fever after a drinking-bout.

Although now Shakespeare is a central focus for scholars, who generally regard him as the greatest artist in world literature, he seemed to have very little interest in a glorious posterity. He thought only in the playhouse audience, as a means of making money. Perhaps his sonnets are the only trace that he dreamt once of being in the Parnassus, but he wasn’t a lyrical poet at all. He didn’t attend university, provoking thus the envy of a lot of writers who did go but didn’t get his success.

Charles Lamb was born 1775 and died in 1834 in London. His father was a lawyer’s clerk. Mary Lamb, his older sister (eleven years his senior) taught him to read when he was a child, after which he got lessons from a governess, and later he went to a charity boarding school. There, pupils usually suffered violence from their teachers, but Lamb seemed to avoid this brutality.

He was a stutterer, so this hindrance disqualified him for the clerical career and he didn’t attend university. He looked for a job and found a situation as a clerk, a job he kept throughout his life.

He fell in love twice. The first time was rejected by the girl’s father because he was only his employee, and the second time was rejected by the girl herself. He died a bachelor.

A tragic event marked the Lamb family: when he was twenty, his sister Mary, in a fit of insanity, killed their mother with a kitchen knife. As a result, Mary spent several periods of her life in different asylums. Charles took care of her, although he suffered episodes of depression.

Nevertheless, Charles and Mary could form a literary salon, or club, called The Lambs, in their house, where people like Coleridge, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, etc, used to meet and discuss books and art, and perform plays.

In 1807, he and his sister adapted several Shakespeare plays for children and entitled the book Tales from Shakespeare. He wrote the tragedies, and Mary the comedies. A year later, he went on with this project by writing The Adventures of Ulysses.

However, what literary critics praised most were his Essays for Elia, where he could display his subtle and humorous candour.

 

SUMMARY

Macbeth is a tragedy about boundless ambition and desire for power.

Macbeth is a thane (that is, a Scottish nobleman) loyal to his king and has just returned from defeating the enemies allied with the Norwegian army. He is strong, brave and violent. On his way home, he meets three witches who prophesy that he will become thane of Cawdor and eventually king. When the first prophesy comes true, Macbeth thinks that the other prophesy will also come true. In order to help to fulfil the prediction, and encouraged by his wife, he murders the King while he’s Macbeth’s guest, and seizes the throne.

Once king, he tries to prevent another prophesy that said Banquo’s son would be king, killing Banquo and his heir, although he was his best friend. Banquo dies, but his son escapes, so from then on, Macbeth doesn’t feel safe. His wife begins to have remorse, and Macbeth suffers fits of madness.

Worried about his situation, Macbeth asks the witches again and receives confusing prophesies that make him believe he is invincible (for example, that a forest will move to attack him, or that a man “not born of woman” will kill him). However, these predictions come true in unexpected ways: the king’s son leads an army camouflaged as a forest against Macbeth, and, in the final battle, Macbeth is killed by Macduff, a man “not born of woman” in the usual way. Malcolm, the King’s son, is crowned king, restoring the previous order.

 

QUESTIONS

-To what extent is ambition healthy, according to your opinion?

-Do you believe in seers, or in predictions, or in psychics, or in astrologers? Are their predictions always false?

-“Where those birds (martlet, swallow) most breed and haunt, the air is observed to be delicate.” What natural indicators tell us about the air / water quality?

-“[She] could look like the innocent flower, while she was indeed the serpent under it.” Give examples from fiction (or from real life!).

-“She would not have undertaken a deed so abhorrent to her sex.” Are women naturally less violent or cruel than men? Or is it something they learn in their education?

-“[She] began to pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit into his mind.” In this case, according to you, who is guiltier, the woman who pours or the man who listens and does what she asks from him?

