The Coup of Grâce, by Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce at the Wikipedia
The Devil's Dictionary at the Wikipedia

Some entries of the Devil's Dictionary

The Coup de Grâce, review

The Coup de Grâce, study

Audio book

Biography

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, was born on 24 June on 1842 in Meigs County, Ohio, United States, and died around 1914 in Chihuahua or Ojinaga, Mexico –this is a mystery!! They don’t have evidences, because his body was never found after his death. He married Mary Ellen Day (Molly) in 1871, and they had three children: Helen Bierce, Day Bierce and Leigh Bierce.

All instruction he received was from his father’s books, a farmer from Connecticut.  After graduating, he became known as a journalist in San Francisco, collaborating in various newspapers and becoming an editor. Years later, after returning from London, he went to live in Washington D.C.

When he was young, he enlisted to fight in the Civil War.

He was a writer of short stories, journalist and American editor. His satirical style of sharper works, with tragic humour and violent themes that always revolved around death, earned him the nickname of "Bitter Bierce". His literature exerted a strong influence on the Pacific Coast and several critics defined him as dry, functional and mechanical, and even compared him to great poets such as Edgar Alan Poe and also with Nathaniel Hawthorne and H.P. Lovecraft. Bierce wrote several books and stories and was a screenwriter for some movies. Among some books, the most notable are: The Damned Thing, The Devil’s Dictionary, Chickamauga and An Inhabitant of Carcosa.

His legacy and influences were many, among them there are three films made based on the short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

Summary

This history talks about death. The entire scene takes place on a battlefield, where we can see the cruelty among the dead and those who barely survive. It talks about two friends, who, raised together since their early childhood, it is very difficult to separate from so much affection. One of them has no military aptitude or disposition, yet he enlists in the army to be close to his unconditional friend. However, the relationship was maintained with difficulties and in a different way, due to their military rank and the required distance.
The story speaks of a lot of blood, coldness, challenges, decisions and mismatches, and, as the final revelation demonstrates, says that, however arrogant an individual can demonstrate, the feeling and love came to the surface at the end. In our story, the captain, in a rush of courage, makes the strong decision of shortening the suffering of a dying man, and leaves us with doubt and reflection: Even with the supplication of the dying, was this the best shot? Could the help that arrived have saved him?

QUESTIONS

What do you know about the American Civil War?
In the story, they “wounded must wait until the end of the battle”. Do you think it’s a correct policy in a war? (In recent American films, the army always tries to rescue the wounded or the prisoners.)
Many of the enemy’s dead were counted several times. Why? (They say “History is always written by the winners.”)
Talk about the three characters (personality, relations with the others, rank in the army…)

Madwell

Caffal Halcrow

Creede Halcrow

What does this sentence mean “these two patriots would doubtless have endeavoured to deprive their country of one another’s services”?

Do you know the story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah (2 Samuel, 11-12)? Is there any relation to our story?

Describe the situation in which sergeant Halcrow is after the battle. Why was he in so bad condition?

Who was Prometheus and why is he mentioned in our story?

What is exactly a coup de grâce? Describe the coup de grâce in our story.

How did the horse die? Why do you think he killed the horse first?

The story has an open ending. What do you think it’s going to happen afterwards?
What is your opinion about the euthanasia? Are you pro or con? Why?

VOCABULARY

succor, splinter, strecher-bearer, exposure, avail, score, glean, reap, quit, bearings, wretch, unheed, clump, daring, non-comissioned, comissioned, saturnine, repartee, defiled, besmirch, swine, chine, choke, utterance, cock (a gun) v., muzzle, trigger, report n.

Hills like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemingway

 

Biography, by Remedios Benéitez

Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899 - July 2, 1961)

He was the second of six children. His father was a doctor and his mother a music teacher. His father’s interests in history and literature, as well as outdoorsy (fishing and hunting) became a lifestyle for Ernest.

