Korea, by John McGahern

 

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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

The Fly, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Maria A. Feijóo

This story takes place in a very brief time-lapse, at the end of a meeting between two friends. They both are old men, but very different from each other. Nevertheless, they have an important thing in common, as we will learn later in the narrative.
The first character introduced is Mr Woodifield. He is the youngest, although due to his poor health we could think he is the oldest: he has had a stroke, and his life and mental abilities have been affected. He is now retired, and we know that he is married and has at least two daughters, as we are told that they only allow him to go to the City alone on Tuesdays.
One of those Tuesdays, he goes to “the boss’s” office. This character has no other name in the story. We can suppose he really has been Mr Woodifield’s boss. He is five years older than him, but remains very vigorous and active. He also offers the perfect image of social success: he is proud of his house, of his money and of his position. He treats his employees in an authoritarian way, but he seems to have a real esteem for Mr Woodifield. Anyway, there is something that he does not want to talk about: a photography of a young officer that stands on his table.
At the end of their meeting, “the boss” offers Mr Woodifield a glass of an expensive whisky - he insists on that - in the awareness that he usually is not allowed to drink. Maybe due to the alcohol, Mr Woodifield brings out just the only thing “the boss” does not want to hear about. He explains that his daughters have been in Belgium, visiting the grave of their brother, Reggie, and that they also had a look at a nearby grave, the grave of “the boss’s” son, the young officer in the picture. This is what they have in common: both had lost their sons during the war.
After a few banalities, Mr Woodifield leaves his friend’s office. As he remains alone, “the boss” commands his clerk to be let alone for a half an hour. He is very affected and wants to weep. His unique son was the meaning of his whole life: he wanted him to inherit his business, his house, all what he built with so much effort.
But, surprisingly, he is not able to cry as he did at the beginning of his loss. He goes on thinking how great his son was, but six years have passed, and even looking at the photography he cannot really feel again the pain he was intended to feel.
Suddenly, his attention is drawn to his ink pot, where a fly is desperately trying to survive. In what seems a compassionate gesture, he saves the fly from dying by taking the poor animal out of the ink and dropping it on a blotting-paper. He observes the way the fly removes the ink from his body, and suddenly he takes more ink and drop it on the fly. Once more, the little insect removes the ink accurately, driven by its survival instinct. A second and a third time, the boss repeats the cruel gesture, and twice more the fly repeats his laborious task, each time with less energy. The boss continues observing and even talking to the fly, until it dies.
At that moment, the boss throws the exhausted body of the insect into the waste-paper basket. He has a very weird feeling that frightens him, but he calls his clerk and asks him to bring some blotting-paper. And when he tries to remember what was worrying him before, he could not remember. He could not remember anything at all.

 MY OPINION

This short story is very interesting because there are plenty of possible interpretations. The fly can be held as a powerful representation of the nonsense of the war, where young people lose their lives in an absurd way under the command of powerful people. It is also a vivid image of how difficult it sometimes becomes to struggle for life when we have been hurt by destiny. The two human characters are another image of the poor control we may have upon our lives. “The boss” is an especially rich character due to the contrast between his image of a powerful man, able to control his and the other’s life, and his very childish behaviour with the fly as well as his poor emotional ability to face and manage pain.

QUESTIONS

-How has your life changed since you are retired? Or how do you think it’ll be changed?

-Do retired people feel they are a nuisance for other people? In what sense?

-Let’s talk about cemeteries. Are they beautiful places to walk around? Do you know any curious cemetery? Do you go and visit your relatives’ graves?

-Do you think it’s correct to take away things from a hotel? (I mean: shampoo bottles, combs, toothbrushes…) Do you usually do it?

-When you travel, what do you remember best? (People usually tell anecdotes.)

-What kind of crier are you? Do you cry watching films? Are you ashamed of crying? (Kundera kitsch)

-According to your opinion, why do /don’t children go on with their parents’ trade?

-What do you think it’s the meaning of the fly in the story?

-Why did he torture the fly? Is it an instance of the banality of evil?

-Magic numbers; three times the man flooded the fly with ink, and at the third time it died. What do you think of ritual numbers? Do you have one? Why did you choose it?

-“But such a grinding feeling of wretchedness seized him that he felt positively frightened.” Why?

-At the end, he didn’t remember something, like the old man at the beginning. What does the writer tell us about this for?

 

VOCABULARY

snug, pram, City, at the helm, wistfully, muffler, treacle, on his last pins, tamper, rolling in his chaps, nutty, yer, saw ... out, cubby, spring chair, learning the ropes, man jack, tackle, look sharp 

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The Son, by Graham Swift

SUMMARY, by Nora Carranza

Kosta Alexopoulos is a Greek, born in Smyrna, in Asia Minor, he lives in Camden, England, with his wife Anna and their son Adoni.

They are all expatriated, the family had to abandon their country, and, after thirty-five years, Kosta remembers the facts that obliged them to move out from Greece and reflects about their life, and he mostly concentrates in his relationship with Adoni.

When Kosta was a baby, his parents had to go with him to a French refugee ship: the Turks were burning Smyrna, killing as many persons as they could.

Later on, there was another war in Athens, the Germans killed Kosta’s mother, and he decided to chop off his mother fingers in order to exchange the big rings she had on her hand. Not the moment for feelings, there was hunger time.