 

VOCABULARY

Meek, thane, kinsman, heath, swallow, withal, ply, foul, shrink, defiled, rankled, beset, chide, unmanned, sow, gibbet, throbs, recruits, levies, averred, avouches, hell-hound, rabble

Invisible Mass of the Back Row, by Claudette Williams

Obituary, The Guardian

Summary and analysis

Small Axe, series

Small Axe, Wikipedia

Queimada, Wikipedia

Queimada, film

Don't call the police, by Arianne Shahvisi
 

VERY SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Claudette Williams was born in Jamaica in 1955 and died in London at the age of 69. In her late years, she got Alzheimer, but she died as a consequence of a heart attack.

Claudette lived in Jamaica until she was ten, when she joined her parents and her older brother in London. Her parents had migrated to Great Britain some years before and were working in the public transport. While in Jamaica, Claudette lived with his younger brother under the care of an aunt.

In London, after her schooling, she trained as a teacher and then trained teachers at the university.

She was a social activist and a feminist, and was focused mostly in educational topics.

Her short story Invisible Mass of the Back Row was published in an Anthology of Modern Short Stories for secondary schools.

 

SUMMARY

Hortense, our narrator and protagonist, tells us about her childhood in a Jamaican school, about her move to London and meeting her parents after some years, and of her attending a school in London.

In Jamaica, Hortense lives with his aunt, because her parents had moved to London, and they are waiting to be settled there before sending for her.

The title alludes to the last row of pupils in a classroom in the educational style of the 1950s. Usually, the back row was where the worst students sat, as the front one was reserved for the best ones.

In the first part of the story, an inspector visits Hortense’s classroom during a lesson and asks her a question about Christopher Columbus. The answer she gives him doesn't match what the educational system was waiting for. Thus, the inspector gets angry with her, and her teacher hits her knuckles with a ruler.

Hortense feels that the educational system is unfair, and she and her friends want to retaliate on a pupil of the first row. However, a teacher appears, and she has to forget her plans.

Later, after having lunch with her friends, she gets home and finds a letter from her parents sending for her.

She gets to Great Britain and there she has to learn a new language, or rather a new way to speak English.

At school, she finds herself in the same position as in the Jamaican school: in the back row of the classroom. But there she also discovers new friends, new books, new ideas and new concerns. Once again, during a lesson, the teacher asks a question about Christopher Columbus, and Hortense’s answer is again rebellious; but now her answer got the support of a deeper understanding of her people's social situation.

 

QUESTIONS

-Do you think Christopher Columbus is a positive historical figure, or a negative one?

-In older times, bad pupils used to be placed in the back row. What is the best way to sit pupils in a classroom, according to you? Why?

-Fear is sometimes a strong and unavoidable emotion. Do you think other people (or animals) can feel it?

-In your opinion, are imperialist countries always in debt to the colonies? Do you think some countries are richer than others because they have been robbing them?

 -Hortense has read some books and then her ideas have changed. To your view, can a book (or some books) change your life/ideas? What book has changed you, even if it was only a little?

-What do you know about Toussaint L’Ouverture, Sojourner Truth, Nanny, Cudjoe and Paul Bogle?

 

VOCABULARY

galvanised, back-chat, tight-rope, dis=this, pickney=child, fi=for, unno=you all, puppa= daddy, meek=make, dem=the/their, marga/mawga=skinny, beeline, chu=true, pan=on, warra warra=euphemism for a curse, cinnamon, red herring, crackers, teck=take, mop, banter, oat=oath, unny=you all, choke, numbness, pokey, fa=for, dey=there, thaw

Korea, by John McGahern

 

Audiobook

Film

Analysis

John McGahern

He was born in Dublin in 1934 and died aged 71. He was the oldest of seven brothers and sisters. He grew up in a small farm. His mother was a school teacher, and his father a sergeant in the Garda, the Irish police force. When his mother died, he was ten, and the whole family went to live in the Garda barracks. The sergeant was a violent man and treated his children accordingly.

John trained as a teacher and worked some time in a school. At the same time, he began to write, but when he published his novel The Dark, he was dismissed, and his book banned by the Irish Censorship Board, for its pornographic content, according to the Board. So he went to England, where he worked on a variety of jobs. After some years, he went back to Ireland, and he settled in a small farm far from everywhere.

