Showing posts with label teenager. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teenager. Show all posts

Cecilia Awakened, by Tessa Hadley

San Miniato al Monte

SUMMARY AND IDEAS

This is another story about a singular girl: the intellectual, clever, plain, rejected by her schoolmates, shy girl, and her getting free of this secluded scholar life.

Cecilia, a 15-year-old girl, is the only daughter of an elderly couple, a librarian (Ken, the husband) and a historical novels' writer (Angela, the wife). This couple brought up their daughter in their likes, habits and culture, rather apart from ordinary or not so cultivated people. But while a child, Cecilia has liked this kind of life (reading thick books, going to the museums…), although for her mates and even for her teachers she has been a bit of a smart-arse or too goody-goody.

The story is situated mostly in the family stay in Italy, where they spend a week holiday, although it goes backwards, and forwards again. In this trip, Cecilia awakens to her adolescence when he sees how absurd it’s that she’s still sleeping in the same room as her parents, she doesn’t dress as a teenager and she does cultural tourism. Now she’s abroad, she feels deep inside her that she’s a kind of weirdo, she sees that they are a nuisance for the local people and notices the contrast between herself and the local girls.

She spends all the week in Florence sulking, although she doesn’t oppose openly to her parents’ opinions and proposals. But the last day of her stay, she has an epiphany, a moment of revelation when they go and see a church away from the most touristic and crowded places. There she likes the building and its pictures, and she sees clearly what a pest is the tourism. After the moment of calm bliss, a monk chides them for being there when local people are meeting to say a prayer, and she doesn’t want to be there any more because she thinks the monk is right; so she asks her parents to go back to the hotel alone. She has awakened, she wants to break free from her family and from her childhood.

The ending is very peculiar because the narrator doesn’t tell us what she’s doing, but what her mother imagines she’s doing.

 

I think there are some interesting topics in this story. One of them it’s the beginning: as we can see, it isn’t unusual for Tessa Hadley to start the story in medias res; it’s a classical way (e.g. Odyssey) and it’s useful to attract the reader’s attention.

A resource we don’t find in this story is the weather to create some mood in the atmosphere: sadness, melancholy, action… Perhaps in Italy, the weather doesn’t change so often to give us a variety of moods.

We can see the story has some similarities with “A Card Trick”, because the star is also a weirdo shy intellectual girl that wants to get out of her cocoon. But in the present case, the girl is not the absolute protagonist: she shares this role with her mother. Angela had to fight her own mother, because she didn’t want to be a traditional woman, and now she feels that her daughter also wants to fight her because maybe she wants to be more like the other normal girls, so maybe every generation has to reject the previous one.

Another interesting question is the reason or the meaning of the characters’ names. Does Angela want to be a guardian of her daughter, as an angel? Saint Cecilia, besides being the musicians’ patroness, is (according to some sources) also the patron saint of blind people: was Cecilia blind (or voluntarily blind) to other girls, to the world, and now she can see it because of a miracle / epiphany?

And we have also some mysteries: why does the narrator focus our attention in Angela’s mother’s lipstick? What is the meaning of San Miniato martyrdom (he was beheaded, but then he carries his head on his trunk)? And what about St. Placidus being rescued from the water?


QUESTIONS


-What do you think are the features of rearing a child when he or she is the only child and with their parents a bit old?
-Did / do you do any collection? What do you collect? What for?
-Have you read Middlemarch? And what about Dickens novels? What can you tell us about them?

-Why do you think the writer had chosen such big physical changes in Cecilia’s puberty?

-Cecilia’s family liked the past and didn’t like the present. What do you prefer, and why, past, present of future? Is there an age for each preference?

-Is there a cliché in the story about what men and women see in museums?

-“Angela wasn’t a feminist, grateful to be liberated from the tyranny of pleasing.” What does it mean for you?

-The father is “getting early English books online.” Do you know what is Project Gutenberg?

-Do you think that some people are more attractive with a cup / cigarette in their hands?

-As you see it, is Signora Petricci correct in her opinion about Cecilia’s father? Or was it only a teenager’s imagination?

-Cecilia has a trick to get rid of a fear. Do you have one? Can you tell us?

-May you say that the writer has chosen the character’s names for any reason?

-What message could the sound of Petricci’s bracelet have sent to Cecilia?

-“She wasn’t beautiful.” When and why do we decide that a person is beautiful?

-According to your point of view, intellectual people are always shut out of the world?

-When you travel as a tourist, do you feel rejected? How much tourism is too much tourism?

