A Service of Love, by O. Henry

Audiobook

Analysis

Summary and analysis

SUMMARY

This is a story of true love.

Joe Larrabee and Delia Caruthers wanted to be artists: the boy, a painter, and the girl, a musician. Both of them went to New York from their villages in search of opportunities.

They met in a club where people talked about art and artists, and they fell in love and got married straight away. Happier couldn’t they be: they had their art and they had each other. But they had to live in poverty. Their love was “through thick and thin”.

They attended lessons to improve their art; Joe painted in the great Magister workshop, and Delia’s teacher was Rosenstock.

But the money didn’t last as much as they would like, and they had to do something to earn their living; so Delia looked for pupils to teach piano classes, and Joe had to sell his paintings to any redneck that came from the country, for example, Peoria; but neither of them allowed the other to abandon their art.

So they went on being short of money for a while. Every day they told each other their daily routine and how they did in their jobs. But one day, Delia came home with her hand bandaged; she told her husband she got burnt serving a dish to her pupil at her house (according to Delia, the pupil was a General's daughter). But Joe knew where the cloth for the bandage came from and started questioning Delia. At the end, she had to tell the truth, and so he also had to confess his secret. Was this disclosure going to kill their love?

 

QUESTIONS

What is love? Can you give us an ultimate definition? Do you think sexual love is essentially different from friendly love?

How do we know if they had or didn’t have talent? Are there any hints in the text?

How do you know if a person has any talent?

Tell us something about Émile Waldteufel, oolong, Joseph Rosenstock, Benvenuto Cellini.

Do you believe in living “through thick and thin”? Do you have any anecdotes about this romantic ideal?

 

VOCABULARY

chipped in, atelier, A sharp, janitor, dresser, mantel, sandbag, switchman, chafing dish, hatchet, scalloped, trump, veal, goatee, freight depot, Welsh rarebit [rabbit, sic], iron, make up

The Shawl, by Cynthia Ozick

Audiobook (almost)

Summary and analysis (video)

Summary and analysis (text)

Conversartion with Cynthia Ozick

A Book Club meeting about The Shawl

BIOGRAPHY AND SUMMARY,

by Teresa Creixell

Cynthia Ozick is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist.
She was born in New York City on April 17, 1928, and raised in the Bronx. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia and owned a pharmacy.
She attended Ohio University where she completed her bachelor’s degree in English literature, focusing on the novels by Henry James.
She was married to Bernard Hallote, a lawyer, until his death in 2017. Their daughter, Raquel Hallote, directs a Jewish studies program at SUNY Purchase.
Her literary works have been acquired by Yale University.
Ozick’s fiction and essays often deal with the lives of American Jews, but she also writes about politics, history, and literary criticism. She has also written and translated poetry.
The Holocaust is also a dominant theme. For example, in Who Owns Anne Frank? she writes that the true meaning of the diary has been distorted.
She has been nominated for the Nobel Prize.
 
The Shawl
 
The Shawl is an unforgettable and heartbreaking short story published in the New Yorker in 1980. Ozick later included it in a novel about the main character, Rosa, in a single volume also titled The Shawl.
She felt compelled to write The Shawl after reading a sentence in William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in 1960.
In later years, Ozick said that her short story was not a document, it was an imagination.
The story is written in the third person and is full of metaphors.
 
SUMMARY
 
The story takes place during the Holocaust.
A mother, Rosa, was walking with her baby, Magda, between her breasts, and her 14-year-old niece Stella. They were very hungry and were in a line of prisoners heading towards a Nazi concentration camp. The soldiers did not know that Magda existed.
Rosa breastfeeds her daughter with the little milk she has and wraps her close to her in her shawl. Stella is jealous of Magda’s shawl; she also wants to be protected.
Rosa is no longer hungry, she feels as if she is fainting, in a trance.
She looks at her daughter inside the shawl, her fair skin is so different from hers, her blue eyes and yellow hair like the star embroidered on the coat. She looks “Aryan”.
She would like to leave Magda in one of the villages they pass through, but she cannot move beyond the line or she will be shot, and she does not know if a woman would really take Magda. It’s not worth the risk.
Rosa no longer has milk, but the shawl is magical, it can feed Magda for 3 days and 3 nights. Magda doesn’t move, she’s alive but she’s very still and quiet.
At 15 months, Magda knows how to walk, and her mother knows that the soldiers will soon discover her, but it’s Stella who takes off her shawl when Magda was still in the barracks, where her mother had left her.
From outside, Rosa sees her daughter walking around looking for the shawl, and Magda shouts “maa..”
Rosa is scared, but at the same time happy because she hears her voice ―she thought she was mute.
The mother gets the shawl, Stella was cold and had covered herself with it.
She goes out to the square and, in the most tragic moment of the story, Rosa sees how, far away, a soldier throws her daughter against the electric fence. The girl is shouting “mama!”
Rosa puts the shawl in her mouth to suppress her own cries.

