Transients in Arcadia, by O. Henry

Audiobook

Summary and analysis

SUMMARY

This is the story of a woman who spends a holiday week in a luxury hotel on Broadway, NY The hotel  is the Lotus, and the woman goes under the name of Mme Héloise D’Arcy Beaumont. The place is splendid, and the first pages of the story are a description of all the amenities, facilities and staff of the establishment: rooms, saloons, waiters, cooks, etc. And nevertheless the fact the building is in Manhattan, inside it you feel so far from the city bustle that you can imagine you are in the country or around the mountains. And madame Héloise is so sophisticated and elegant that all the employees are happy to wait on her, the best guest of the few that sojourn in the hotel.

On the third day of her stay, another guest came in to register in the reception counter. His name was Harold Farrington, a name of aristocratic resonances. He also was elegant and classy, and dropped some hints to the receptionist about travelling. He also looked for a place to relax and enjoy quietness.

On the next day, after dinner, when Harold passed by Mme Héloise, she dropped her handkerchief. He immediately picked it up and gave it back to her owner. A conversation followed afterwards, and, from that moment on, they spend all of their time together. They liked each other.

On the last day of her residence at the hotel, they were sitting at the same table. It was in the evening, and it was the moment of telling the truth: they tell each other who really they were, but they didn’t show much surprise.

From now on, what kind of relationship would they have?

 

QUESTIONS

-What is the relation between the title and the story?

-What do you know about the Lotus-eaters (they appear in the Odyssey)?

-When you are travelling, what kind of accommodation do you prefer? Why?

-While travelling, the accommodation is usually the only thing (besides the journey ticket) we pay. Why is that we don’t make profit of it, and try to spend all the day away from it?

-What kind of holidays do you prefer? Travelling or staying at home? Mountains, beaches, cities? Relax or bustle? On your own or with family / friends? On your own or with a touristic guide?

-What is your opinion about this saying: “You don’t know a person until you’ve travelled with them”?

-What would you like to save a big amount of money for?

-Do you think children have too many holidays?

 

VOCABULARY

trout, venison, game warden, lairs, caravansary, forego, pellucid, rapiers, purlieus, haven, acme, tossed, chatelaine purse, hosiery, instalment, per

Keys, by Graham Swift

Summary and analysis, by Elisa Sola Ramos

Briefly, the summary of the story is an incident of everyday life: John, a 47-year-old architect, accompanies his wife to the station to catch the train: she has to go to see his brother who is dying. John doesn’t go with her because he can’t stand his brother, and makes a secondary excuse that he has work. She doesn’t mind that he doesn’t accompany her, either. Just after leaving the woman, he realizes that he has left his keys in his zip-up jacket pocket inside the house and finds himself locked out of the house. Then, he notices that the neighbour’s housekeeper is there, and he knocks on the door for her to help him into his house. They make love.

As in many of Graham Swift’s stories, an incident of everyday life (in this case, forgetting the keys) serves to reflect on one’s own life. In our story, being shut out of the house helps John to see his own life from a distance, as if he was a stranger. And this is what John does: a 47-year-old architect, with a comfortable life and married to Clare, shows us a conventional slice of life of a well-to-do middle-aged couple, and we see the loneliness of the characters at every moment. Clare doesn’t count on him when it comes to her family (“He’d be peripheral. He was just a husband.”) and John had an affair with his colleague - or superior - at work and didn’t tell his wife, even though she knew (“she had her inklings”). The couple leads a conventional life, with jobs that are not perfect, and they are burdened with their loneliness.

The other character is the cleaner, a girl no more than 25 years old, foreign, with little command of the language. There is a great distance between John and the cleaner, to highlight the man’s power over the woman: age, purchasing power, culture... It’s a full-fledged league, but both characters are completely alone, they are strangers to their own life. They meet at a given moment and make love, but they make love to themselves because they never break the distance that separates them, at no time do they communicate.

Weather is an essential element in the story. As in many of the stories we have read, time is another character. In fact, it is the element that creates the right atmosphere. With a short story, this is very useful, because a few words create an atmosphere. In this case, the rain draws a curtain between him and his own life. It begins that four drops fall and ends that it rains in torrents and torrents, and that gives the tone and context of the story.

As always, a good image illustrates the entrance of the blog: an old and unpainted heart as a keyring, like the relationship between the two main characters. What really brings people together? Does John need Claire to appease his predatory instincts, his “stray animal inside him”, to get the stability he wants, against his impulse? Does Claire need John for her strength, as opposed to her brother and family? Why do people stay together if they feel lonely? It is the great question of our story.