-What do Abraham and Isaac symbolize in the story?

-What do you know about Caravaggio? And about San Miniato al Monte?

-What is for you the best way to learn to appreciate art, books and music?

-What are the meanings of these revelations for Cecilia: 1-San Miniato, 2-Vespers song, 3-the monk?

-Why does Angela remember her mother’s lipstick when Cecilia has gone to the hotel?

-Does San Placidus rescue have any meaning for the end of the story?


VOCABULARY

dummies, squalling, stinks, showed her off, finicky, wizened, fey, sprite, Poundworlds, identikit, dozed, jazzed it up, plotters, reëntering, harbouring, static, slacks, hooking, pull-out bed, swarthy, truckle, checked, derided, crop, scowling, swooning, unassailable, printouts, sweltering, reprieve, thawing, skeins, Verpers, doom, quailed, scourging, puny, foreboding, snooping, nub, stamped-out



A Card Trick, by Tessa Hadley

 SUMMARY

This is a capital story of the collection; with it, Tessa Hadley won the 2005 O. Henry award.

Gina, a 47-year-old scholar and writer, is revisiting Wing Lodge, the house where John Morrison, her favourite novelist, whose works she has deeply studied and about whom she has written a book, lived during the last and most productive years of his life.

There she remembers her holiday at her mother’s friend (or client), Mamie. Mamie has a glamorous family of three boys and a daughter. Although Mamie belongs to the high class, she and her children are natural, free and easy, frank, kind and welcoming; but they aren’t much into culture, literature and art, and haven’t gone to university, so their academic education is a bit limited; however, they aren’t silly and can have interesting conversations. In the other hand, Gina is very clever about these subjects, and she’s a very good student, but she’s socially clumsy and shy; moreover, she feels awkward in her body, because she’s tall and a bit plump.

There, in their house near the beach, she spent two weeks, but she didn’t go much to the beach, neither did she take part in their open-air entertainments; instead, she pretended to study to prepare her exams and spent most of the time alone in her room; but, when the family is away, she roams the house searching and prying and making herself comfortable with food, drink, cigarettes and lying on the sofa.

One day, believing she was alone at home, she discovers that Josh, the less glamorous of the brothers is at home. She had some feelings for him. Gina doesn’t know what to do and spends a lot of time shut in her room.

But the last day of her holiday there, she feels a lot more confident. One of the sons is in London, Mamie and two other children have gone to see some friends, and Tom is staying at home building houses of cards; as he cannot finish a difficult one, Gina offers to show him a card trick. The boy is astonished and enraptured at the trick. For Gina, this meeting is a kind of symbolic sexual encounter.

The next day, she went back home and never again met anybody of Mamie’s family. Afterward she will know that Mamie got divorced and, after some time, she died, and one of her sons also died drowned; so perhaps a glamorous family has also their misfortunes.

But now, as she remembers this fortnight in a coastal village, she isn’t that awkward 18-year-old girl any more: she’s a tall woman, perhaps not beautiful, but “statuesque”, who has had some success in her field and feels confident with her life and her body. In John Morrison’s house she gets emotional when she sees a manuscript with a scene that has been erased in the published book: a middle-aged woman, daughter of the man just dead in bed, declares her love to the doctor who has taken care of him until the last moment; the doctor, who is married, feels disgusted and, amazed, rejects her.

The end of the story is a bit mysterious. Something (and insect, the lady guide) calls her attention, and the memories of that holiday come back to her, and she regrets that isolate life of hers when she could cheat someone to be her friend. Maybe, as she’s now a public person, she can play tricks no more to anyone.


QUESTIONS

-Why Gina’s appearance is important for the plot?

-What is Wing Lodge? (Compare to Lamb House). Have you ever visited a house of a famous person? Do you like visiting museums? Somebody said museums were like churches: do you agree?

-What can you say about Mamie and her family?

-Is a friendship between people of very different social classes possible? Why do you think so?

-Do you follow a diet? For your health or for your body shape / weight? Do / did you trust your diet?

-What are A levels and S levels?

-Is it usual that rich people don’t go to university? Do you think everybody should go?

-Do you know who were Walter Gropius, Conrad, Ford, Henry James, Wyndham Lewis, Gaudier-Brzeska, Mansfield, Pound?

-What kind of books do you imagine John Morrison wrote?

-What different talents (from the protagonist) did Mamie’s children have?

-Do you feel curiosity about how authors write? (I mean technical aspects: computer, pen, with music…) Do you know any singular case?

