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 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 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

The Complete Life of John Hopkins, by O. Henry

Audiobook 

Presentation

SUMMARY

As it’s usual in O. Henry, he starts his writing with a philosophical deliberation. In our case, he reflects about the saying “No man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love, and war.” So we have to imagine that in our story, the author / narrator is going to demonstrate the truth of it, or at least, give an instance of it. How an ordinary man with a monotonous life can taste the full flavour of life?

John Hopkins was a very commonplace man. He had had the same tastes and the same habits for all his life. He dwelt in a normal flat with a ficus and a dog in an unobtrusive street and was married as most people. His wife was also an unimaginative woman. There wasn’t any surprise in the lives of these two people. One cannot expect anything that wasn’t monotony in their home.

Every weekday, when John Hopkins came from work, had dinner, made some trivial remarks about the day, told his wife some little change in his office or about the people there and then was quiet.

But today, he did something absolutely unusual: in the middle of a sentence, he suddenly decided to walk down to the corner to buy a cigar.

And now a series of extraordinary events took place. First, he forgot his money and couldn’t pay for the cigar, then he quarrelled with the tobacconist because the man didn’t sell on credit. Afterwards, a policeman arrived to where they were fighting and tried to arrest Hopkins, but he defended himself and run away. In his flight, he was rescued by a stranger in a car, who took him to his lady. The lady, however, wanted her cousin Walter Long, but, as the driver hadn’t been able to find him, he had brought John Hopkins instead. The lady needed a brave and strong man to throw out of her house somebody who had offended her; nevertheless, the offender, who perhaps was her husband, her brother or any family member, in a moment seized Hopkins, pinned him down and easily shoved him out of doors.

John Hopkins, once on the street, not at all confused, walked directly home. His wife greeted him with...

 

QUESTIONS

-What is your opinion about this saying: “No man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and war”?

-Where are poverty, love and war in our story?

-What do you prefer: a routine life or an adventurous one? What is it better for our mental health?

-What are the benefits of a customary / everyday / trivial conversation?

-Somebody said: our troubles come of not being able to remain calmly at home all the time. What is your view about that sentence?

 

VOCABULARY

plummet, ostrich tips, mucilaginous, hornblende, grafted, joust, rebuses, took [spiritedly] to his hells, soak, winning, chowder, grouch at, scraper, kennels, check

The Princess and the Puma, by O. Henry

Audiobook

Analysis

Summary

SUMMARY, by Nora Carranza

This O. Henry story occurs in a region with farms, cowboys, ranchers and varied animals, including very dangerous ones.
It is strange to think about a princess in this context, but in fact there existed a complete “royal family”.

The king was an old, terrific farmer, a man who became richer and richer, and finally owned a large extension of land, the Espinosa Ranch, with uncountable cattle, and thus he, Ben O’Donnell, was called “the Cattle King”.
As for the queen, a Mexican girl became a good wife, and somehow succeeded teaching Ben how to behave better or how to manage his thunder-like voice. When the family prosperity arrived to an oppressive point, she quietly abandoned realm and life.

They had a daughter, Josefa, the Princess, who inherited some positive aspects from her parents, being a mild, beautiful, intelligent girl. Moreover, she was incredibly skilled with weapons like few men could be.

An attractive and rich heiress, Josefa was in the marriage plans of Ripley Givens, an Espinosa’s foreman.

One day, Givens arrived to a place called White Crossing; he was tired and far away from the Ranch, and he decided it was better to pass the night there. There was a river with nice water running and great trees. Near the river banks, it grew suitable grass for the horse to eat, and it could be a comfortable bed for Givens himself. The rancher had tobacco and coffee and felt satisfied with his circumstances. Anyway, he laid the pistol belt on the grass: it was necessary to be watchful about the Mexican lions.

Givens was approaching the river for water, when suddenly he discovered unexpected presences. There was a side saddled pony, and rising from the edge of a water hole was Josefa. Not only the pony and Josefa were there, but, at short distance, a terrifying Mexican lion stay hidden in the vegetation. Givens had to do something… his six-shooter was not at hand… so, crying loudly, Givens jumped between the Princess and the beast. At the same time, the man heard two shots and was flattened to the ground by the heavy lion.