QUESTIONS

What kind of goodbye do you prefer? A short one? A long one? When it’s you who goes away? When it’s you who stays?

What do you think of families? What is it better for a person, relatives or friends?

“He was just a husband.” Do you think a husband will always be peripheral? They say the first person old widows forget is their husband. Is it true?

“Weak men got ill and die.” Do you think character and constitution decide over life and death?

For you, what is a feeling? Are feelings logical? Can you control your feelings?

What is your opinion about saying always the raw truth?

Did you lose your keys any time? Do you have a story about this?

What will happen to the residents of Neale Road?

Ugly names: can a name be ugly? Can a name decide if a person is attractive or plain?

What do you know about Moldova?

Do you think we have an “animal inside us”?

Is a paraphilia to need to make love in any other’s house?

What is your opinion about the famous sentence: “No news, good news”?

What do you imagine it is going to happen then? Is Clare going to know about it? If yes, is she going to pardon him? Is their marriage going to last long?

 

VOCABULARY

spared, forecourt, got on with, spared, stifling, spot, inklings, riddle, terraced, manhandling, squirmed, tackle, put up with, unremitting, none-the-wiser, feral, bucketing, proneness, have that one there, sanctuary, knuckle down

Sinners, by Seán Ó Faoláin

Biography

Seán Proinsias Ó Faoláin was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1900. He studied in a religious school and his primary school was in Gaelic. As he was born as John Francis Whelan, we have to suppose he changed his name into Gaelic. When he went to university in Dublin, he joined the Irish Volunteers, and he fought for the Irish independence. He got disappointed with the outcome of the Independence War and the Irish Civil War and he went  to study in Harvard, in the USA, and then he worked in some high schools and universities in England where he taught Gaelic. He only came back to Ireland in 1933 where he worked in his short stories, novels and in literary magazines.

His most famous book is Midsummer Night Madness, a collection of short stories about the Civil War.
For Irish people he’s a controversial figure, because some of his books were banned for indecency and because he wasn’t satisfied with the creation of the free Ireland as it was. He was very critical with some of conservative aspects of the Irish nationalism and the Catholic Church.
He died in Dublin at the age of 91.

Seán Ó Faoláin the Wikipedia

Plots of some of his stories

SINNERS

This is a story about a religious confession of an orphan girl. She was picked up at the orphanage by Mrs Higgins as a maid. Now she has to go on confession because her patron knows she has stolen her boots and wants to recover them by the way of her avowal to the canon confessor. Mrs Higgins has told the canon about the girl and her pair of boots and asked him to elicit the girl’s “sin” and then make her to give the boots back to her.

But the thing isn’t going to be so easy because there is the secret of confession, and, of course, it’s supposed the confessor cannot know the girl’s sins through another person; and also, because the girl is a simpleton and the canon has no patience with her. The canon is an old man and, after a life of confessions for no good, he is already fed up with the mean spirit of the people, his trivial problems and their failure in improving their morals. Will the girl confess her robbery? Will Mrs Higgins get back her pair of boots? Will the canon be in peace at the end?

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters in the story:

The canon

Father Deeley

The girl

Mrs Higgins

What does the canon do to control his anger? Do you know other ways to calm you down? Which one do you use?

It seems that in Ireland there are (or were) a lot of orphanages: Why do you think there were so many? Have you seen “Song for a Raggy Boy” or “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee”?

What is a Freemason? What do you know about the Freemasonry?

Do you think is it possible not to commit a “sin” in 5 years? What is the limit between a small “sin” and a big “sin” for you? Can be there a general rule or does it depend of every person in particular?

Do you think confession can help people (like a kind of psychological therapy)?

And penance? Can penance help you when you feel you’ve made a mistake?

The canon is old and Deeley is young. What advantage has an old person to a young person, according he canon? Do you think he is right?

Ambrose Bierce said that a secret is something you tell only to one person. Do you think is it possible to keep a secret? Even for a priest?

What do you think of the confession in general?

VOCABULARY

grille, restiveness, sigillum, pettish, shade, prevarication, forestalled, gospel, lattice, shudder, slur, wisha, gasped, flaking, wan, prying, poking, prodding, picking at, lashings and leavings of, starved, immodest, blunty, whimper, urchins, spittle, gabble, cross, cosily, cokalorum, jade