In 1916 he graduated for high school and began his writing career as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. Six months later he joined the Ambulance Corps in First Word War and worked as an ambulance driver in the Italian front, where he was seriously wounded by a mortal shell. He was awarded by the Silver Medal.

Back in America, he continued his writing career working for the Toronto Star. In 1921, he became a Toronto Star reporter in Paris. There he published his first books called Three Stories and Three Poems and In Our Time. In Paris he met Gertrude Stein, who introduced him into the circle that she called The Lost Generation. During that time, he wrote several books.

Hemingway participate in the Spanish Civil War and took part in the D-Day landings during the invasion of France in World War II. His military experiences were emulated in For Whom the Bell Tolls and in several other stories.

He settled near Havana, Cuba, where he wrote his best-known work, The Old Man and the Sea (1953), for which he won a Pulitzer Price and the Nobel Prize in Literature.

War wounds, two plane crashes, four marriages and several affairs took their toll on Hemingway hereditary predispositions and contributed to his declining health. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and insomnia in his later years. His mental condition was exacerbated by chronic alcoholism, diabetes and liver failure.

He committed suicide in 1961.

 

Analysis of Hills Like White Elephants

It was published in 1927. The story focuses on a conversation between an American man and a young woman, described as a “girl” at a Spanish train station in the Valley of Ebro while they are waiting for a train to Madrid. The girl compares the nearby hills to white elephants.

While the couple drinks beer, they discuss an “operation” that the man wants the girl to have. You can guess that they are talking about an abortion.

Hills like White Elephants at the Wikipedia

Cliff notes about Hills...

Spark notes about Hills...

More analysis of Hills...

Some more things about Hemingway:

He never went to the University and he admired Sherwood Anderson (we are going to read a story by him).

Rules he followed composing a story:

1.Direct treatment of the “thing”, without evasion or cliché.

2.The use of absolutely no word that does not contribute to the general design.

3.Fidelity to the rhythms of natural speech.

4.The natural object is always the adequate symbol.

His method follows the principle of the iceberg: “There’s seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate, and it only strengthens your iceberg: it’s the part that doesn’t show. If a writer omits something because he doesn’t know it, then there’s a hole in the story.

 

QUESTIONS

What is the meaning of “white elephant”?

Why do you think the story is situated in a railway station?

What city do you think is the station? How do you know?

What can you tell us about absinthe? And about licorice?

Describe the man.

Describe the girl. Why is she named “Jig”?

What do these symbols mean, according to your opinion?

Anís del Toro

beads curtain

river

hills

…

Do you think they’re having a casual, formal, tense, relaxed… dialogue? Why?

What can you deduce from this sentence said by the man: “I know a lot of people that had done it”?

Why did the man carry the bags to the other tracks? Whose bags are these, his, hers or theirs?

In the end, are they going to Madrid together? How do you know?

According to critics there are 4 possibilities. Which one do you think is the most probable? Why?

1) they will have the abortion and break up

2) they will have the abortion and stay together

3) they will have the baby and break up

4) they will have the baby and stay together.

 

What do you think of Hemingway’s style?

Do you think this one it’s a macho or a feminist story?

Have you read anything else by Hemingway, or seen any film based on his stories?

Delicate debate: What opinions do you have about the problem of abortion?

My Vocation, By Mary Lavin

BIOGRAPHY, by Maribel Mayorga

Mary Josephine Lavin wrote short stories and novels, and she is now regarded as a pioneer in the field of women's writing.

She is particularly noteworthy for her stories on the topic of widowhood, which are considered her finest.

Mary Lavin was born in East Walpole, Massachusetts, EUA, in 1912, the only child of Tom and Nora Lavin, an immigrant Irish couple. She attended primary school in East Walpole until the age of nine, when her mother decided to go back to Ireland. Initially, Mary lived in Athenry, in County Galway, in the West Coast. Afterwards, her parents bought a house in Dublin.