While Josefa calmly reloaded her silver mounted 38, with a sarcastic smile in her face, Givens could move from under the dead animal, feeling a defeated knight, his dream about the girl lost and burnt.

Anyway, he immediately came out with a curious explanation, and while touching tenderly the dead lion, he exclaimed “poor old Bill!” Givens version sustained that Bill, his innocent pet, had escaped from the camp, probably exhausted because a little annoying terrier arrived to the site and frightened him. And now poor Bill was hungry, and perhaps he expected Josefa would help him. Josefa couldn’t have known, Givens said, but some reproach appeared in his face.

Josefa seemed deeply ashamed and guilty, also admired Givens, who had risked his life to protect his pet. With tears in her dark, sweet eyes, she asked forgiveness. And Givens yielded.

It was already dark, Josefa should be accompanied to the Espinosa Ranch; consequently, both rode their ponies side by side, hand in hand, along the prairie.

The King appreciated Givens courtesy and offered him to pass the night in the ranch, but the foreman declined and trotted away.

At that point, Josefa proudly referred to her father how she had set two bullets to that killer Mexican lion, the “Gotch-eared Devil”; she recognized the animal for the slice on the left ear that old Gonzales had cut off with his machete. From the dark royal chamber, the thunder royal voice expressed the sincerest approval to the Princess.

QUESTIONS

-Who was Danaë and with is it her relation with the story? And Momus?

-Why didn't Givens tell Josefa the truth about the lion?
-Why did Josefa pretend to believe Givens's lie?
-At the end of the film Speed, after overcoming all the dangers, the male protagonist says to the female star that relationships that arise from extreme situations don't usually last. What is it your view about it?
-According to your opinion, what animals could be treated as pets and which ones not? Do you think animals must have some rights?

VOCABULARY

six-shooters, rattlers, prickly pear, cow-puncher, outfits, yearling, mesquite, gar, sacuista, jar, gouging, rastle, wrangler, quarry, demurred, steers, settled his hash, Bully for you!

The Raft of the Medusa, by Julian Barnes

Théodore Géricault

The Raft of The Medusa at the Wikipedia

Julian Barnes at the Wikipedia

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters at the Wikipedia

Analysis

New York Times review

The short story you’re going to read is a bit different from the ones we have read until now, but don’t get scared, because I’m going to help you.

The story has two very different parts.

The first part narrates the shipwreck, so it has a lot of naval vocabulary (there is a glossary below), but don’t worry about it: to understand what happened you don’t even it to look up these words in a dictionary: just go on reading. The event is more or less like this: in the year 1816 a group of four French ships sailing from a port near La Rochelle were heading south along the African coast. Due to the incompetence of the commandments and/or adverse winds, the group of ships got separated, and the last one got stuck in a reef and couldn’t go on sailing at all; so the commandments ordered to leave the ship, but, as there were not enough boats for all the passengers and crew, they decided to build a raft that would be towed by the boats. But the raft couldn’t support so much weight, and they had to throw away some food and drink; even so, when everybody was on board, the raft was more than half a metre under water, and almost everybody on the raft had their legs under water. But the worst was that the boats cut the ropes that were tied to the raft to tow it, abandon it to their own fate and went away. The situation on the raft was desperate: they didn’t have instruments to navigate, neither rows nor a sail; they fight for better positions on the raft and for food and water; during the night it was a storm; a lot of people died or were murdered or committed suicide; there were cases of cannibalism… At the end, only a few survived on the raft and were rescued by the ship Argus. The survivals had decided to write down the events, and so now we know a lot of details of the story.

The second part narrates how Théodore Géricault painted The Raft of the Medusa (Medusa being the name of the stranded ship) and what was the public opinion about the painting. This second part of the story doesn’t have vocabulary problems (I think), but perhaps it isn't as moving as the first one, and it demands an effort extra as it goes into art.

Julian Barnes is very keen on art and has a book of essays about paintings and painters called Keeping an Eye Open and the novel The Man in the RedCoat with a lot of art inside, or The Noise of the Time about the Russian musician Shostakovich… So in his books we find a lot of history, art and also politics.