QUESTIONS

Besides the Holocaust, what other genocides do you know about? Tell us a bit of information about one you know.

In your opinion, how can the human being become a mass murderer?

What do you know about Hannah Arendt?

In your view, were all Germans guilty / responsible for the Nazi regime? Or only a part of them?

Is Stella responsible for Magda's death?

VOCABULARY

sore, ravenous, teetering, windingsm fled, gums, cinnamon, spindles, thighs, flopped, roll-call, devoid, windpipe, ash-stippled, lice, whimper, shins, turd-braids, whip, goblet, domino

The Roads We Take, by O. Henry

Film (audio in Russian, subtitles in English)

Another movie (audio in English, no subtitles)

Audiobook

Summay and analysis

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken, analysis

Hit the Road, Jack, by Ray Charles

SUMMARY
This is the story of an untrustworthy bandit, "Shark" Dodson.
He and two mates more, John Big Dog and Bob Tidball, robbed a train. In the fray of the attack, John Big Dog was shot dead by one of the train employees. The other two bandits ran away with a big booty of thirty thousand dollars, and happier they were because now they were only two to divide the amount: there wasn’t a third in the party.

They got to the place where they had left their horses and set John Big Dog’s horse free. Then they mount and went away as fast as they could. But during their flight, Bob Tidball’s horse broke its leg, and they had to kill the brute. So now they were two robbers, their booty and only a horse; in consequence, their escape was a bit more difficult, but not impossible. However, Shark Dodson decided that two people were too many people for a horse, and got rid of Bob Tidball murdering him in cold blood to secure his flight and to keep all the money for him only, even though Bob had been a staunch friend of his.

Some years later, we find Dodson  turned on a very respectable rich man with his own company. He had also friends, the  best one of them, Williams, with a big number of shares in Dodson’s company. But all of a sudden, there was a financial crisis, and Williams was on the point of losing all his money. He went to Dodson to ask for help, and Dodson…

 

QUESTIONS

Do you think everyone gets what he deserves in this world? Do you have any example (real or fictional)?

Do you think it’s possible to go up in society and become very rich following strictly legal and ethical ways?

Think about case of betrayal you know and tell us about it, as if it were a story (about love, politics, money…) Do you know any case in which treachery could be justified?

In a moment, Dodson said that he had a most remarkable dream. Do you think it's possible that the first part of the story was only a dream?

 

 

VOCABULARY
quarter-breed, pieces of ordnance, tender, ore, through the mill, currency, conductor, unwittingly, chaparral, pommel, primeval, spryest, posse, haul, sorrel, bottom, cards and spades, desperado, crowbait, boodle, hit the trail, timber, spoil, hitting the breeze, pards, vamoose, cupidity, holders-up, upholstered

After Twenty Years, by O. Henry

Film adaptation (acted by students of English)

Audiobook

Study and analysis

SUMMARY, by Josep Guiteras

A policeman was walking through the streets of New York doing his rounds.
It was about 10 at night, and, in front of the door of a hardware store, there was a man. When he saw the policeman, he told him not to be alarmed because he was waiting for a friend whom had not seen for 20 years, and that 20 years ago they had agreed to meet precisely on this day at 10 at night.
After listening to him, the policeman said good night and continued doing his rounds.
Twenty minutes later, a tall man approached Bob, who was waiting for his friend Jimmy Wells. They greeted each other effusively and walked down the dark street. When they arrived in front of a pharmacy where the electric lights illuminated the street, Bob realized that the man who was with him was not his old friend Jimmy Wells.
The man was a plainclothes policeman who had arrested him for being a criminal, alias "Silky".
However, the police gave him a note signed by Jimmy Wells, which said: Bob, as we had agreed, at 10 p.m. I was in front of the hardware store…

QUESTIONS

How would you feel better, being loyal to your friends or doing your duty?

In your opinion, which one of these sentences it's the truest one: 1-People never change, or 2-People are always changing, are never the same?

Have you been on a meeting where people hadn't seen each other for a long time? Tell us your experience.

VOCABULARY

on the beat, club, thoroughfare, stalwart, scaafpin, chum, hustling, stanchest, plodder, pile, groove, razor-edge, bully, outline, pug, plain clothes