His six novels are mostly based in his personal experiences.

The Barracks is a description of the life in the Garda barracks. The Dark narrates a young man’s life. The Leavetaking is about his work as a teacher and about being fired. The Pornographer tells the story of a writer who has to write porno for his living. Amongst Women follows the life of an IRA veteran, and That they May Face the Rising Sun explores the Irish rural life.

He also wrote a Memoir, some plays and short stories collections, the last one, Creatures of the Earth: New and Selected Stories, that contains a selection of all his old stories and some new ones.

 

Korea

It’s a curious title for a story set in the rural Ireland; nevertheless, the Korean War between 1950 and 1953 situates the narrative in time and provides its historical background.

A father and his son, who is about to finish his schooling, earn their living by fishing for eels. They also had a small piece of land where they grow some vegetables. It’s an economy of subsistence in a poor rural area. However, the authorities want to limit the fishing quota in order to leave more fish for the tourists that are going there from England. So, prospects for the eel business aren’t very good. The father is worried about his son’s future and, seeing that in Ireland there won’t be opportunities for him in Ireland, proposes him to go to the USA. At first, his son doesn’t know what to answer, but then he overhears a conversation between his father and a neighbour: there are lots of jobs available in the army because of the Korean War; they pay $250 monthly, and, in case of death, the family gets $10.000. Thus, America is a possibility of success and also a risk of death. Now the boy has taken his decision: he’ll stay in Ireland.

As his father goes on insisting in his going away, the son suspects that he wants him in the army in order to get his pay; or even worse, that he wants him dead so he can get the ten thousand dollars.

At the beginning of the story, the father, who fought for the Irish independence and is disappointed with the new country because he hasn’t made any profit by it, tells the boy about an execution by shooting of an adult man and a boy. The man displays a total indifference or even disdain to the firing squad, but the boy cries, struggles and at the end obeys orders as a soldier. This sad scene haunted the man forever, and it’s a kind of allegory of the contrast between youth and experience.

QUESTIONS

-According to you, what is the meaning of the episode of the executions in the story? Is there a parallelism between the two adults and the two boys?

-Do you think that, in extreme cases, the death penalty is necessary?

-In your opinion, why this episode haunts the father in his wedding?

-Why are there quotas in haunting, fishing or collecting some natural products? Do you think that it is fair?

-Must a father send his son to an incertain future if the alternative possibilities are very poor?

-Progress usually destroys traditional ways of living. But, does tourism bring progress to the countries it visits?

-"I fought for this country", says the father. But, what is a country for you?

-It seems that independence doesn’t make some people happy as they hoped. Why do you think is that?

-Could you detail the differences between the short story and the film?

VOCABULARY

rap, tunic, highfalutin, throbbed, bow, stern, beaded, consignment, bows of ridges, coarse, conscripted, shirred, fend

My Polish Teacher's Tie, by Helen Dunmore

Created by ChatGPT

Audiobook

Obituary

Analysis

By Aurora Ledesma

 

HELEN DUNMORE

 

Helen Dunmore was a British poet, novelist, and short story and children’s writer. She was born in Beverley, Yorkshire, in 1952. She was the second child of four children of Betty (née Smith) and Maurice Dunmore. Her father managed industrial firms, but loved poetry, and Helen learned many rhymes, hymns and ballads during her childhood.

She attended Nottingham Girls’ High School and studied English at York University (1970-1973). She lived for two years in Finland, where she worked as a teacher.

In 1980, she married Frank Charnley, a lawyer, and they had two children: a son, Patrick, and a daughter, Tess. Frank had a son, Ollie, from a previous marriage. Helen died from cancer in 2017.

Her best-known works include the novels Zennor in Darkness, A Spell of Winter and The Siege, and her last book of poetry was Inside the Wave (2017). She won the inaugural Orange Prize for fiction, the National Poetry Competition, and posthumously the Costa Book Award.