This is the cover of the book I bought thirty years ago. In it, you can see the Ark of Noah and a part of a spaceship floating in a stormy sea in an intent to convey the contents of the book: the history and the sea. The idea of the book is similar to another famous book by Stefan Zweig: Decisive Moments in History: Twelve Historical Miniatures. So, Barnes tells us about ten “and a half moment” in the History (real or literary) of the world but under a fictional vision with a short story form.

QUESTIONS for the first part of the story 

Tell us in your words what the bad omen was.

What happened in the Canary Islands?

Why was Senegal important for the French?

What do you know about famous rafts? What do you know about the raft of Odysseus?

Do you remember other famous shipwrecks?

What do you know about the myth of Medusa?

When the raft was ready with all the people on it, they shouted “Vive le Roi!” What political moment was France in?

Tell us about the sufferings of the shipwrecked people.

What cruel or repugnant but necessary actions did the shipwrecked do? What would you do in your case?

What happened to the people who didn’t want to abandon the ship?

Who rescued the shipwrecked, and what did the survivors do afterwards?

 

QUESTIONS about Scene of Shipwreck, by Géricault

 

Do you remember any film or novel about catastrophes? Why do you think we like this kind of films if we already know how they end?

What do you know about Géricault (not the biography, but some curious or interesting fact)?

Géricault shaved his head in order not to see anyone and be locked in his studio working. Do you know more cases of artists who had to do something radical to keep on working?

What human resources did Géricault use to paint more realistically his painting?

What can you tell us about Delacroix?

“You can tell more by showing less”: What does this saying mean? Can you give some examples?

What do you think about the title “Scene of Shipwreck”? What other title would you have given to the picture?

Who is Venus Anadyomene?

What differences do you remember between the painting and the real facts?
As we can see that cannibalism is taboo in most societies, do you think eating meat would be so in some years?

(some) VOCABULARY (in context)

portent = augury
porpoises = sea mammals similar to dolphins
frigate, corvette, flute, brig = different kind of ships
banian fig
shallows = not deep water
lead = heavy metal used to measure the depth
ensign = junior lieutenant
luffing = losing wind
have a heel = incline to one side
astern = behind
pinnace = boat
soundings = measuring (the depth of the water)
billows = big waves
tags = strips of (e.g.) metal
pewter = metal mixture of tin and lead
supernumerary = extra

The Runaway, by Morley Callaghan

Morley Callaghan at the Wikipedia

The Runaway: summary

The Runaway at the "Esquire"

Morley Callaghan, by Roser Gelabert

BIOGRAPHY

Morley Callaghan was born in 1903, in Toronto, into an Irish Roman Catholic family. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1925. During his college years, Callaghan held a summer job as a reporter with the Toronto Daily Star, where he met Ernest Hemingway. The two exchanged stories, and Hemingway encouraged Callaghan in his writing. In 1925 Callaghan enrolled in a law school at Osgoode Hall, in Toronto, and was admitted to the Ontario Bar in 1928, but he did not practice law.

Callaghan’s career as a writer began in 1921, when he sold a descriptive piece to the Toronto Star Weekly. In 1926 published his first story in the Paris magazine, This Quarter and started on his first novel Strange Fugitive, and his stories began to appear regularly in American and European magazines. Callaghan married Loreta Dee in 1929 and went to Paris for eight months. There he was part of the great gathering of writers in Montparnasse that included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald or James Joyce. He recalled this time in a memoir, That Summer in Paris, 1963; in the book he discusses the famous boxing match between himself and Hemingway, and, being Callaghan a better boxer, he knocked Hemingway to the floor.

The 1930s were an active and prolific period for Callaghan. His work was strongly affected by the experiences of the Depression. He published four novels, and he produced a second collection of stories, Now that April’s Here and Other Stories. And wrote two plays in 1939.

During World War II, Callaghan was attached to the Royal Canadian Navy and served on assignment for the National Film Board of Canada. He also become a well-known radio figure.

Callaghan’s novels and short stories are marked by Roman Catholicism, often focusing on individuals whose essential characteristic is a strong but often weakened sense of self.

Callaghan was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1960. In 1982, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

A long time Toronto resident, Callaghan remained independent until the end of his life. He broke a hip in 1989 at the age of 86, but still persisted in walking to his neighbourhood grocery store to do his shopping. He died of natural causes in Toronto on August 25, 1990.