The Germans also killed Kosta’s father.

With the country destroyed and no nice future to come, Greek men looked for wives and set out to New York or England, hoping they would open a restaurant, make money and eventually go back to Greece.

Therefore, after many years working, Kosta opened his own restaurant in Caledonian Road, a place totally different from the sunny and noisy places he loved, where he would never go back: he thinks “you are made for one soil, but life send you to another, and then you can’t budge”.

The three members of the family work at the restaurant: Anna, Kosta and Adoni.

Adoni doesn’t meet at all the connotation of his name. As a matter of fact, Adoni was born in Athens, in 1944, in Melianos' family, neighbours of Anna’s family. The real boy’s father died in Poland; the mother died giving him birth.

The baby was taken in by Anna’s family, and she proposed Kosta adopting him when they married. Kosta accepted, imagining that later the true son he desired would arrive, but he didn’t know Anna was not fertile.

The years passed by, and the couple never find the moment to explain Adoni his origins. There was always an excuse to postpone that essential explanation. They even began to cheat themselves that the boy was their real son.  

Kosta considers that Adoni didn’t grow in a satisfactory way, because he wasn’t good at school, reserved, he didn’t look for girls, didn’t go out at night, didn’t have his own wishes or opinions.

When Adoni was eighteen, he started working at the restaurant. He was efficient in that job, he worked hard, although he moved like a great bear between the tables and didn’t show any charm. When Kosta introduced Adoni to the customers, they look surprised at that absurd name.

Kosta always plays the role of a proud Greek restaurant owner; always pretends he was Zorba the Greek. 

They have a life of routine and permanent work, they live on top of the restaurant, no entertainments, holidays or comfort, their only dedication was their business, each one their duties.

Anna wasn’t a beautiful woman either, she put on weight and seemed a huge milk pastry when lying on bed. But she does properly all what’s needed for the work, a “great work horse” in Kosta’s opinion.

Kosta expected one day Adoni will be like the son he would have liked, and he moved between deception and acceptance, between hope and guilt. Sometimes he wept.

Moreover, Kosta started to be paranoid, imagining Adoni could discover by himself he had no real parents.

Surprisingly, when Adoni was already thirty-three, he started to go out at night, awakening happy expectations on his father that he would finally meet girls! But what he really did was going to the library and visiting a group of old expatriate Greeks, facts that make grow the fear of his father that he was playing the detective.

When summer arrived, Adoni asked, for the first time in his life, to go on holidays. He was thirty-five….

And he had decided to visit Greece, a very terrifying idea for Kosta, who had to accept to let him go and find out where he came from. Anna felt less worried, considering they would go through it all, that life and routine would continue as always.

The fortnight finished, Kosta went to the airport, and when he met Adoni, tried to find out every evidence that he already knew, he waited his son to say it, to let it out. Instead, Adoni commented about Athens, full of tourists and no decent meal to be found in the city centre.

Arrived at the restaurant, the family work the whole day as every day until the night, when the frightening moment arrived. Adoni explained, his face hardened to stone, that he found an old man, Elias, who knew the past of the families. That man revealed Adoni his true surname was Melianos, not Alexopoulos, his real father died in the war and his real mother died when Adoni was born.

Elias told another unexpected news: Kosta’s parents were killed by the Turks, and their neighbours, the Alexopoulos, were the ones that took Kosta to the refugee ship.

As Kosta had once said: We are born in confusion, and that’s how we live.

I think this story is an example of some damages of wars, not always considered.
We always think about the destruction, the dead people, the hunger, and other terrible sufferings. But we don’t frequently think about the orphan little babies, or children, deprived of their parents, who grow with other families or in public institutions. Besides, wars produce expats who must abandon their countries, to live abroad feeling the loss of their homeland.

QUESTIONS

-What do you think of anthropophagy? Would you do /accept it in case of extreme necessity? Do you know cases about it?

-Who was Adonis in the Greek Mythology?

-After a war between two countries, according to your opinion, when or how can them stop their mutual rancour?

-When, or why, would emigrants go back to their native country? Do you know people who have gone back?

-What do you know about the Greco-Turkish war (1919-1922)? And about the great fire of Smyrna?

-For adopted children, what is the best moment to tell them they are adopted?

-If you were an adopted child, would you like to know who were your biological parents and why you were given to adoption?

-Why do you think the narrator has made Adoni bashful, silent, secretive and “chaste and sober as a monk”?

-“We Greek are like that”: do you have an adjective to define different nations?

-From your point of view, is it a good idea to encourage your children to look for a partner? What is the best way to encourage them?

-What kind of club do you imagine “Neo Elleniko” can be?

-What is the reference to “King Oedipus asking fool questions”?

-Have you read Zorba the Greek or seen the film?

-Hasn’t Kosta to be happy because he didn’t chop off his mother’s fingers? Why do you imagine he’s angry?

 

VOCABULARY

barter, snap-shots, pile, beads, budge, lopping off, (was) none the wiser, kid, stunted, swop, podgy, snigger, drooping, blancmange, winds, dolt, skewering, qualms, gave her notice, mousy, worked it out, forestalled, nightingale, fogies, lollop, Customs, spit it out, nudging at his lips, cue, tilting