Her writings for children include short stories, and novels for older children, such as the Ingo Chronicles (2005). Some of Dunmore’s children’s books are included in reading lists for use in schools.

Dunmore’s readers will not be surprised to learn she loved gardening, and she knew about wild flowers. She was a brave and strong swimmer, venturing into the sea on cold days in a wetsuit. She loved art, buying as much as she could afford and enjoyed collaborating with artists and musicians.

The final poem Hold Out Your Arms, is an intimate and powerful poem of how the novelist recounts her thoughts and emotions as she faces her final days. She invites death to “hold out your arms for me” describing the figure of death coming to take her away. Death is not something to be feared, but caring and gentle. The poem, written just days before she died of cancer on June 2017, was included in her poetry collection Inside the wave. She was ‒first and last‒ a poet.

 

MY POLISH TEACHER’S TIE

 

My Polish Teacher’s Tie was first published in 2001 in the short story collection Ice Cream. The protagonist, Carla Carter, works as a part-time catering staff at an English School. She is half-Polish, but the teachers don’t know that. She is a single mother with a daughter, Jade. Carla’s mother was Polish, and she came to England after the war. She taught her some Polish children’s songs full of rhymes, so Carla spoke Polish till she was six, but her father forbade her to speak Polish before she started school, and that’s why she has forgotten most of it.

One day, Carla overhears the school’s headmaster saying that some Polish teachers want to improve their written English and are looking for pen friends in English schools. Carla asks the headmaster for one of the Polish teacher’s addresses, and she begins writing to Steve. Days later, she receives the first letter from him, and she realises that he thinks that she is an English teacher. When Carla writes to Steve, she doesn’t want to tell him anything about her employment. She tells him about her daughter Jade and about the songs that her mother taught her. Steve tells her that he writes poetry and sends Carla beautiful poems. At first, they write once a week, but later, twice. Their letters become friendly and personal, and a connection between them builds up.

Some time later, the Head announces that a teacher will be coming over from Katowice the following month. His name is Stefan Jeziorny. Carla feels a bit surprised, because she hadn’t read his last letter yet, in which he tells her about his visit. Carla dreads meeting him, knowing he will discover her real job, and thinks he will be disappointed. When he arrives, he will be staying with Valerie Kenward, a teacher at the school. Valerie complains that she can’t understand Steve, because of his accent, and she also makes fun of his tie.

As soon as Carla sees him in the staff room, she goes over to introduce herself. When she sees that he is pleased to meet her and does not care what job she does, she becomes more confident and positive. To her surprise, Steve sings a Polish song. She recognizes it from her childhood, and the two of them sing together.

 

Some Reflections

Sometimes, as happens with the characters in the story, having a low-level job and being a foreigner could make us feel ashamed, insignificant and even invisible.

On one hand, Carla hides her origins from her colleagues and her job from Stefan, she’s ashamed of being just a server. On the other hand, Stefan feels isolated and misunderstood, he just smiles like a child, because he doesn’t know anyone. His way of dressing, his accent and his manners are cruelly criticized by Valerie.

When Stefan shows a warm and inclusive approach towards Carla, regardless of her job, she becomes more confident. She realises that there is so much more to a person’s identity than their surface.

QUESTIONS

-What can a tie, a piece of clothes, a dress... tell us about the person?

-What is more important for you, your mother tongue, or another tongue you have learned along your life? Why do you think so? When are we ashamed of our accent or of our mother tongue?

-Sometimes we feel inferior, and sometimes superior, in front of a stranger. What are the circumstances for every case?

-In your view, can art be really appreciated by somebody without education? What is your opinion about the saying "There's no accounting for taste"? "Good taste" is something natural or something learned?

VOCABULARY

overall, kitty, tipping, chucking, OFSTED, serving-hatch, bin, sod it, stage-whispered, squiggles, swim, bumbled

The Silence, by Murray Bail

 

By Núria Lecina

BIOGRAPHY

Murray Bail (born the 22^nd of September 1941) is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction.

