An Ideal Craftsman, by Walter de la Mare

Walter de la Mare at the Wikipedia

The Listeners (poem)

Peacock Pie (collection of poems)

BIOGRAPHY

He was born in 1873 in Kent (now, a quarter of London). He died at 83 years old. One of his ancestors was French, hence his surname, "De la Mare". Somebody said also that he was a relative of Robert Browning, the famous poet, but it wasn’t true. When he was 23, he started working for the Standard Oil Company to provide for his family; but he also found time to write. At 26, he married the actress Elfrida Ingpen, then years older than him, and they had four children.

When he was 35, thanks to Sir Henry Newbolt (a poet, historian and a government adviser), he got a pension from the government that allowed him to write full time.

He wrote mainly poems for children, e.g. Peacock Pie, tales as Collected Stories for Children, and also horror stories, e.g. Eight Tales. He wrote a surrealistic novel too, Memoirs of a Midget, awarded by the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

About literature, he devised two kinds of imagination: childlike imagination (visionary) and boylike imagination (intellectual and analytical). According to him, the best poets are in the border between both imaginations.

SUMMARY

“An Ideal Craftsman” tells us the way to fake a suicide of somebody murdered. A young boy is awakened in the middle of the night by a noise and sets off for a raid on the kitchen, but he is afraid of the servant Jacobs. We don’t know exactly what is Jacobs like, but we do know that, according to the boy, he is a villain. After going through several corridors, halls and stairs (because it is a big house), the boy reaches the kitchen, where he finds a woman (the cook or another servant) that behaves in a very strange fashion, but she is friendly with the boy. The boy asks her where is Jacobs, and she says he’s gone. But when he leaves to go back to his room, he discovers Jacobs’s body, and the woman confesses her murder. The boy seems to understand why she has killed him. However, she doesn’t want to run away because she knows the murder and the culprit are going to be discovered easily.  Still, the boy feels some affection for the woman and has the idea of counterfeiting a suicide in order to dodge all suspicions against her. But there is a small detail missing. Will they become aware of it and arrange the scene?

QUESTIONS

According to Roald Dahl (Book of Ghost Stories), “it is the women who have written some of the very best ones” (meaning ghost stories or horror stories). And some other critics say that women are very good at children and ghost books. What do you think about this? Do women and men have different abilities when they are writing?

About the story:

Talk about the characters:

The boy (age, interests, family, personality…)

The woman (appearance, temperament, age, job…)

Jacobs: what do you know about him?

When do you use the question Qui vive? (202, 6)

What is the Newgate Calendar? (202, 19)

What do they mean by the “silver night”? (203, 29)

Why do you think the woman talks to the boy in the third person? (206, 26-29, et al.)

The boy finds incredible that so stout a woman had so small a voice. Do you think that voices can be beautiful or ugly, as faces we think are?

For the boy, “one pretty keepsake had been degraded forever” (207, 20). What does it mean?

Why did some “old man’s bones had lain beneath the tramplings of the crossroads”? (213, 4)

Why did the woman kill Jacobs?

How did she kill him? How do you know?

What was the boy’s reaction when he knew of the murder? Why do you think he has this reaction?

The boy and the woman arrange things to pretend it was a suicide. But there was a missing detail: what was this detail?

VOCABULARY

frisked, pampered, scuffling, piecing together, summoned, wound up, raiding, ferret, sheathed, poignard, wraith, qualm, eavesdropper, bent, ladle, bedaubed, locket, gallivanting, shammy, shunning, minified, cock-crow, fusty, larder, draughts, blancmange, sly, baize, wreathing, gaunt, squawk, blandishment, mottled, callousness, apiary, keepsake, mawkishly, look out, thrush, wheedlingly, waddling, stark, wisp, chicken skin, holly, kitchen range, gallipot, small hours, trampling, stoutly, linnet, throttled, stage villain, arena, maundering, cut, gritty, pell-mell, ditch, crockery, wilted, bawled

Through the Tunnel, by Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing at the Wikipedia

Through the Tunnel at the Wikipedia

Audiobook

Through the Tunnel, summary & analysis

BIOGRAPHY

Doris Lessing was born in Iran in 1919. At that moment, Iran was under the rule of Great Britain. Her father was a bank clerk and her mother a nurse. When she was 5, her family moved to Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe, but then also under the British Empire. There she lived until she was 30. Her family had a farm, but not much money, and she went to a catholic school. At 15, she started working as a nursemaid. At 19, she got married and had two children, but she left her husband and her children. Afterwards, she said, “There’s nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend an endless amount of time with small children.” But she got married again and had one more son, and she divorced again. She left also Rhodesia and went to live in the UK, fed up with the classicism and racism of the African country.