-What does “a Spartan boy carrying the fox under his shirt” refer to?

-What are “Honey” and “19”?

-Can you describe Tom?

-What do you know about “Derek and the Dominoes”?

-What good memories do you have about your holidays?

-“It was her mother fault”. What do you think of your parents’ responsibilities for our successes and failures?

-“It feels more sympathetic”. What can this mean when talking about a pack of cards?

-What do you think it’s the best way to break the ice in an embarrassing situation? For instance: “Charming day, isn’t it?” “Pray, don’t talk about the weather. Whenever people talk about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.”

-Do you know an easy card trick?

-What is it the meaning of the card trick for Gina’s maturing?

-How did Gina change over the years?

-What kind of novel was “Winter’s Day”?

-What books did made you cry?

-At the end, who is the victim in this sentence: so that your victim wouldn’t be able to put a card down wrong?

 

VOCABULARY

clothes-wise, Laura Ashley dress, pinafore, hair slide, toppling, glass-topped wicker table, raid, S level, awe, duffers, retakes, disingenuous, pushbike, wetsuit, fitting, sundial, gnarled, conkers, sparely, ferreting, off-handedness, frowsty, herbs, scuttled, fry-up, double declutching, sec, loo, tipsily, estate hands, drawn out (coffee), till, entropy, takeover, longhand, overspill, floundering



The Best Days, by Graham Swift

The Best Days, by Dora Sarrión
Sean and Andy are two friends who attend the funeral of Daffy, their former headmaster of Holmgate School, where they had studied six years ago.
It was a grey afternoon and there’d been a solemn and silent moment when the hearse departed, but then, someone had called out “Bye Daffy!!!” and the atmosphere was broken, it was almost like joyful liveliness. People started waving to each other, hand shaking, smiling, speaking. Everyone was freshly aware of being alive in the world and not dead in it.
The two friends spotted in the crowd who assisted to the funeral an old school friend, Karen, whom they both were in love with when they were students.
Karen turned up with her father, who was clearly a bit drunk, and her mother, who was wearing an outfit that was almost identical like his daughter, both were dressed in a vulgar and inappropriate way for a funeral, almost like whores. In Andy’s opinion, the mother “looks a right old baggage”.
These words bothered Sean, because, although deep down he agreed with Andy, he had an experience in the past that brought back him memories about Karen's mother, which were themselves embarrassing, but also pleasant, even exciting.
Sean remembered that, one day, while he was travelling on the bus where Karen was also, he noticed that she had forgotten her bag on the seat when she got off the bus. So he picked it up and decided to deliver it to her house, hoping to see her.
But she wasn't there, Sean found only her mother, who invited him to "come in and wait for her". Sean hesitated for a moment, but in the end he came in.
Suddenly, he found himself in Karen's mother arms and, without being able to avoid it, he lived his first sexual experience with her.
The author mixes several topics in his story:
Death: The atmosphere that usually surrounds funerals is contradictory, on the one hand people usually show sadness and pain for the deceased person but on the other hand, when the coffin is no longer present, they feel relieved and a great joy for the fact of being alive.
The loss of youth, reflected in Karen's mother: Sometimes, it's difficult to recognize the deterioration that the pass of time produces in our physique, and we insist on not accepting that reality, although we know that we cannot hide it even if we disguise ourselves as young people.
Memories: Over the years, when we think back to experiences that we lived in the past, many times they appear in our memory in a blurred way, in a form of sensations, smells, colours, music or phrases. Sometimes, we don't recall the events as they happened, but we can remember the emotions they produced in us. Sean keeps in his mind his first sexual experience, summarized in a sentence, which would stay with him until the day he dies.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters

Sean

Andy

Clive Davenport

Karen Shield

Do you have fond memories of your primary or secondary school? Have your opinions changed, positively or negatively, in the course of time?

Do you think unemployed people spend their time doing things that when they were employed couldn’t do?

Graham Swift like to emphasize situations talking about the weather. Did you find an instance of this in this story?

Why do you think a funeral is a good occasion for gathering people?

What kind/class of people attended the funeral? How do you know?

Why does the narrator describe their suits as “interview suits”?

Do you think she had left her bag in the bus on purpose?

Why do you imagine Karen and her friend did at Cheryl Hudson’s?

When the narrator says the “TV was on”, did he want to mean something else?

There are some details to show us that Mrs Shield isn't drunk. What are these? Why does the writer insist on this?

“Had she done this before?” What’s your opinion?

Mrs Shield is very practical: how does the writer show this?