 

THE STORY

The protagonist in this story is an adolescent boy named Michael. He is younger than some of his friends he is much bigger physically. His life is divided between the pleasures of childhood, the problems at home and the pangs of love. Michael's behaviour is affected for these tensions. It is due to these tensions that at first jumps down on the sawdust and the same tension disallows him to jump down the second time, while all other boys are able to do, so he becomes a subject of jeer. Only to stablish his superiority, he goes out to fight with a coloured boy, but then he makes friends with him and finds several qualities in the opponent. He loves his father and also his stepmother, he has a soft corner for his stepmother, but is unable to establish a good relationship with her because she reprimands him, though for his own good. What disturbs him more is that his father and stepmother quarrel all the time, and that makes Michael feel unhappy and sorrowful. He is also ashamed that their hot arguments can be heard by the passers-by and those living in the neighbourhood.

Added to this tension is the fact that he is unable to stablish communication with the girl he loves. He can’t find the right words to talk to her. One of the major reasons for him to decide to escape is when he realizes that she is in a relation with another boy.

He feels trapped in a society where everyone knows everyone and a family where his father had constant arguments with his stepmother.  He wants to be with unknown people, but then he is going to his uncle in the city. Thus, we see that he is suffering from contradictory feelings all the time, unable to decide clearly what he wants.

It is then not a surprise that Michael feels the need to escape, to run away from everybody and visit “places with beautiful names, places like Tia Juana, Woodbine, Saratoga and Blue Bonnets.”

Michael, however, is not an irresponsible guy, he has plans to settle with his uncle in the city he plans to write his agony to his father from the city. The story ends with a wide-open future to the young boy.

 

CONCLUSION

Adolescence is the most difficult stage of life. Teenagers are difficult to manage. They can be very sensitive, perhaps too sensitive on some occasions. They are often contradictory. It is hard to understand what they are going through; and due to this, they are likely to do strange things, which are done by Michael in this story.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the main characters:

>Mike / Michael

>Father

>Mother / Stepmother

>Helen Murray

>Art

Teenagers:

>What characteristics define a teenager?

>What is the meaning of “adolescence”?

>Teenagers now, are they the same they were in “our time”? Why?

>Doing something risky, or difficult, seems to be the typical challenge for teenagers, like a rite of passage. Do you remember some anecdote / story related to it?

>Do you remember any other short stories or novels where the teenagers are the stars, e.g., The Lord of the Flies?

>Do you think Mike’s feelings for his parents reflect the typical teenager feelings for theirs?

Fighting: is it a way to make friends? (Remember The Quiet Man and Women in Love)

Why was Mike worried when his father didn’t go out of the shed?

Why do you think at a moment the narrator says “Heavy clouds were sweeping up from the horizon” (384, 4)? And what about “The moonlight shining on the hay” (390, 2)?

At the end, Mikes to look for the places he mentions because of the beauty of the names: do you know something about the chapter in Proust “Names of countries”?

VOCABULARY

lumberyard, sawdust, whitecaps, stump, yellow, coaxing, fob, lick, humoring, cinder path, flour-and-feed, loafers, crony, glumy, roughcast, shack, coon, snowball's chance, pop, clucking, stoop, woodpecker, pocket, shipyard, dogged, clover

The Swimmer, by John Cheever

John Cheever at the Wikipedia

The Swimmer at the Wikipedia

Analysis, summary, characters, themes... click here

More analysis: click here

Another study guide (clear and to the point): click here

The Swimmer audiobook (from minute 3.31 on)

The Swimmer (film) at the Wikipedia

The Swimmer (trailer)

Presentation, by Begoña Devis

Biography

John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. His father was the owner of a shoe factory, which went bankrupt with the crash of 29, and the family fell into relative poverty. After this fact, the father left the family, and the young Cheever lived for a time in Boston with his brother. During that period he survived by publishing articles and stories in various media.
He was expelled from the academy for smoking, which ended his education and this was the core of his first short story, Expelled, which Malcom Cowley bought for the New Republican newspaper. From that moment, Cheever devoted himself entirely to writing short stories that progressively found space in several magazines and newspapers, and finally in the famous magazine The New Yorker, with which he maintained, until the end of these days, an intense relationship.
He was called the Chekhov of the suburbs, because many of his stories occurred in the middle class neighbourhoods that were born around New York during the recovery of the economy after the Second World War.
In 1957 he won The National Book Award for his first novel, and in 1971 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his compilation of stories. He wrote primarily about the decline of the American dream, alcoholism and homosexuality, and sometimes his characters had dubious moral.
A movie was made from his short story The Swimmer in 1957, played by Burt Lancaster. At the time it was unsuccessful, but now it is considered a cult film by cinephiles.
John Cheever died in New York in 1982 at the age of 70.