He was born in Adelaide, South Australia, a second son of Cyril Lindsay Bail (1914-1966) and Hazel Bail (née Ward). His father worked in the tramways and his mother was a housewife and a milliner. He has two brothers.

He has been married twice. His first wife was Margaret Bail (née Wordsworth). They got married in 1965 and divorced in 1988.

His second wife was ​Helen Garner; they got married in 1992, and they divorced in 2000. She also was a well-known Australian writer.

He has lived most of his life in Australia, except for sojourns in India (1968-70), England and other parts of Europe (1970-74). After working for advertising agencies in Adelaide and Melbourne, he moved with his first wife to India in 1968, where he worked for an agency in Bombay. During his travels, he became ill of amoebic dysentery and went to London for treatment. Once there, he decided that the novel he had written in India was worthless and threw it in the trash.

For recovering, he remained in London for five years (1970-1975), spending the first year on unemployment benefits. He then wrote for many newspapers, which encouraged him to publish his first novels once he returned to Australia. This travel’s experience influenced him. Many of his works reflect which he, an Australian, thinks when observing his country from outside, its culture, and the way people live.

Now he lives in Sydney.

Before dedicating himself to literature, Bail worked in galleries and as an art critic. He was trustee of the National Gallery of Australia from 1976 to 1981, and wrote a book on Australian artist Ian Fairweather.

 

Bail is considered one of the most innovative Australian writers in short fiction, classified as very interesting, unique and an intellectual of the 20th century.

He is known for his dry humour and for challenging the traditional narrative. Bail used to say that novels should not be stories with a beginning and an end, but that they should be instruments for thinking. That inspiration comes from mistakes. When nothing goes as you expected, imagination begins, he says.

He did not believe in sudden inspiration, he believes in thought and patience. He could spend years revising a work. He is an admirer of Kafka, Borges, Nabokov and Calvino —all writers who play with language and with the way people tell stories.

He had often said that Australians were too practical, and that the local culture did not value invention or fantasy.

He says it with irony, but it is a real criticism: he wanted Australian literature to stop being just stories of the outback and survival, and become a more philosophical and universal literature. He doesn’t have a very extensive body of work, but he does have a lot of work to do. He says that writing is like making furniture with words: few pieces, but well-made and useful. This is in line with his passion for cabinetmaking and object design.

 

HIS WORK

 

-Novel

Homesickness (1980)

Holden’s Performance (1987)

Eucalyptus (1998). He has been awarded several times for this work. This is the story of a botanical fairy tale. It is his most famous novel, where realism and fairy tale are mixed. A father promises that only he who knows the name of all the eucalyptus trees of his property will be able to marry his daughter. Curiously, Eucalyptus was to be made into a film starring Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe, but the production was cancelled at the last minute due to artistic disagreements between Bail and the director.

Camouflage (2000)

The Pages (2008)

The Voyage (2012)

 

-Non-fiction

Ian Fairweather (1981). This work was written when Murray was working on the National Gallery of Australia; it’s a biography of this artist, an Australian painter who was also eccentric and solitary, who lived in a cabin made of drums and scrap wood.

Longhand (1989)

 

-Notebooks 1970-2003 (2005)

He (2021). The last book, only 164 pages to explain his autobiography. He writes it in the third person; he doesn’t like to use the first. It’s curious that he describes why he started writing his memoirs: it was dissatisfaction of his way of working, sitting at a table writing every morning and at weekends. And he admits that the inspiration for his fiction is found in his childhood memories and travels. He says that he has lost interest in art, and that music occupies more of his free time than looking at paintings.

 

-Short fiction

Contemporary Portraits and Other Stories (1975), republished in 1986 as The Drover's Wife and Other Stories. Here is where we can find our short story, The Silence.

 

 

SUMMARY

 

Let’s set the scene:

Australia is a continent of seven and half millions square kilometres. It’s the largest world island. In spite of this extension, there are only 28 million inhabitants and the population density is of 3,4 residents for square kilometre.