Mary attended Loreto College, a convent school in Dublin, before going on to study English and French at University College Dublin. She taught French at Loreto College for a while. As a postgraduate student, she published her first short story, "Miss Holland", which appeared in the Dublin Magazine in 1938.

In 1943, Mary published her first book, Tales from Bective Bridge, a volume of ten short stories about life in rural Ireland; it was a critical success and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction

In 1954 her husband died. Lavin, with her reputation as a major writer already well established, was left to confront her responsibilities alone. She raised her three daughters and kept the family farm going at the same time. She also managed to publish short stories, and she won several awards for her work, including the Katherine Mansfield Prize in 1961, Guggenheim Fellowships in 1959 and 1961, and an honorary doctorate in 1968. Some of her stories written during this period, dealing with the topic of widowhood, are her best stories.

In 1992, the members of Aosdána (an affiliation of creative artists in Ireland) elected Lavin Saoi (one of the highest honours in Irish culture) for achieving "singular and sustained distinction" in literature.
She died in 1996 at the age of 84.

MY VOCATION

My  Vocation was published in 1956 in the Atlantic  Monthly, a magazine in the USA, thanks to  a recommendation from J. D. Salinger (author of The Catcher in the Rye).

This is a story that talks about family, religion, life in Ireland, and about a daughter who was looking for her vocation: she was thinking of becoming a nun. One day she found in an ad in a newspaper that they were looking for applicants. She did not hesitate to write, and she received a telegram in answer to the application. She lived in Dorset Street and the best thing of Dorset Street was that it was like a big happy family, and everyone was proud of the idea of her going to the missions, although she did not like the idea of going with lepers. It was time for the interview: what did she decide for her future?

QUESTIONS

The “dowry”: does the tradition go on in the case of brides?
The smell of people: do you think people smell according their job? Have you read “The perfume”?
What do you know about Mary Magdalen? What is the irony in the story?
What are the Tiller Girls? And the Gaiety? What do you need to have to be a Tiller Girl?

What is the Seven Churches ritual? Is there something similar here?

In the story they say nuns don’t cough or sneeze because they are like angels. Here, when someone sneezes, we say “Jesus!”, or “Health!”, or, in catholic anglophone countries, “Bless you”. But usually in Great Britain, when somebody sneezes, he or she says “Sorry!” Do you know any different habits about sneezing, or yawning or belching?

What do you need to be a waitress, according to the story?

What kind of girl do the boys choose to get married to, according to the story? Do you know other clichés?

What do you know about Mary Alacoque?

What preparations did the mother do for the nuns visit? How did the neighbours help?

Our protagonist ties a knot in her handkerchief: What do you do when you want to remember something?

What do you know about leprosy and lepers? Have you seen the film “Sweet Bean”? And Papillon? What happened to Gaugin in the novel The Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham?

What is a Recruiting Officer?

Describe the two nuns that visit the protagonist’s house.

How did the meeting go?

On page 440, line 20, one of the nuns says: “Oh, we have to be ready for all the eventualities”. What do you think she means?

What cab did the girl order for the nuns? Describe cab, horse, cabby…

Tell us about the accident. Did the nuns get hurt?

At the end: is she going to be a nun? How do you know? What is Dollymount?

PREPARE YOUR SPEECH

 

What do you know (from your experience) about nuns? Did you study in a nun’s school? What do you think about your experience?

Tell us your experience about your call/vocation. Is it easy to know one’s call? An important number of students change studies after their first year: why is it so difficult to choose what one wants to be in one’s life? What would you do if you didn’t like your child’s call?

What do you think of Missions or NGOs? Do they really help the people they say they’re helping?