The Swimmer

The Swimmer is a short story by John Cheever about a relatively young and handsome man who decides to go back to his home, 8 miles from where he is at the moment, swimming. For this he plans a tour along the pools of his various friends and neighbours, a route that he will call “Lucinda River” in honour to his wife. This wild idea will take him on a personal journey with surreal overtones. As the journey progresses, the character’s disorientation, his temporary alterations and the doubtfulness of his feat are revealed. At first his neighbours are friendly and accommodating, but there comes a time when everything gets worse, being forced to cross a public swimming pool, later when a neighbour accuses him of being  an intruder and in the last pool he sees how an old lover looks at him with disdain, and she doesn’t even offer him a drink. When he finally gets home, we do not know if a day, a month or a year, later, he finds it closed and empty
In my opinion, it is a metaphorical journey, in which the protagonist wants to return home but cannot find the way to do so. Alcoholism is always present, and the sinking in it (and not in the pools) is what increasingly disorients him and prevents him from getting where he would like. A journey on a magnificent sunny day, in which an attractive young man is about to do something heroic, but instead he finishes as a defeated man who has lost his home, family and even his memories.

It is a dark and desperate story, but of great narrative force and with a dreamlike and surreal component that makes it especially attractive.

QUESTIONS

Characters:

Neddy Merrill

Mrs Graham

Enid Bunker

Grace Biswagner

Shirley Adams

Mr and Mrs Halloran

Helen and Eric Sachs

Places:

At Westerhazy’s

At Levys’s garden

At Lindleys’s

At Welchers’s

At the Recreation Center

At home

Can you point out the hints the narrator give us along the story about the decline and fall of the hero?
What social class do the characters belong to?
What do they drink?
What is the National Audubon Society?
Can you find parallels between this story and the Odyssey or a Pilgrimage?
What season is the story situated in?
What is a point of no return? And what is the point of no return in the story?
Greetings: he kisses women and shakes hands to men. What do you think of this kind of greetings, one for men and another for women?
Where do you prefer to swim: swimming pools, the sea, rivers, reservoirs?

 VOCABULARY

golf link, artesian well, cumulus cloud, dogleg, hurl, choppy, saddle, hoist, portage, bony, de Haviland trainer, spigot, cordite, put sb out to board, tool (v), bask, roughhouse, cerulean

The Last Mohican, by Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud at the Wikipedia: click here

Pictures of Fidelman at the Wikipedia: click here

The Last Mohican: review

The Last Mohican: analisis

The Last Mohican: critical review

Presentation, by Gemma Agell

The writer

Bernard Malamud, a New Yorker, was born in Brooklyn in 1914 and died in Manhattan in 1986. He is one of the main representatives of the Jewish literature, although he was a declared agnostic. His parents were Russian immigrants. Malamud lived his adolescence during the Great Depression and watching Charlie Chaplin’s films to have some fun and explain them to his friends. He graduated at Columbia University where he did his thesis about Thomas Hardy. It seems it was an impulsive man since in 1948, he burned his first manuscript entitled The Light Sleeper. The topics he wrote about were social issues and above all the difficulties of immigrants who arrived in America, and the hope in reaching their dreams despite their poverty. He is not considered a prolific writer since he only wrote 8 novels. In 1967, he won the Pulitzer and the National Book Awards with the novel The Fixer where he talks about anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire. He was also known for the 55 short stories collected and published after his death in the book Complete Stories. 

The story

The Last Mohican happens in Rome and has two men as protagonists. Fidelman is a middle-aged man who’s just arrived in Italy to spend a year to write a critical work about the painter and architect Giotto. He planned to stay in Rome for one week and then travel to Florence, Assisi and Padua, but this was completely disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious Jewish man. Their first meeting was when Fidelman was leaving the rail station, Susskind, keeps his eyes on him; Fidelman was good-looking and well-dressed, the perfect prey for Susskind who was looking for someone to finance their “street business”. He was a Jewish refugee from Israel who had lived in Germany and now was trying to survive in Rome cheating tourists. He offered Fidelman as a guide, to help him to find an hotel, in fact all of them were things to get some money. After this first meeting, the story tells us how a very organised man with a well-planned stay in Rome, changed completely when Susskind got into his life. In order to escape from this, Fidelman decided to go to Florence some days before expected, but his plans were broken when he arrived at the hotel room and his briefcase, and in addition the first chapter of the manuscript about Giotto, disappeared. From the beginning, he suspected of Susskind, and started a searching that supposed for him a decline, for during three months he quit the visits to the museums and got obsessed about find Susskind, even though he got up on weight and his physical aspect got worse. At the end of the story he finds Susskind but not his manuscript. 

Some things

Malamud starts with an accurate physical description of Fidelman and his outfit. It is important that the reader imagine a good-looking man but also emphasize with him, presenting him as a humble man who had worked hard to save money and even borrowed some from his sister in order to make his dream true, travel to Italy.

The reason that Fidelman decided to go to Italy was Giotto. Giotto di Bondone was a painter and architect born in Vicchio in 1267. Nowadays, we can contemplate his works at the Gallerie degli Uffici in Florence, Louvre Museum in Paris or the National Gallery in London. He contributed to the Italian Renaissance, and is known for representing emotions in paintings and also for incorporate 3-dimentional vision. By the incorporation of this changes it started a new way to express the religious art. He has remarkable paintings in churches of Assisi and Padua. The writer also wants to reflect that Fidelman is a curious person mentioning Trofimov as his alter ego: “Call me Trofimov” he said to Susskind. Trofimov was a role of the play The Cherry Orchard by Chekov where he express his ideas and represents an eternal student; Fidelman said “If there’s something to learn I want to learn it”.

The author describes the life that Fidelman dreamed at his arrival in Rome, a curious person who had planned his stay with a lot of activities: mornings at libraries searching for catalogues and archives, and after lunch and a nap to recover, he visited churches and museums during the afternoon. A perfect day for him finished with some relax, dinner with white wine and a stroll in Trastevere quarter near the Tiber. The role of Susskind is the stereotype of a person who takes profit on others, he asked for a suit, for money, and had not enough with some dollars he received from Fidelman. Susskind is a kind of survivor who lives illegally in Italy after quitting Germany; I’m not sure if he really wants to find a real job or prefers to live this way. When he begins to go after Fidelman, surely because he thinks that he is rich, he becomes almost his shadow, and Fidelman gives him some money in order “to have some peace of mind” as he said in the story. In my opinion, while the story goes on you empathize with Fidelman and his feelings to get rid of Susskind and really enjoy his stay in Rome, just until it became to an obsessive behaviour.

While reading the story you are someway transported there, he reflects the art present in Italy and especially in Rome, incorporating references of emblematic sites of the Eternal City: the Diocletian Baths, which afterwards were reconverted in a church and convent by Michelangelo. The Vatican, a paradise for art lovers, where Fidelman experienced some kind of “ecstasy” staring at its walls and absorbing all that beauty, and he also introduces a little reference to the statue of Romulo and Remus, the twins from the legend of Rome’s origin.

Malamud chose that the two main characters of the story were Jewish like him, although he was agnostic. The first time they met, Susskind calls Fidelman asking if he was Jewish, this was the link he found to explain him his own story as a refugee a connect with his solidarity.

The story had a change of direction when the briefcase with the manuscript disappears, Fidelman was another man, he didn’t enjoy any more his stay in Rome, and even he postponed his trip to Florence and the other cities. The next months he started to visit places just to find Susskind, because he suspected that he has stolen the briefcase, he didn’t answer his sister calls, his appearance was not important anymore, he put on weight. The search for Susskind had become an obsession.