What do you know about In Praise of Older Women, by Stephen Vizinczey, or Elogio de la madrastra, by Vargas Llosa, or about the film Ce que le jour doit à la nuit?

Would you have another point of view of the situation in which the boy was involved, if instead of a boy it had been a girl, and instead of a woman, a man?

After making love, he tried to work out his bearings. Does this feeling have any relation to the saying “Post coitum omne animal triste est, sive gallus et mulier”?

Was Sean a bit in love with Karen’s mother? How do you know?

Can you imagine how the life would be going on for the mother, the daughter, Sean and Andy?

Were those days for Sean the best days?

What is Sean’s moral lesson?

 

VOCABULARY


hearse, spillage, turnout, blustery, daffy, milling, makeshift, grim, barn, craned, drag, stance, abuse, rebuke, outbreaks, drab, flouncy, headpiece, tarty, fetching, sight, smothered, cutely, perky, unredeemed, scruff, blunt, cocky, old baggage, curb, the big V, tugged, goody-goody, delve, primness, sternly, fluffy, deed, ducking, cluttered, glow, bearings, peck, daubed, slab, goggling, prat, lovey-dovey, preening, big-time, jump, get the hots


Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend, by P. D. Wodehouse

P. D. Wodehouse at the Wikipedia




P. D. Wodehouse, by Begoña Devis

BIOGRAPHY 

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was born on the 15th of October 1881, in Guildford (UK). He was the son of Eleanor Deane, from a landed family, and Henry Ernest Wodehouse. The Wodehouse had been based in Norfolk for many centuries. His lineage is ancient, going back to as far back as 1227, when Sir Bertram of Wodehouse fought with Eduard I against the Scots.
He was a prolific writer, author of more than 90 narrative books (70 novels and 20 collections with a total of 200 stories), another hundred short stories in magazines, 400 articles, 19 plays and 250 song lyrics for 33 musicals of Broadway as well as adaptations and screenplays.
Until the age of two, he lived in Hong Kong, where his father was a British government judge. Back in London, he grew up with his two older brothers practically as am orphan, under different family guardianships, especially aunts, since his parents continued to reside in Hong Kong until he was 15 years old. That’s reflected in his abundant production: in his work there are no mothers but aunts, and there are also few fathers and their relationship with their children are scarce and comical. On the other hand, his biographer revealed that, as a young man, he pretended to be almost mentally retarded, when in reality he has intelligent, complex and educated. Thanks to that false naive disguise, he was able to concentrate on what he really liked: writing.
Having studied at Dulwich College, his first paid paper was “Aspects of Game Captaincy”. He was unable to follow his brother to Oxford because the family finances began to have difficulties. So, instead of a university degree, in September 1900, he reluctantly took a job at the London office of the Bank of Hong Kong and Shanghai. To disassociate himself from this job that he did not like at all, he began to write about sports and humorous stories in the press and magazines. As a great sportsman, he represented Dulwich College in boxing, cricked and rugby, sports which, along with golf, figure directly or indirectly in many of his stories.
Although he had already visited New York in 1904, it was during another visit in 1909 that Wodehouse sold “two short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier’s magazines for a total sum of $500, much more than he had ever made”. That decided him to leave the United Kingdom and settle in New York. In 1914, he married Ethel Newton, a widow he had met in New York two months earlier and whose daughter, Leonora, he adopted.
The following year, he was hired as a theatre critic by Vanity Fair magazine. By this time, his first novels had met with some success, and, from 1909, Wodehouse was living between Paris and the United States. His reputation as a humorous novelist was established with his work Psmith in the City. He maintained his enormous popularity through almost a hundred novels, in which a series of curious and very British characters were almost always idle young people disoriented by the absurd and comical situations. In 1919, he begins what will be his most famous series of novels and stories, with My Man Jeeves. This character, a shrewd valet who always rescues the reckless Mr Bertie Wooster, who almost always is the victim of some conspiracy by his aunt.
In 1934, Wodehouse, already very successful as a writer, and to avoid double taxation on his income, moved to live in France. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, instead of returning to the UK, he decided to stay in his house on the coast at Le Touquet. In the summer of that year, Wodehouse had gone to Oxford to be made an honorary doctor, and shortly after his return to Le Touquet. The German authorities interned him, in his late sixties, as an “enemy alien”, first in Belgium, then in Upper Silesia (now in Poland). After that, the British government, despite having a report by a senior M15 exonerating him of treason (which was not published until after his death), denounced him as a Nazi collaborator, and the media continued to accuse him of being a traitor for a long time, and some public libraries banned his books, and even some prominent authors criticized him harshly. Wodehouse, disgusted by the treatment received by his country, never returned to the United Kingdom, and in 1955 he obtained American citizenship.
PG Wodehouse is considered one of the best English humourists alongside Jerome K. Jerome, Evelyn Waugh and Tom Sharpe. An edition of his complete works is practically impossible, since in more than seventy years of constant literary work (from 1902 to1975) Wodehouse did not let a day go by without writing something. 
In the year of his death, the great Wodehouse was made Sir. He died in Remsenburg, Long Island (United States) on the 14th of February 1975. He was 93 years old.


Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend 

Despite glorious weather, Lord Emsworth is miserable; it is August Bank Holiday, which means the annual Blandings Parva School Treat. The precious grounds are to be overrun with fairground rides, tea-tents and other amusements for the throngs, and Emsworth is will be forced by his sister Constance to wear a stiff collar and a top hat, despite the warm weather and his strong protests.
On top of that, Head Gardener Angus McAllister is determined to carry out his project of putting gravel in the garden. Emsworth, who loves his mossy carpet, loathes the idea, but his sister is in favour, and the stronger personalities overpower the elderly man.
After that, while visiting Blandings Parva to judge the flower displays, Emsworth is frightened by a large dog, but he is rescued by a small girl named Gladys. They chat and become friends, especially when she reveals that, having been seen picking flowers in the Castle grounds, she hit McAllister in the shin with a stone to stop him chasing her.
When the fête begins, Emsworth is uncomfortable as ever in his formal clothes, and he’s worried about the speech he will have to make. In addition, at the tea-tent, his top hat is knocked off by a cleverly aimed rock cake, and Emsworth flees, taking refuge in an old shed. In there, he finds Gladys, miserable; she has been put there by his sister Constance, for stealing from the tea tent something to take to her brother Ern, barred from the fête for biting Constance on the leg.
Delighted by this family, Emsworth takes Gladys into the house, and provides her a hearty tea, and also a feast to take back to Ern.  Gladys requests to pick some flowers to take home too. Emsworth hesitates, but cannot refuse her. As she is picking flowers, McAllister rushes up in a fury, but his master, encouraged by Gladys’s hand in his, stands up to the man, saying that the flowers belong to him, and that he also doesn’t want gravel in the garden, putting him in his place.
Constance approaches then, demanding Emsworth return to make his speech, but he refuses, saying he's going to put on some comfortable clothes and to visit Ern with his friend Gladys.
In my opinion is a really naive story, with sense of humour and ridiculous situations, as in almost always stories of the writer happen. In that story, the powerful aristocrat behaves like a boy, under the strict supervision of his sister (who could very well be his aunt), while his saviour is a little girl. Thanks to her, he finds the courage to do and say what he really wants.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the main characters

-Lord Emsworth

-Lady Constant Keeble

-Angus McAllister

-Gladys

-Ern

-Beach

What happens in August Bank Holiday?

Tell us about the gravel path.

What opinion does Lord Emsworth have about Scottish people?

Why does Angus have the upper hand with Lord Emsworth?

Can you explain the scene with the dog?

What are Lord Emsworth’s resources as to deal with people of the other sex?

What is the meaning of “season” for a “classical lord”?

What kind of relationships does Lord Emsworth have with women?

Talk about Lord Emsworth’s Panama hat.

What was the problem with his collar?

What is the reference for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego?

According to Lord Emsworth, what are the characteristics of a London child?

Why Gladys and her brother were excluded from the garden party?

What do you know about the Battle of Bannonckburn?

When did Lord Emsworth feel like a true lord again?

“Better to cease to be a Napoleon than be a Napoleon in exile.” What do you think of this proverb?

 

VOCABULARY

summer morning, beaming, kippered, marquees, potter, evenfall, dodge, dodder, hemlock, peers, filling station, blistering, clutches, kink, number twelve heel, flout, demeanour, confidence trick, wizened, velveteen, pick, tenantry, ‘ahse, josser, plice, arf, sharted, ‘air-oil, todiy, stror, rummage-sale, ballyragged, Jno., gave at the knees, squeaker, cut both ways, rig-out, dickens, Saturnalia, goggling, vouchsafed, tough egg, curate, back-chat, squint, tumbril, slicer, dooce, shirk, lidy, gorn, Gad, pliying, dorg, fit, spineless, excursions



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


Never, by H. E. Bates


Summary

 

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