VOCABULARY

cut out, call, hopscotch, sniff, cheapen, sparky, scrub, hold with, hot jar, kneeler, tightly, dead keen, morosely, dowry, harp on one string, start the ball rolling, front, ram, lore, square meal, lug, return room, being any the wiser, raffle, stub, back out of, gorgeous, wear away, pickle, daft, flighty, cabby, bucket, caper

Many Are Disappointed, by V. S. Pritchett

BIOGRAPHY (from last year), by Rafel Martínez

Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett, was born in Suffolk, on 16 December 1900, he was the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena. His father, a London businessman, started several businesses, but, due to his insecurity and his tendency to credit and embezzlement, had to close the businesses and disappear, so the family was forced to change their address to different cities, such as Ipswich, Woodford, Essex or Derby, which forced the children to change schools frequently, all to circumvent the persecution of the numerous creditors of Walter, the father.

The family moved to East Dulwich and he attended Alleyn's School, but when his paternal grandparents came to live with them at age 16, he was forced to leave school to work as a clerk for a leather buyer in Bermondsey. The leather work lasted from 1916 until 1920 when he moved to Paris to work as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for The Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. Pritchett, along with his friend and writer Gerald Brenan, is one of the few Englishmen who, in the early 1930s, toured the Spanish territory. From that youthful experience, Pritchett wrote Marching Spain, which appeared in 1928. However, it was not until 1954 that, already a consecrated writer, he published The Spanish Temperament, an excellent travel chronicle about our country.

In 1936 he divorced his first wife and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts, by whom he had two children; the marriage lasted until Pritchett's death in 1997, although they both had other relationships.

During the Second World War Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information while continuing to write weekly essays for the New Statesman. After World War II he wrote extensively and embarked on various university teaching positions in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. Fluent in French, German and Spanish, he published acclaimed biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977), and Anton Chekhov (1988).

Sir Pritchett was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1975 for "services to literature" and a Companion of Honour in 1993, in addition to other multiple decorations and mentions throughout his life, which makes him the best English author of his time.

Sir V. S. Pritchett died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997.

THE STORY

Four cyclists going on a ride expect to find a bar or a pub at the top of a hill, but they are disappointed because there is only a house with the old sign “Tavern”, that can mean an inn (that is no alcohol), so they won’t be able to have some beers. They have followed this road in the hope of sightseeing an antient Roman way: second disappointment. And thus, so on with some more. In the house there’s a small and frail woman with her daughter, also a little girl. The woman is happy to serve them some tea with some light food, although they would rather have had stronger food. At the end, they are happy with their tea, and they even start to have some feelings for the woman and her child. After tea, they went back again in search of a pub, and the woman feels very happy to have had them at home, and this not only for the money she got from their meal.

I think there are two very interesting features in this story. First, the characters: you don’t find the typical way of composing a story: the narrator begins introducing the characters with a full description, physical and psychological; instead, you have to unite the different pieces of the characters to form them, like in a puzzle. What did the author do this for? And second, the title. In the story, there are a lot of disappointments, and everyone has their own disappointment. But in the end, I think they are satisfied with what they had, at the end disappointment has been disappointed.

Many Are disappointed: Analisys

Many Are disappointed: Review

QUESTIONS

Look for and jot down information about the characters in order to describe them (surname, appearance, personality, age, likes and dislikes…)

Bert
Sid
Harry
Ted
The woman
The girl

What kind of bike are they riding? How do you know?

What different feelings does the woman have for the four different men?

Why does Sid think that he had seen the woman before? Does he want to flirt with her?

In which part of Great Britain is the story situated (look for the toponyms in a map)?

Why is there a confusion between Romans and Gypsies?

Describe the meal.

Why do you think the woman trusts a very confidential thing (she almost died) to Sid?

Do you think the house is really a “tea-house”? Why?

Explain all you know about the ring.

Are the really sportsmen? How do you know?

Why did or didn’t you like the story?

VOCABULARY

dunno, out-building, ruddy, skylark, stubborn, reed, meadows, hedge, wiry, whimper, frail, drab, moist, dumbfounded, sell, gasper, treacle (coloured), drizzle, dazed, dippy, cocksure, splice, flash, dawdle, drably, scabious, bin, boldly, wants, pout

The Demon Lover, by Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabet Bowen at the Wikipedia

(We had a previous entry about Bowen, so I have copied some paragraphs.)