The author added some irony in the narrative, mostly when he explains his dreams, for instance the one where he was in the cemetery reading the inscription; these situations always finished with the sentence: “But not Susskind”. This particular sense of humour was also used to represent in a visual way the freezing cold of the refugee’s room, he said: “this fish in the fishbowl is swimming around in Arctic Seas”. When he goes in Susskind apartment furtively and don’t find anything, he returned to the pension and had a dream where he found the briefcase, “but not the manuscript!”

Some Giotto's paintings

On the day before our departure, we decided to go as far afield as Padua where were to be found those Vices and Virtues of which Swann had given me reproductions; after walking in the glare of the sun across the garden of the Arena, I entered the Giotto chapel the entire ceiling of which and the background of the frescoes are so blue that it seems as though the radiant day has crossed the threshold with the human visitor, and has come in for a moment to stow away in the shade and coolness its pure sky, of a slightly deeper blue now that it is rid of the sun's gilding, as in those brief spells of respite that interrupt the finest days, when, without our having noticed any cloud, the sun having turned his gaze elsewhere for a moment, the azure, more exquisite still, grows deeper. In this sky, upon the blue-washed stone, angels were flying with so intense a celestial, or at least an infantile ardour, that they seemed to be birds of a peculiar species that had really existed, that must have figured in the natural history of biblical and Apostolic times, birds that never fail to fly before the saints when they walk abroad; there are always some to be seen fluttering above them, and as they are real creatures with a genuine power of flight, we see them soar upwards, describe curves, 'loop the loop' without the slightest difficulty, plunge towards the earth head downwards with the aid of wings which enable them to support themselves in positions that defy the law of gravitation, and they remind us far more of a variety of bird or of young pupils of Garros practising the vol-plané, than of the angels of the art of the Renaissance and later periods whose wings have become nothing more than emblems and whose attitude is generally the same as that of heavenly beings who are not winged. (Marcel Proust: La prisionnière)

Navicella

San Francesco dona le vesti al cavaliere povero.

TOPICS

Fidelman has a pigskin briefcase. What is the importance of this particular for the story?
What are “oxblood shoes”?
What do you know about the Diocletian Baths?
Fidelman: describe very briefly his appearance and his personality.
What is the meaning in context of “give a skeleton a couple of pounds”?
What do you know about Romulus and Remus legend?
There’s a film directed by Guy Richie (Madonna’s ex-husband) called “Lock, Stock and Two Barrels”. In the story we have the expression “lock, stock, barrel”; what does it mean? What is its origin? What is its relation with the title of the film? Have you seen it?
What is the meaning of “knickers”, in context?
Shimon Susskind: describe briefly his appearance and his personality.
What can you say about Florence, Siena, Assisi and Padua?
Who was Trofimov?
What was Fidelman’s daily routine?
There is the expression “remembrance of things unknown”. Doesn’t it remind you of a famous French literary work, a masterpiece? What’s its author and the exact title?
Fidelman said “My God, I’ve got to stop using my eyes so much” when he was looking at some ceiling. Why does he say it? What do you know about the Stendhal syndrome?
Why Susskind doesn’t go to Israel?
What is the context for the sentence: “The Italians are human people”?
What business does Susskind propose to Fidelman?
At the police station, an officer draws a line on “valore del manuscritto”. What is the meaning of this?
How did Fidelman try to recover the main ideas of his first chapter about Giotto?
Where did Fidelman look for Susskind and where did he find him?
What were Fidelman’s three different accommodations?
What was Fidelman’s daily routine after losing his work about Giotto?
They mention the Spanish painter Murillo. What do you know about him?
What was Fidelman’s real vocation?
Where did Susskind live?
What is the meaning of Fidelman’s last dream (“San Francesco dona le vesti al cavaliere povero”)?
Why did Susskind burn the chapter?
What did Fidelman earn at the end?
What is the relationship between the title and the story (remember there’s an adventures novel by James Fenimore Cooper called The Last of the Mohicans)?

VOCABULARY

shalom, schnorrer, Yiddish, constipated, mirthlessly, grant, porter (two meanings), cigar store Indian, welfare organization, gabardine, warped nerve, peddle, Joint Distribution Committee, gross, saddled, pest, Sephardim, faucet, pudgy, ghetto, goyim, painstakingly