Skin, by Roald Dahl

 Audiobook

Film (Tales of the Unexpected)

Prezi presentation

Creative writing with Roald Dahl

Study guide

Chaïm Soutine famous paintings

A VERY BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
 
Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Wales; he was the son of a rich Norwegian family who had migrated to Great Britain. Roald was named after the poles’ explorer Roald Amundsen.
In his book Boy: Tales of Childhood, he narrates his childhood, his time in the school village and in a boarding school. According to him, it was an unhappy time.
As a teenager, he attended Repton School, near Derby. In the same book, he reports about the cruel and violent atmosphere of the place, with its hazings and its physical punishments.
When he was 18, he started working for the Shell Petroleum Company, and, after four years of training in Britain, he went to Kenya and other places in Africa as its employee. From his  job in the Shell Co and his years in the RAF, another book resulted: Going Solo.
The second year he was staying in Africa, WWII started, and he had to join the British army there. He applied for flying in the RAF, and after a very short training, he piloted a plane and fought in different battles in Africa and in Greece. In one of his raids, he had a crash that left him some time blind and wounded; but once he had spent some months in hospital, he went flying and fighting again.
When the war was finished, he was given a post in the British Embassy in Washington, and later he worked for the British Intelligence. Here he met C. S. Forester (author of Captain Hornblower –in Spain, the film adaptation was called “El hidalgo de los mares”, with Gregory Peck as the star). Forester encouraged him to write his experiences as a pilot in the war, and from that moment, Roald Dahl became a writer.
After the success of narrating his RAF experiences, he started to write fiction, usually stories for children and short stories for adults. Who doesn't remember Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or The Witches?
His short stories were adapted for a television series under the name of Tales of the Unexpected, of which our story Skin is a famous one.
He also wrote a novel, My Uncle Osvald, and the scripts for James Bond’s You Only Live Twice, and for Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang.
He died at 74 of a rare cancer.

SUMMARY
This is one of the most typical stories by Roald Dahl: a tale of the unexpected. A bit of horror, a bit of thriller, sophisticated atmosphere and surprising ending.
A man called Drioli sees a picture in an art gallery and all of a sudden remembers its painter, Soutine, and the golden age in Paris where they had lived the bohemian life of the romantic artists. The painter was at that moment a young refugee from Russia and had a great talent, but he couldn’t sell any of his pictures: they were too modern. Drioli was a tattooer, and Soutine was in love with Drioli’s wife, his model.
One day, Drioli had a lucky strike (he tattooed a lot of drunken sailors) and got a lot of money from them. Now, the only thing he wanted to do with it at the moment was to celebrate this success, and the only thing he could imagine for a celebration was getting drunk. So the three of them had a party and got really boosted. In the middle of their intoxication, Drioli had a wonderful idea. He was so enthusiastic about Soutine paintings that he wanted to have something by him, and it came to his head to have a drawing tattooed in his skin made by Soutine. But Soutine didn’t know anything about the art of tattooing, and Drioli had to teach him how to use the needle. The motive had to be, of course, a portrait of Drioli’s wife, and the best part of his body where to do it was his back. The painting exhibited the Soutine's art to perfection. Once done, Soutine loved his work so much that he signed it with delight.
Then, a lot of things happened: there were two world wars and Drioli’s wife and Soutine died.
 
Now, we are just after WWII, when Europe was totally devastated, and Drioli, as almost everybody, was poor and hungry. Drioli was passing by a famous art gallery in Paris and saw Soutie’s picture in its window. Suddenly, he became aware that he was, at last, a renowned painter, and that his paintings were highly valued in the art market… and that he had a painting by him on his back!, in his skin! But he could get money from it! The thing was, how?
How could he sell the painting?
Someone from the gallery proposed him to be a sort of mobile picture, a live painting walking and exhibiting himself in a luxury tourist resort, bed and meals paid for life. The manager of the art gallery proposed to him that a surgeon stripped him of his back skin and replaced it; the other one said that would kill Drioli, but the manager assured he knew expert surgeons who could do the operation without any risk.
What did Drioli decide to do?
Sorry, but we aren’t going to give away spoilers.
 
QUESTIONS
-Do you have a tattoo? Are you pro, or against, tattoos? If you have a tattoo, or you know something about it, can you describe the process? Can a tattoo be art?
-And what about piercings? Do you have to be legally an adult (18 y-o) to have a piercing or a tattoo?
-Who decides if a painting is really a work of art? And how? Is there something really objective in the decision? How can you question this decision without appearing a simpleton?
-When a nude is art and when it isn't?
-What do you know about Chaïm Soutine, the real painter?