Elisabeth Bowen was an Irish-born author, but she did her literary activities within a cultural club in London called The Bloomsbury Group, which had its headquarters in the neighbourhood of the British Museum and whose most famous members were the writer Virginia Woolf and the economist John M. Keynes (whose main idea was that the government had to intervene in the economy to correct the bad effects of the capitalism).

She was born in Dublin in 1899 and spend her childhood in a big country house with a large park. Her family belonged to the Anglo-Irish class that had dominated Ireland for centuries. Her novel The Last September deals with the situation of her class during the Independence War and the Irish Civil War. When she was seven, she went to live in England, where she studied. When she was 24, she married and published her first book, a collection of short stories, Encounters, that was a great success and encouraged her to go on writing. From then on, she wrote a book every year and a lot of book reviews.

Her stories are usually about the upper class, and she writes in a sophisticated style.

But Bowen isn’t very well-known here: in Catalan you aren’t going to find any translation, and there are only some of these books in Spanish. If you want to find her works in the library, click here.

The Demon Lover

The short story that we’re reading has autobiographic details because during the World War II she worked in London for the War Ministry. In the title we find the word demon; this word has the meaning of "evil spirit", but is also a variant of daimon, that only means "spirit". So, we don't know exactly if the lover is bad or not. The story is about a (happily?) married woman during the Blitz. She had a boyfriend in the WWI, but he was reported missing or dead, and she forgot him. But now, after 25 years, she got a suspicious letter. Could it be from her old boyfriend saying that he wants to fulfil the promise of marrying her? This boyfriend, what kind of person/being was/is he?

The Demon Lover: audio

The Demon Lover Study Guide

The Demon Lover: summary, characters, analysis

Presentation (minutes 00-3.30)

The Demon Lover, (but a very free and enlarged adaptation, minutes 00-52)

QUESTIONS

Which are the first hints of the Blitz?

Why do you think the woman is prosaic?

Why is a “tenseness preceding the fall of the rain” before she read the letter?

Why did she look at the mirror after reading the letter?

Why did she look at it “stealthily”?

Describe the protagonist.

What was the effect of the raining when he opened the chest?

What did she remember best from their last meeting (a physical mark)?

Why did she wish him already gone when they were saying goodbye?

Describe the boy.

Describe their last meeting.

Was she really in love with him? How do you know?

Tell us about Mrs Drover’s life after discovering her fiancée was missing or dead.

Why was she “unable to be with her back exposed to an empty room” and preferred to “sit against the wall”?

A crisis is mentioned: what crisis is it?

Why did she decide to take the objects she had come to fetch and not to run away immediately?

“She tugged at the knot she had tied wrong”: what is its connotation?

What are her feelings now about her old fiancée?

When she is in the point of leaving the house, what reassures her? And in the street? And what scared her before leaving?

Why does the narrator use this expression: “a hinterland of deserted streets”?

What was the appointed time?

What details suggested us that her old fiancée was the taxi driver?

Some people say the story means that “we are always tied to the past”. What is your opinion?

VOCABULARY

boarded up, contemptuous, bedspring, flicker, foresworn (forsworn), plight your troth, (without) stint, score, desuetude, rally, fumbling, to be in a mood, tread, creek, pant, issue, perambulator (pram)

A Visit of Charity, by Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty at the Wikipedia

A Curtain of Green at the Wikipedia

A Visit of Charity, character analysis

A Visit of Charity, video

BIOGRAPHY

She was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1909, and died when she was 92.
Jackson is a city now with more 70 % of Afroamerican people, while in the 60s it was the other way round; so the city has experienced big changes in demography and, accordingly, in politics.
Eudora Welty lived all her life in Jackson, save when she studied at Columbia University, New York.
She had a calm life in Jackson, despite all the racial problems, so her stories contrast vividly with the stories by Faulkner or by Richard Wright.
As a child, she was an insatiable reader and she wrote her stories without any particular encouragement. She started writing for a Southern magazine and then, thanks to the persistence of a literary agent, for the Atlantic Monthly and for The New Yorker.
She won the Pulitzer Prize when she was 64 years old for her novel The Optimist Daughter. 
She wrote mainly short stories, but also novels and her autobiography. Besides, she was a photographer and published a book of photograhs about the Great Depression.