All her life was a committed person with leftist politics, and until the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, she belonged to the Communist Party.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007.

When the critics talk about her writings, they usually distinguish three periods:

The Communist period, when she wrote mainly about social issues. Her African Stories, for example, belong to this phase.

The psychological period, when she wrote Children of Violence (a collection of five semi-autobiographical novels),  and The Golden Notebook, that is in fact a revision of these 5 novels.

The Sufi period, when she studied the Muslim mysticism called Sufi and when she wrote science-fiction novels, for example, the series Canopus in Argus.

Out of these periods we found The Good Terrorist, about the squatters in London.

Her work is sometimes wearisomely didactic and focused more about topics than about form.

She is considered a feminist writer, although she doesn’t like being labelled.

She died in 2013 in London, when she was 93.

If you'd like to know more about her life, you can read her autobiography Under my Skin, in two volumes of more of 400 pages each one.

Through the Tunnel This is a story about an eleven-year-old boy on holiday on the coast with his widow mother. Every year they go there, and sunbathe and swim on the same big beach, but now he feels boring spending the time with his mother on this beach, because he thinks he has grown up, and this big and safe beach is for small children and mothers. So he decides to explore a cove near the big beach. There he sees some boys doing feats of old boys or adults; for example, they dive to the sea from a high rock, or swim under a long rock. The boys ignore him, because when he sees that he cannot do the same as them, he behaves like a child. Then, when he’s alone, he studies the passage under the long rock that they have crossed, and tries to cross it too. But it’s very long and dark. He’s going to need some goggles and is going to have to practise his breathing… because he’s decided to go through the tunnel whatever happens. Is he going to get it at the end?

QUESTIONS

Why do you think the author talks about the “woman’s arm” instead of talking simply about the “woman”?

In the lines 20-21 we find the expression “impulse of contrition – a sort of chivalry”. How can you identify contrition with chivalry?

There are two beaches: the big one and the small cove or ravine. It seems that the big beach is for children and the ravine for adults. What characteristics does the author give to each one in order to identify the big one with children and the rocky ravine with adultness?

What kind of relationship is there between the mother and her son?

Jerry tries to talk to the group of boys that are having a swim; but they speak the local language and Jerry doesn’t. How difficult is to make friends with someone who speaks a different language? Do children and young people make friends more easily than mature people?

The gang of local boys have a leader. Do all the gangs have to have a leader? What are the qualities that a leader has to have (according to your opinion)?

There is a moment when Jerry acts out a foolish dog. Why do you think he reacts like this?

Jerry asks (in fact, demands) for some goggles and wants to have them immediately. What is the best way to behave in front of a demanding child?

Do you think that every child needs, in order to grow up, to get through a rite of passage?

The narrator says, “He would do it if it killed him”. Do you think this is a sign of maturity? Was his a sensible decision?

Why, when he could be a member of the gang, “he did not want them”?

It seems that the mother was unconscious of the dangers her child was in. Are we usually aware of the dangers our children are in?

What do you think is the meaning of the blood filling the goggles in relation to coming of age?

Why wasn’t Jerry’s mother impressed when he told her he could stay for more than two minutes under water?

VOCABULARY

blurted out, villa, worrying off, scoop, inlets, surf, craving, poised, bog, blank, feat, nagged, sequins, groped, frond, dizzy, overdo, weed, gout, scooped, glazed looking

The Rocking-Horse Winner, by D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence at the Wikipedia

The Rocking-Horse Winner at the Wikipedia

A Summary and Analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner

The Rocking-Horse Winner Study Guide

Audiobook

D. H. LAWRENCE, by Adriana Cruz

BIOGRAPHY

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, his birth name, was born in Eastwood,

England, the 11th of September 1885, and he died in Vence, France, on the 2nd of March 1930 (the cause of death was tuberculosis). He was married to Frida von Richthofen, a German literate.

Lawrence was an English writer, author of novels, poems, plays, essays, short stories, travel books, paintings, translations, and literary criticism. His literature exposes an extensive reflection on the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. Lawrence views on all these matters caused him many personal problems. As a consequence, he had to spend most of his life in voluntary exile, which he himself called a “wild pilgrimage”. Among his most notable works there are Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He got distinctions like the James Tait Black Award.

In his childhood, he studied at Beauvale Board School, becoming the first local student to win a county council scholarship to Nottingham High School.

He also studied at the University of London, where served as a teacher and received a teaching diploma in 1908. In the autumn of the same year, Lawrence left the home of his youth for London, although he continued to work as a teacher for a few more years.

Lawrence had a very close relationship with his mother. 

He had an affair with a married woman six years older than him with three small children, and they flew to Freida’s parents’ home in Metz. Afterwards, they got married.

He spent the rest of his life travelling in the company of his wife around several countries. Finally, they arrived in the United States in September 1922, where they met Mabel Dodge Luhan, a public figure, and contemplated establishing a utopian community on what was then Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico.

They acquired the property, known today as the D. H. Lawrence Ranch.

 

SUMMARY

The story tells of a middle-class family with three children (a boy and two girls), who live in a good house with a garden, with discreet servants. Although so that everyone could notice, they kept up appearances. The mother is haunted by a sense of failure, always thinking that she needs more than she has. Her husband did not earn as much as she wanted and the life he would like to have with her luxuries and extravagance. Her children feel this anxiety, even claiming they can hear the house whisper, “There must be more money.”
The boy Paul was playing with his wooden horse in search of luck and ordered his horse to take him where the luck is.
Basset, the gardener, told him about horse racing and the two became partners.
One day, the boy is questioned by his uncle on the subject, and he is surprised when he tells him the name of the winner. Uncle Oscar, intrigued, asks how he knows who will win, but Paul tells him that he only knows who wins and doesn’t tell him his secret. That’s how the guy finds out about his earnings and successes.
Uncle Oscar Cresswell becomes a partner with them. The boy and Bassett make huge bets on the horses Paul names.
When Paul decides to give the mother a gift of £1,000, on her every birthday, for five years, so that he can ease her commitments, but only makes her spend more.
Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be “lucky.” As the Derby draws near, Paul is determined to meet the winner.
The mother, returning from a party, discovers his secret; She has spent hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night, until he “arrives”, in a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner’s name.
Her uncle and the Gardener bet and won big on the investment of 14 to 1 of everything he had.
The mother now had a lot of money, but she did not have her son.

The boy told his mother, “Mom, I’ll ever leave you: I’m lucky”.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the main characters:

Paul
His mother
His father
His uncle
The gardener
Why do you think the mother couldn’t love her children?
Do you think money can make happiness?
And what about luck? Can it make you happy?
Being lucky is something that depends on the causality, or can you do something to be lucky? Remember the saying “Fortuna helps the brave”.
Are you pro or against lotteries? Why?
Paul’s mother became unlucky when she got married? Do you think marriage can change people so much?
Mantra is a commonly repeated word or phrase, especially in advocacy or for motivation. In the story we can find two or more mantras (“There must be more money”, “I want luck”). Do you think mantras can be useful or effective? (Perhaps you remember old people saying the rosary.)
Why do you think uncle Oscar is lucky?
Do you believe in intuitions or hunches?
The mother got some money for her birthday. Was she happy then? Why?
Does our childhood determine the way we are as adults?
Some interpretations of this story say that the boy has the Oedipal complex and that his rocking on the horse is like a kind of masturbation. What is your opinion about this interpretation?
What is the symbolic meaning of the story according to your point of view?

VOCABULARY

thrust, grinding, racked, champing, smirking, pram, brazening it out, peer, careered, steed, batman, blade, sport, honour bright, daffodil, romancer, fiver, spinning yarns, writs, writhed, drapers, sequins, overwrought, quaint, prance, uncanny, Master, as right as a trivet, tossing 

The Monkey's Paw, by W. W. Jacobs

W.W. Jacobs at the Wikipedia

The Monkey's Paw at the Wikipedia

Audiobook

Movie

Study guide

W.W. JACOBS
By Aurora Ledesma

BIOGRAPHY
 
William Wymark Jacobs was born on September 8^th, 1863 in Wapping (London). The eldest son of William Gage Jacobs, and his first wife, Sophia Wymark, who died when Jacob was very young. Jacob’s father was the manager of a South Devon wharf, and young Jacobs spent much time with his brothers and sisters among the wharves, observing the comings and goings of the ships and their crews.
The Jacobs were a large poor family and; young W.W. as he was called by his friends, was shy and had a fair complexion. Jacobs attended a private school in London and later went to Birkbeck College (now part of the University of London). In 1879, Jacobs began work as a clerk in the civil service, in the Post Office Savings Bank, and by 1885 he had his first short story published, but success come slowly. Most of his work was humorous, and his favourite subject was marine life. His first collection of stories “Many Cargoes” shows the lives of men who go down to the sea in ships.
Jacobs is remembered for a macabre tale, “The Monkey’s Paw”, which was published in 1902 in a short-story collection, The Lady of the Barge, with several other ghost stories.
Another collection of short stories, Sea Urchins, made him very popular. From October 1898, Jacob’s stories appeared in the Strand Magazine, which provided him with financial security almost up to his death.
By 1899, Jacobs was able to quit his job at the post office and finally begin making a living as a full-time writer. He married Agnes Eleanor Williams. The couple had five children, though their marriage was considered an unhappy one.
In his late years, Jacobs wrote dramatizations and adaptations of his existing stories. Jacobs’s legacy remains solid: he continued Dickens’s tradition for sharing working class stories in authentic vernacular.
Jacobs died in a North London nursing home on September 1st, 1943 a week prior to his 80^th birthday.

SUMMARY

On a dark and stormy night, the family Mr. & Mrs. White and their son Herbert, are enjoying a cosy evening around the fire. A family friend, Sergeant - Major Morris arrives for a visit and tells them stories about his adventures during his military service in India. He shows them a monkey’s paw and tells them that it has the power to grant anyone three wishes. Mr. White is interested in buying it; however, Morris says that people have bad luck after their wishes are granted. When he was about to throw the paw in the fire, Mr. White grabs it from him.

After Morris left, the family discusses the wishes. Mr. White, following Herbert’s suggestion, asks for 200 pounds which he can use to pay off his mortgage.  The family waits, but nothing happens. Next day, Herbert goes to work and does not return. In the evening, a person from his company comes to their house and tells them that their son has had an accident with the machinery and died. He says that the company is not responsible for the accident. However, as compensation the company gives the family a check of 200 Pounds.

Mr. White goes to identify his son’s body and bury it. After a short discussion, Mrs. White orders his husband to make a wish to see her son alive. After a while, somebody knocks at the door, and she goes to open it. Mr. White remembers his son’s mutilated body during the burial and makes the third wish. The knocking at the door suddenly stops, they open the door and find no one there.

The Monkey’s Paw is a very popular story. A lot of films, T.V. series and plays have been made about it. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador made a chapter for the TVE series “Historias para no dormir”.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters
>Mr White

>Mrs White

>Herbert White

>Sergeant Morris

>The man from Maw & Meggins

Mrs White tries to calm down her husband when he's lost the game. What do you usually do to calm down another person?

Let's talk about superstitions, magic, talismans... Do you have any anecdote about the topic?

What do you think about fate? Do you believe in fate? Do you think there is a relation between cosmos and people?

Can you imagine which were the sergeant wishes?

And the first man's wishes?

What did Mrs White wish for the house?

If you had three wishes, what would you wish and why?

Do you remember other ways of saying wishes? Can you explain them?

Do you think Mrs White would accept her son as he was after the accident?

Would you do the same as the father with the third wish? Why?

Can you imagine another ending for the story?

VOCABULARY
knitting, grimly, mate, slushy, condoling, beady of eye, doughy, offhandedly, spell, jarred, sensible, henpecked, marred, squatting, wholesomeness, disown, bibulous, silk hat, dozed, fitfully, bracket, mantelpiece, china, screwing up

Never, by H. E. Bates

Summary

Wikipedia

H.E. Bates's books in films

Bates's website

Bates: The Modern Short Story

 

H. E. Bates, Never, by Elisa Sola

 

BIOGRAPHY

Herbert Ernest Bates was born on the 16th of May, 1905 (nineteen o five), in Rushden, Northamptonshire. Therefore, he was an English author.

His grandfather Charles Lucas was a shoemaker and led Herbert to walk around the countryside, and this is where he learnt to appreciate the plants and wildlife of the area of North Bedfordshire, where his grandmother's family came from. In fact, many of his stories describe life in rural areas of England.

He was educated at Ketting Grammar School, where he enjoyed football and athletics. His English teacher there was Edmund Kirby, who was to influence his studies of literature and poetry. He left school at sixteen and became a junior reporter in the Northampton Chronicle, but he hated his job. Then he took a job as a clerk for a leather merchant and it was there where he wrote his first novel The Two Sisters, when he was merely twenty years old. in 1925, when he was 21 years old, he found a company willing to publish this book.

In 1931 he married Marjorie Hellen and they moved to Little Chest, in Kent. There they bought a granary which they converted in a beautiful garden. In this environment he could write and quickly gained a reputation for writing stories about country ways.

During World War II he continued writing stories, alongside with his duties in the RAF, under the pseudonym of "Flying Officer X". In some of his stories, he wrote about several people who were identifiable to the locals. In fact, he dedicated several of his books to the people who had influenced his life: the character Uncle Silas (in a series of stories) is his great uncle Joseph Betts. Another famous character was Sam Smith, who was a friend whom he had learnt about poaching (stealing game).

Marjorie and Herbert had four children: Ann, Judith, Richard and Jonathan who were grown with the same love for nature. Herbert wrote also a book about gardening and an autobiography.

H.E. Bates died in 1974, aged 68, after a serious illness, but his greatest success came after his death, when his son Richard produced a television series based on the Pop Larkin family in The Darling Buds of May, and its sequels as well as adaptations of My Uncle Silas, A Moment in Time, Fair Stood the Wind for France, and Love for Lydia.

H. E. Bates has a road named after him in his town of Rushden.

 

NEVER

In the short story “Never” by H. E. Bates, a teenage girl by the name of Nellie decides that she wants to leave home, because her life is monotonous, but in reality, she doesn’t want to leave, or she can't leave.

The author describes a shading landscape and a depressed mood of the girl. All the elements in the story are chosen to recreate a sad and depressing atmosphere. Everything suggests that the girl is suffering from a mental illness. I think that she has a depression. Even at one point of the story she acknowledges that she isn’t well: "I hate everyone. I've changed until I hardly know myself". Some elements used by the author to create this atmosphere are:

1. The constant hesitation: "what shall I take? The blue dress with the rosette? What else? What else" / "Should she go to Elden or Olde?"

2. The repetition: "It was all confused. It was all confused" (she is confused and the landscape is confused too (clouds, half-dark room) / "I'm going away, I'm going away (she had said hundred times during the afternoon)", "She counted the money a dozen times", he moved her fingers anxiously.

3. The obsessive tune of the waltz in her mind, with the train schedule: "Elden 6.13, Olde 6.18"... The domestic sound of the tea cups reveals us the routine that she hates.

4. The cold throughout the story and the heat at the climax, when she thinks that she is about to leave. In the beginning she is in a drowsy, half-dark room, a sunset, with great clouds across the sky. We imagine a cold atmosphere. In the middle of the story, at the climax, she "felt warm", her breast rises and falls, her body felt a light thrill and she wishes she had no more fear, but in the end cold returns: "she felt cold... It was cold."

4. The weight: In the beginning her luggage is light, but after her euphoria, the luggage is heavy.

5. The light: The story begins in a "drowsy, half-dark room" (it was afternoon) and ends in the same "drowsy room", but "absolutely dark" (it was black night), like the future of the girl. The last words of the story "Some day! Some day!", are in contrast with the title: Never! From this point of view, it's a circular story.

With all these sensory elements: light, height, temperature, sound..., the author creates an atmosphere of deep discomfort. The familiar environment of the girl is also negative because her father is moaning about his lack of luck, and her routines are empty of excitement or energy. She acts only to fill up the day.

Faced with this, the girl wants to break this dynamic, but she is so afraid that she is unable to take the step in order to change her life.

Many people had dreamed of some new exciting adventures, new experiences, something very different from the same old existence. Some of them take this step, others are still questioning whether they're ready for it, and finally, others give it up. 

QUESTIONS

Describe the protagonist: age, interests, personality

What is the meaning of “sat in a heap”?

Talk about her family.

Why do you think she wants to go away?

What’s her biggest worry about going away?

What are her daily routines?

What things did she put in her bag to go away?

What is Elden 6.13 and Olde 6.18?

Where can you find the rhythm of a waltz in Elden 6.13 and in Olde 6.18?

What will be the best moment (day, week, year) to run away? Why?

There’s a big ellipsis of time in the story. What ellipsis is this one and why?

When she packed her things the bag “was not heavy” (page 392, line 17), but then it “grew heavy” (page 393, line 24). What is your opinion about this change?

Did she really want to go? How do you know?

Why the “red ring” was mocking her?

What weather elements pictured her disappointment?

Do you think she even went out of the house? Why?

What is a rite of passage? What rites of passage do you know?

Tell us about any “rite of passage” (yours, your children...) or any anecdote, any moment you remember of your adolescence, something that was decisive in your life.

VOCABULARY

guide, rotten, rosette, mending, hand, ace, trump, mournful, utter, prattle, strum, thrill, bottom G, flat, fitful

Many Are Disappointed, by V. S. Pritchett

BIOGRAPHY (from last year), by Rafel Martínez

Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett, was born in Suffolk, on 16 December 1900, he was the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena. His father, a London businessman, started several businesses, but, due to his insecurity and his tendency to credit and embezzlement, had to close the businesses and disappear, so the family was forced to change their address to different cities, such as Ipswich, Woodford, Essex or Derby, which forced the children to change schools frequently, all to circumvent the persecution of the numerous creditors of Walter, the father.

The family moved to East Dulwich and he attended Alleyn's School, but when his paternal grandparents came to live with them at age 16, he was forced to leave school to work as a clerk for a leather buyer in Bermondsey. The leather work lasted from 1916 until 1920 when he moved to Paris to work as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for The Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. Pritchett, along with his friend and writer Gerald Brenan, is one of the few Englishmen who, in the early 1930s, toured the Spanish territory. From that youthful experience, Pritchett wrote Marching Spain, which appeared in 1928. However, it was not until 1954 that, already a consecrated writer, he published The Spanish Temperament, an excellent travel chronicle about our country.

In 1936 he divorced his first wife and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts, by whom he had two children; the marriage lasted until Pritchett's death in 1997, although they both had other relationships.

During the Second World War Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information while continuing to write weekly essays for the New Statesman. After World War II he wrote extensively and embarked on various university teaching positions in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. Fluent in French, German and Spanish, he published acclaimed biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977), and Anton Chekhov (1988).

Sir Pritchett was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1975 for "services to literature" and a Companion of Honour in 1993, in addition to other multiple decorations and mentions throughout his life, which makes him the best English author of his time.

Sir V. S. Pritchett died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997.

THE STORY

Four cyclists going on a ride expect to find a bar or a pub at the top of a hill, but they are disappointed because there is only a house with the old sign “Tavern”, that can mean an inn (that is no alcohol), so they won’t be able to have some beers. They have followed this road in the hope of sightseeing an antient Roman way: second disappointment. And thus, so on with some more. In the house there’s a small and frail woman with her daughter, also a little girl. The woman is happy to serve them some tea with some light food, although they would rather have had stronger food. At the end, they are happy with their tea, and they even start to have some feelings for the woman and her child. After tea, they went back again in search of a pub, and the woman feels very happy to have had them at home, and this not only for the money she got from their meal.

I think there are two very interesting features in this story. First, the characters: you don’t find the typical way of composing a story: the narrator begins introducing the characters with a full description, physical and psychological; instead, you have to unite the different pieces of the characters to form them, like in a puzzle. What did the author do this for? And second, the title. In the story, there are a lot of disappointments, and everyone has their own disappointment. But in the end, I think they are satisfied with what they had, at the end disappointment has been disappointed.

Many Are disappointed: Analisys

Many Are disappointed: Review

QUESTIONS

Look for and jot down information about the characters in order to describe them (surname, appearance, personality, age, likes and dislikes…)

Bert
Sid
Harry
Ted
The woman
The girl

What kind of bike are they riding? How do you know?

What different feelings does the woman have for the four different men?

Why does Sid think that he had seen the woman before? Does he want to flirt with her?

In which part of Great Britain is the story situated (look for the toponyms in a map)?

Why is there a confusion between Romans and Gypsies?

Describe the meal.

Why do you think the woman trusts a very confidential thing (she almost died) to Sid?

Do you think the house is really a “tea-house”? Why?

Explain all you know about the ring.

Are the really sportsmen? How do you know?

Why did or didn’t you like the story?

VOCABULARY

dunno, out-building, ruddy, skylark, stubborn, reed, meadows, hedge, wiry, whimper, frail, drab, moist, dumbfounded, sell, gasper, treacle (coloured), drizzle, dazed, dippy, cocksure, splice, flash, dawdle, drably, scabious, bin, boldly, wants, pout