VOCABULARY
hedgehog, brooding, boozy, scowling, Kalmuck, peeking, jabs, impasto, collops, paw, flunkey, wings (of a nose), lacking
 

Feuille d'Album, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Núria Lecina

The title is the same as Chopin’s musical composition that remembers love in spring, when new flowers and leaves begin to grown. This piece was dedicated to the countess Szeremtieff.
The text is narrated in the third person by an unknown narrator. In some moments, another narrator takes part with some question or comment. There are a lot of changes in the narration. The text it’s full of descriptions of the main character, other people and places or atmosphere.

Ian is the main character. He is a young painter who lives alone in Paris, in a typical French building in a top flat in front of Senna’s River. The description that Katherine writes shows us different aspects of the boy, sometimes contradictory.

We read that at first glance he seems an interesting man, elegant, clever and handsome. In spite of that, we read that he also is an impossible man, unbearably heavy and especially shy, very shy. He has difficulties to achieve a normal social relationship, and his relationships with women who are interested in him always end badly. Ian doesn’t answer to the kindnesses of these women. He hides inside his shell, like a tortoise. He closes and disappears.

He lives in his own world; he has an introvert life with his own routines. He is excessively tidy with home things. He thinks about his economy and the way to organize his savings. All in his life has to follow some pattern to be right. For instance, in front of his bed, there is a notice with this advice: GET UP AT ONCE.

One afternoon he was in the window having a snack when he saw a girl in the building across the way in front of him. The girl went out to the balcony with a flower’s pot. She was a bit odd in her clothes and maybe in the way she spoke to another person. He didn’t know who spoke to her. Perhaps somebody she lived with?

At this moment Ian understood that she was the only person he really wanted to meet. She appeared to be the same age as him. He fell in love with her just at that moment. He began to imagine things about her life and also how his life would be like with her. But the girl did not notice the presence of someone watching her. She carried on his routines.

From this day, he felt a change in his life: he had a challenge and this was to get as fast as he could a new pattern of behaviour to order his routines and actions: NOT TO LOOK AT HER AND NOT TO THINK ABOUT HER UNTIL THE PAINTING IS FINISHED.

Ian wanted to meet the girl, but he hadn’t any idea of what to do. He didn’t have experience in this matter. His shyness drowned him. Every day he observed the girl, every time he had more and more desire to meet her. One day he discovered that every Thursday she went out with a basket, probably shopping. One Thursday, when the girl left home, Ian decided to act. He went down to the street and followed her. He saw more and more clearly that they were soulmates.

She seemed lonely, serious. Then he saw the opportunity. She entered a shop and bought an egg, only one. The same that he would have chosen. When the girl came out, he went into the store and bought the same. Quickly he followed her, and when she arrived to her building and entered the lobby, he went in behind her and said:

“Excuse me, Mademoiselle, I think you dropped this”, and he showed her the egg.

And he handed her his own egg!!!

That scene seems taken from a basic manual to begin relationships. Maybe the object isn’t the most appropriate, but I hope everything will work very well with them.

 

PERSONAL OPINION

As in Chopin’s composition, Ian finds love, and it appears suddenly, like leaves (feuilles) and flowers in Spring. In this short story, Katherine Mansfield presents the awakening of the love in a young man. One man that, in spite of his difficulty with relationships, has the same emotions and feelings as the other people.

In my opinion, Ian suffers some dysfunction in social abilities. He constantly needs rules for his actions, he always needs order around him. It seems he is afraid in front of new situations; this is, from my point of view, the reason why he doesn’t answer people and hides like a tortoise. Maybe he suffers from some minor autistic disorder.

QUESTIONS

-Why does he say “you nearly screamed” when the boy was in your studio?

-Who was the person “who started to give him a mother’s tender care”?

-When do you know that someone is an artist?

-What kind of pictures do you imagine Ian French painted?

-How do you imagine the family’s girl and the girl’s character?

-Why did he give her an egg at the end of the story? What does the egg symbolize?

-What is the meaning of the title?

 

VOCABULARY

rousing, stony, rag-time, Broken Doll, fishy, ladling, booths, awning, still life, spangle, peppered, daffodils, draper's, dairy

 ANALYSIS

ANOTHER ANALYSIS

MEANING OF THE TITLE