The first residents arrived there 42,000 years ago. They were nomads, hunters and collectors. Their spirituals values were revering the earth and believing in the dream time. Nowadays, Aboriginal people keep this culture even though the political changes. It’s the country less world populated, where the ninety per cent lives in the urban areas. The big portion inside is arid and desert.

It would be in one of these deserts, some years ago, that we could imagine at our character, Joe Tapp.

The Silence seems a simple history. Joe Tapp lives in the desert, in an enormous landscape, alone, in a campsite where he has a tent, a freeze, a petrol drum, firewood that obtain from some cut trees and a lot of rubbish. All of it scattered.

It’s not clear if Joe is an Aboriginal Australian, but his habits and his behaviour make us think that he is very close to this culture.

His life is very repetitive, the story explains his daily routines. For over a year he has been there, in the desert, hunting rabbits that live hidden in the dunes. He sets traps so that they are stuck in the rabbit’s neck. His activity is in the morning, he goes with sacks on his back to collect the corpses. Once in the camp, he skins and cleans them, removes the pelts and puts them in the freezer. He rests, and at sunset, he returns to the trap area to prepare them again. He sleeps and starts the new day again.

Joe is an introverted person, rooted in the environment where peace and silence reign; tranquillity is only broken by some animal noise. It’s the silence of nature.

All this activity, which aims at his survival, is altered every two weeks when Norm Treloar arrives with his noisy red truck, to buy and pick up the dead frozen rabbits. This is the only relation with another human. Joe doesn’t feel well at all when Norman arrives. Norman is a communicative man, and always, like a social routine, greets him, asks him how everything is going. Then, they load the meat on the truck, they have a tea, and finally Norman leaves, raising the desert’s dust. All return to natural state, the silence!

Joe feels worse and worse each time. He is overwhelmed, often thinks about the meeting with Norman, and suffers waiting for the next time. Every time he feels the meeting more intrusive. Breaking the silence bothers him, disturbs him. Norman’s words and noise offend him. He doesn’t want this relationship, he even throws to the fire the newspaper that Norman lefts. He wants silence, but also humanity disconnection. But he needs to go on with the business.

Joe thinks about his work, enjoys his peace, he loves to be there, surrounded by nature, he spends hours squatting. Like an Aboriginal.

And when suddenly he heard the truck’s far noise, Joe knows what he would do. He runs to the sand dune and hides behind the bushes. From there, he can see the campsite, and he lets Norman do the work. The truck driver looks around, searches for Joe, honks the horn, smokes a cigarette, and finally goes to the freezer, fills the truck with the meat, and leaves.

The silence returns, and Joe comes back to the campsite ready to carry on his work. Now he can go and setting rabbit’s traps, happy to have had a resolution.

 

My opinion

Silence is the absence of all sound or noise. In this story, it is the fact of stopping talking little by little. Joe is becoming more and more silent. For what reason?

Joe decided to be there more than a year ago, in the desert. We don’t know where he came from or what he did before, or why he came there. He chose to live in a place where it was easier to find himself, to be in contact with a silent world, to live at his own pace.

I think that the environment has been absorbing and integrating him in the nature, and he has finally found an inner peace and a meaning to his life. Possibly we, who live in a completely different place, don’t understand this. We live in a continuous communication, sometimes very crazy.

Silence can also be a kind of non-verbal communication, and maybe Joe’s story wants to transmit this other lifestyle to us. Maybe it’s not necessary to speak a lot and think more.

 

QUESTIONS

-Hunting with traps today here is forbidden: What can be the rules for an "ethical" hunt?

-Now and then there is a rabbit pest, or a locust pest, or any kind of pests. If they are natural phenomena, must we fight them?

-What are the benefits of being alone? And the damages? Do we need moments to be alone? Why are we nowadays more individualistic?

VOCABULARY

singlet, drums, burrowed, gears, whine, melt, sport, juice, grub, saltbush, billy, rowdy, strain, stunted, revved