A VISIT OF CHARITY

It is a short story from her book A Curtain of Green, published when she was 32. The book includes her first published story, Death of a Travelling Salesman.

The story tells us about a Campfire Girl who pays a visit a to an Old Ladies Home, as a part or her duties as a member of the youth organization, a visit which is going to get her some points in her score. But what people live and how the live in a Home comes as a surprise for her.

QUESTIONS

Why does she compare the Home to a block of ice?
Campfire Girl: have you belonged to an organization when you were young? What do you know / think of the Boy Scouts, for example?
What do you think about the contrast between the nurse’s cold appearance and her “sea-wave” air?
Why does the Campfire Girl have to pay a visit to some (any) old lady?
Gestures: What are their meaning? For instance, the girl pushing her hair behind her ear; the nurse looking at her watch...
The “waves” appear again: “she was walking on waves”. Is there any relationship between the wave on the nurse’s head and the waves on the linoleum?
"The hall smelt like the interior of a clock": what does this image suggest to you?
There’s an identification between old ladies and sheep, but also they are compared to harpies. Why?
What is the effect of the nurse saying “there are two”?
What is the feeling created by the room’s description?
The two ladies don’t agree about the flowers: why? Did the girl know about the flowers?
What expression suggests a clog in the throat?
How does the narrator show the girl’s anxiety?
What can be the meaning of the cameo pin?
What was the matter with Addie? Why was she so angry today?
It was the first time such a thing had happened to Marian: what was this thing?
What is the meaning of “That’s Addie for you”?
What kind of magazine was Field & Stream?
Do you think the nurse’s invitation to Marian to have lunch there is for real? Why?
Why did she hide an apple before going in the Home? And why did she make a big bite out of it at the end of the story?

VOCABULARY

Home (in context), whitewashed, mittens, awry, propelled (propeller), counterpane, square smile, my (in context), multiflora cineraria, ailing, comfort shoes, rigmarole, tan (gum), crow (in context), nickel

"You can't learn a nigger to argue"

I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there warn't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings, and let Solomon slide. I told about Louis XVI that got his head cut off in France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would 'a' been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there.
"Po' little chap."

"But some says he got out and got away, and come to America."

"Dat's good! But he'll be pooty lonesome—dey ain' no kings here, is dey, Huck?"

"No."

"Den he cain't git no situation. What he gwyne to do?"

"Well, I don't know. Some of them gets on the police, and some of them learns people how to talk French."

"Why, Huck, doan' de French people talk de same way we does?"

"No, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said—not a single word."

"Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?"

"I don't know; but it's so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think?"

"I wouldn' think nuffn; I'd take en bust him over de head—dat is, if he warn't white. I wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat."

"Shucks, it ain't calling you anything. It's only saying, do you know how to talk French?"

"Well, den, why couldn't he say it?"

"Why, he is a-saying it. That's a Frenchman's way of saying it."

"Well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout it. Dey ain' no sense in it."

"Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?"

"No, a cat don't."

"Well, does a cow?"

"No, a cow don't, nuther."

"Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?"

"No, dey don't."

"It's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't it?"

"Course."

"And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?"

"Why, mos' sholy it is."

"Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us? You answer me that."

"Is a cat a man, Huck?"

"No."

"Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. Is a cow a man?—er is a cow a cat?"

"No, she ain't either of them."

"Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of 'em. Is a Frenchman a man?"

"Yes."

"Well, den! Dad blame it, why doan' he talk like a man? You answer me dat!"
I see it warn't no use wasting words—you can't learn a nigger to argue. So I quit.

                        A bit of dialogue between Jim and Huck (from Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain)