Paste, by Henry James

Henry James at the Wikipedia

Paste at the Wikipedia

The Necklace, by Guy de Maupassant

La parure, film (in French)

Paste: audio presentation and audiobook

Henry James, by Carme Sanz

BIOGRAPHY

Henry James has been called the first of the great psychological realists in our time. Honoured as one of the greatest artists of the novel, he is also regarded as one of America's most influential critics and literary theorists. During the fifty years of his literary career, which spanned the period from the end of the American Civil War to the beginning of World War I, James produced a body of tales and novels that fills thirty-six volumes and an almost equal number of volumes of non-fiction prose, including travel books, autobiography, books of criticism, letters, and literary notebooks.
Henry James was born in New York City on April 15, 1843, into an affluent and socially prominent family. His father, Henry James, Sr., moved among a wide circle of intellectual leaders of the time and exposed his children to the cultural advantages of New England and, more especially, Europe; before he reached his eighteenth birthday, the younger James had lived abroad for extended periods on three separate occasions.
In 1861, he suffered an "obscure hurt", an injury to his spine that kept James from service in the Civil War; for reasons perhaps related to this injury, James never married. At the age of thirty-three, he took up residence in Europe, living first for a year in Paris and then permanently in England. He became a British subject in 1915, a year before his death.
In 1869, at the age of twenty-six, he travelled for the second time to Europe, entered the mainstream of London intellectual life, and formed friendships with leading literary figures of the time. He returned to America in 1870, went abroad again in 1872 for two more years, spent the winter of 1874-75 in New York, and finally left America in 1875, this time for good. In Europe, James could best deal with his dominant theme: the illumination of the present by "the sense of the past," the American present illuminated by the sense of the European past.
Among his most famous books we can find: The Europeans, Daisy Miller, The Portrait of a Lady or The Bostonians.

PASTE

After the death of her aunt, the protagonist Charlotte and her cousin, her aunt’s stepson Arthur Prime, find a tin of imitation jewellery which includes a string of pearls. Charlotte is immediately fascinated with the pearls, and wonders if they could be a gift from when her aunt was an actress. Arthur disputes this and feels insulted at the thought of some gentleman other than his father giving his stepmother such a gift. Charlotte quickly apologizes and agrees that the pearls could be nothing more than paste. With Arthur’s enthusiastic approval, she keeps the jewellery in memory of her aunt.

When Charlotte returns to her governess job, her friend, Mrs. Guy, asks her if she has anything to add colour to her dress for an upcoming party. When Charlotte shows Mrs Guy the jewellery, she too becomes fascinated with the string of pearls, insisting that they are genuine. Mrs Guy wears the string to the party; and when Charlotte finds out that everyone believed that they were real, she insists that they must be returned to her cousin. Mrs Guy claims that it was Arthur's foolishness to have given away the necklace, and that Charlotte should feel no guilt in keeping it.

However, Charlotte decides to return the pearls to her cousin, who still refuses to consider the pearls real. A month later, Mrs Guy shows her a wonderful string of pearls, telling Charlotte that they are the same ones that Charlotte had inherited from her aunt. Charlotte is surprised because Arthur claimed he had shattered them, when in fact he had sold them to the store where Mrs Guy bought them.

QUESTIONS

What is the meaning of the title?

Talk about the characters:

Arthur Prime

His father (Mr Prime)

His stepmother (Mrs Prime, née Miss Bradshaw)

Charlotte

Mrs Guy

Who can be “Mrs Jarvey”? 

What’s Ivanhoe, and who was Rowena?

The necklace comes alive when Mrs Guy wears it. Do you think people can give life to things? What is your opinion of “influencers”?

The necklace was “a present from an admirer capable of going such lengths”. What is the meaning of this sentence? What does it imply?

Can you imagine how Mrs Prime got the necklace? Did she have an affair?

What do you know about the Victorian morals / puritanism?

Mrs Guy without the necklace “looked naked and plain”. To what extent do you think the way we dress make us plainer or more attractive?

According to Mrs Guy, those peals were “things of love”, “they had the white glow of it”. How can things get a soul for you / for everybody?

What is the end of the story: Mrs Guy bought the necklace in Bond Street, or she got it from Arthur? Why? How?

VOCABULARY

shrewd, brood, snubbed, shimmered, pit, hortatory, twaddle, gewgaws,
penwiper, pinchbeck, odds and ends, swelled, flaxen, filberts, pert, interment,
counted on to spice, wire, tableaux vivants, muster, garish, trappings, "rum",
give her away, revels, screw down, sickly

A Horse and Two Goats, by R. K. Narayan

R. K. Narayan at the Wikipedia

A Horse and Two Goats at enciclopedia.com

A Horse and two Goats, cartoon

 

R. K. NARAYAN, by Begoña Devis

BIOGRAPHY

R. K. Narayan was an Indian writer born on October 10th, 1906 in Madras (now Chennai), British India, into a Hindu family. He was one of eight children, six sons and two daughters. His father was a school headmaster, and Narayan did some of his studies at his father’s school. As his father’s job entailed frequent transfers, Narayan spent part of childhood under the care of his maternal grandmother, Pavarti. During this time, his best friends were a peacock and a mischievous monkey.
When he was twelve years old, Narayan participated in a pro-independence march, for which he was reprimanded by his uncle, as the family was apolitical and considered all governments wicked.
Narayan moved to Mysore when his father was transferred to the Maharajas’s College High School. The well-stocked library at the school, and his father’s own, fed his reading habit, and he started writing as well. After completing high school, Narayan failed the university entrance examination and spent a year at home reading and writing.
After a brief job as a school teacher, Narayan realized that the only career for him was in writing, and he decided to stay at home and write novels.
While vacationing at his sister’s house in Coimbatore, in 1933, Narayan met and fell in love with Rajam, a 15-year-old girl who lived nearby, and married her. After that, Narayan became a reporter for a Madras paper called The Justice, dedicated to the rights of non-Brahmins. The job brought him in contact with a variety of people.
Narayan sent the manuscript of Swami and Friend (his first novel) to a friend in Oxford, and the friend showed it to Graham Green, who recommended the book to his publisher, and it was finally published in 1935.
R. K. Narayan developed his literary career in the English language and is considered one of the most important Indian storytellers of the 20th century.
Graham Greene considered himself a friend for life and decreed success in the Anglo-Saxon world, where Narayan was for a long time, before Salman Rushdie, perhaps the best-known storyteller of Indian origin.
He wrote about situations in a provincial society in which shopkeepers, beggars, businessmen and a greedy petty bourgeoisie live bustling side by side with the old and static world of the peasants and saints. His novels are set in the imaginary city of Malgudi, especially in the streets and popular settings, a microcosm of South India that still reflects the values and customs of the rural and archaic Indian world, but at the same time also the encounter/disagreement with the modernization that advances inexorably.
However, what stands out in Narayan is his use of irony, the acute observation of the changes that are taking place, rather than social or political denunciation. It also highlights how his characters and their environments continuously refer to the literary and religious heritage of India (sacred books, traditions and Hindu rites), a heritage that the author particularly loves and studies. This makes Narayan the singer of a world that, although not closed to the modern, continues to be deeply proud of its identity and cultural heritage.
Narayan received various awards and honours, such as the Padma Bhusham or the Sahita Akademi, India's second and third highest civilian awards.
R. K. Narayan died on May 13, 2001 in his hometown of Chennai.

 A Horse and Two Goats 

This is the history of a misunderstanding between a poor Indian man, Muni, and a rich American tourist who is visiting the village.
Muni is a very poor man who only has two goats and lives in a thatched hut. One day, Muni wakes up with the craving for something more sumptuous than the balls of cooked milled and raw onion he eats for his daily meal, and asks his wife to make a curry for dinner. She agrees to make him a curry, provided he can go to the local shop and buy the necessary ingredients for it.
Muni goes to buy them, but the shopkeeper refuses to allow him to purchase the items on credit, as Muni has no money. Muni returns home to inform his wife of the bad news. She exasperatedly orders him out of the house to graze his two goats, which are all he has left of a once large and healthy herd of sheep and goats that was afflicted by a pestilence.
As Muni walks toward the highway with his two scraggly goats, he arrives at his favourite spot, an area beside the highway that is the site of an old and grandiose statue of a warrior and a horse. Suddenly, a foreigner in a yellow station wagon comes barrelling down the highway, only to stop abruptly in front of Muni. He reveals that he is interested in buying the statue from Muni, whom he assumes to be its owner.
They both talk for a long time, but they don't understand each other at all. Muni explains to the foreigner the miracles and wonderful deeds carried out by the warrior of the statue, while the American tells him about his life in New York and what he wants to do with the statue in his mansion. The foreigner offers him more and more money, thinking that Muni is haggling, and Muni believes that he wants to buy the goats, so he takes the money very happily.
After that, the American loads the statue in his vehicle and drives it away, thinking he has bought it.
Muni returns home triumphant, informing his wife that he has managed to sell his goats, that had proven to be a curse to him as a constant reminder of how far he had fallen in the world. His wife initially assumes that he must have robbed someone, as the sum of 100 rupees is a small fortune. However, Muni’s elation does not last long as, soon enough, he hears the bleating of his goats at his door, and his wife threatens to call the police.
For me, the most interesting thing about the story is
the detailed vision of life in India for poor peasants like Muni, and the huge
difference of cultures that is reflected between that type of life and that of
the foreigner. The sense of humour and irony that there is, transforms a hard
to believe story in a fun and interesting one.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters

Muni (age, job, daily routines…)

His wife

The shopman

The postman

The American

Tell us something about the postman’s relationship with Muni. And with the postman.

Say something about Muni’s village.

What kind of conversation do the American and Muni have? What do they talk about?

What do people usually do when they try to communicate to a foreigner?

Once upon a time, offering a cigarette was a way to break the ice to start a conversation. Do you think we now communicate less because we smoke less?

“At seventy-one didn’t run, but surrenders to whatever came.” Do you think there is an age when every one of us has to surrender?

The America got stuck in the Empire State Building’s lift for hours, and then he decided to travel. If you had undergone a big thread in your life, what would you do to make up for it?

What is the American going to do with the statue? How did he carry it?

What kind of souvenirs do you by when you travel?

What is an “avatar”? Do you know something about Hinduism?

What is really communication? Is it always necessary to say something that makes sense?

What did Muni dream to do if he had some money?

What did the American buy, and what did Muni sell?

What happened when Muni arrived home with the money?

VOCABULARY

dotting, bullock, faggots, millet, pen, tethered, drumstick tree, ails, imp, ledger, swarga, fast, cronies, hailed, affluence, fleecy, gawky, bhang, thrashed, barren, spurn, scythe, dhobi, scrounge, cheetah, mauled, Namaste!, gainsay, slanderers, undaunted, wary, ingratiatingly, backwater, pinioned, Pongal, Parangi, quip, pundit, bearish, lakh, puja, creeper, gunny sack, dhoti

The Birthmark, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne at the Wikipedia

The Birthmark at the Wikipedia

Audiobook

The Birthmark, film

Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Remedios Benéitez 

BIOGRAPHY 

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July the 4^th, 1804, Salem, Massachusetts, and died on May the 19^th, 1864, Plymouth, New Hampshire). He was an American dark romantic novelist and short-story writer. His works often focus on history, morality and religion.

An ancestor, William Hawthorne, was the first of his family to emigrate from England to America in 1630.

Nathaniel was the only son of Nathaniel and Elisabeth Clark Hawthorne. His father, a sea captain, died in 1808 of yellow fever. After that, her mother moved back into her parent’s house with her children.

With the help of relatives. Nathaniel entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated in 1825.

He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe. He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales.

He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, where he met his future wife, Sophia Peabody. They got married in 1842. The couple rented a home in Concord where they were neighbours with writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and the Alcott family.

The Hawthorns struggled with debt and a growing family, and eventually returned to Salem in 1845. There he worked a few years as Surveyor of the Port at the Salem Custom House.

Hawthorne published his most well-known work, The Scarlet Letter, shortly after, in 1850, bringing him fame and financial relief. He then began working on The House of Seven Gables, a novel based on an old family, the Pyncheons, in Salem.

He was appointed to the consulship in Liverpool, England, by his old college friend president Franklin Pierce (14^th USA president). While in Europe, he wrote The Marble Faun and Our Old Home before moving back to his house in Concord in 1860.

Hawthorne suffered from poor health in 1860, and died in his sleep during a trip to the White Mountains in 1864.

 

THE BIRTHMARK

Aylmer is a brilliant scientist and natural philosopher who has abandoned his experiments for a while to marry the beautiful Georgiana. One day, Aylmer asks his wife whether she has ever thought about removing the birthmark on her cheek. He thinks that her face is almost perfect, but he wants to remove it. She is angry at first, and then she weeps, asking how he can love her if she is shocking to him.

He obsesses about the birthmark. He can think of nothing else. For him, it symbolizes mortality and sin. He wants to remove it, even if it ends her life. Finally, she agrees for love.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters:

Aylmer

Georgiana

Aminadab

What is exactly “natural philosophy”? (27, 2)

“A spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one” (27, 3-4). Do you know what do people mean when they talk about “elective affinities”?

Is there any scientific explanation for a birthmark?

Can you describe Georgiana’s birthmark?

Why do you think Aylmer didn’t see it before marrying her, or why did it appear after getting married?

Why did Aylmer, and then Georgiana, want to erase her birthmark?

In the story, Aylmer has a dream.  Can you tell us this dream? For you, what are the meaning of dreams?

Do you know the myth of Pygmalion?

Can you find a similitude between this story and the legend of Faust?

The story tells us that a lot of Aylmer experiments are failures and there is a risk for Georgiana’s life if he tries to delete her birthmark. Why do they want to take risks so dangerous?

Do you think there’s any relation between the birthmark and the speck in the saying, “You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the log that is in your own eye"? What were Aylmer flaws in this case?

Do you know who were these people: Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus? And what was the Brazen Head?

What do you know about alchemy?

According to your opinion, what is the meaning of Georgiana’s birthmark? Remember that when Aylmer removes it, she dies.

 

VOCABULARY

votaries, weaned, charm, wont, fastidious, flaw, aught, shudder, affrighting, bears witness, mar, patentee, boudoir, pastil, lore, sway, thence, concoct, heretofore, penned, shortcomings, quaff, rapt, musings, goblet, lofty, ere, clod 

An Ideal Craftsman, by Walter de la Mare

Walter de la Mare at the Wikipedia

The Listeners (poem)

Peacock Pie (collection of poems)

BIOGRAPHY

He was born in 1873 in Kent (now, a quarter of London). He died at 83 years old. One of his ancestors was French, hence his surname, "De la Mare". Somebody said also that he was a relative of Robert Browning, the famous poet, but it wasn’t true. When he was 23, he started working for the Standard Oil Company to provide for his family; but he also found time to write. At 26, he married the actress Elfrida Ingpen, then years older than him, and they had four children.

When he was 35, thanks to Sir Henry Newbolt (a poet, historian and a government adviser), he got a pension from the government that allowed him to write full time.

He wrote mainly poems for children, e.g. Peacock Pie, tales as Collected Stories for Children, and also horror stories, e.g. Eight Tales. He wrote a surrealistic novel too, Memoirs of a Midget, awarded by the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

About literature, he devised two kinds of imagination: childlike imagination (visionary) and boylike imagination (intellectual and analytical). According to him, the best poets are in the border between both imaginations.

SUMMARY

“An Ideal Craftsman” tells us the way to fake a suicide of somebody murdered. A young boy is awakened in the middle of the night by a noise and sets off for a raid on the kitchen, but he is afraid of the servant Jacobs. We don’t know exactly what is Jacobs like, but we do know that, according to the boy, he is a villain. After going through several corridors, halls and stairs (because it is a big house), the boy reaches the kitchen, where he finds a woman (the cook or another servant) that behaves in a very strange fashion, but she is friendly with the boy. The boy asks her where is Jacobs, and she says he’s gone. But when he leaves to go back to his room, he discovers Jacobs’s body, and the woman confesses her murder. The boy seems to understand why she has killed him. However, she doesn’t want to run away because she knows the murder and the culprit are going to be discovered easily.  Still, the boy feels some affection for the woman and has the idea of counterfeiting a suicide in order to dodge all suspicions against her. But there is a small detail missing. Will they become aware of it and arrange the scene?

QUESTIONS

According to Roald Dahl (Book of Ghost Stories), “it is the women who have written some of the very best ones” (meaning ghost stories or horror stories). And some other critics say that women are very good at children and ghost books. What do you think about this? Do women and men have different abilities when they are writing?

About the story:

Talk about the characters:

The boy (age, interests, family, personality…)

The woman (appearance, temperament, age, job…)

Jacobs: what do you know about him?

When do you use the question Qui vive? (202, 6)

What is the Newgate Calendar? (202, 19)

What do they mean by the “silver night”? (203, 29)

Why do you think the woman talks to the boy in the third person? (206, 26-29, et al.)

The boy finds incredible that so stout a woman had so small a voice. Do you think that voices can be beautiful or ugly, as faces we think are?

For the boy, “one pretty keepsake had been degraded forever” (207, 20). What does it mean?

Why did some “old man’s bones had lain beneath the tramplings of the crossroads”? (213, 4)

Why did the woman kill Jacobs?

How did she kill him? How do you know?

What was the boy’s reaction when he knew of the murder? Why do you think he has this reaction?

The boy and the woman arrange things to pretend it was a suicide. But there was a missing detail: what was this detail?

VOCABULARY

frisked, pampered, scuffling, piecing together, summoned, wound up, raiding, ferret, sheathed, poignard, wraith, qualm, eavesdropper, bent, ladle, bedaubed, locket, gallivanting, shammy, shunning, minified, cock-crow, fusty, larder, draughts, blancmange, sly, baize, wreathing, gaunt, squawk, blandishment, mottled, callousness, apiary, keepsake, mawkishly, look out, thrush, wheedlingly, waddling, stark, wisp, chicken skin, holly, kitchen range, gallipot, small hours, trampling, stoutly, linnet, throttled, stage villain, arena, maundering, cut, gritty, pell-mell, ditch, crockery, wilted, bawled

Through the Tunnel, by Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing at the Wikipedia

Through the Tunnel at the Wikipedia

Audiobook

Through the Tunnel, summary & analysis

BIOGRAPHY

Doris Lessing was born in Iran in 1919. At that moment, Iran was under the rule of Great Britain. Her father was a bank clerk and her mother a nurse. When she was 5, her family moved to Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe, but then also under the British Empire. There she lived until she was 30. Her family had a farm, but not much money, and she went to a catholic school. At 15, she started working as a nursemaid. At 19, she got married and had two children, but she left her husband and her children. Afterwards, she said, “There’s nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend an endless amount of time with small children.” But she got married again and had one more son, and she divorced again. She left also Rhodesia and went to live in the UK, fed up with the classicism and racism of the African country.

All her life was a committed person with leftist politics, and until the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, she belonged to the Communist Party.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007.

When the critics talk about her writings, they usually distinguish three periods:

The Communist period, when she wrote mainly about social issues. Her African Stories, for example, belong to this phase.

The psychological period, when she wrote Children of Violence (a collection of five semi-autobiographical novels),  and The Golden Notebook, that is in fact a revision of these 5 novels.

The Sufi period, when she studied the Muslim mysticism called Sufi and when she wrote science-fiction novels, for example, the series Canopus in Argus.

Out of these periods we found The Good Terrorist, about the squatters in London.

Her work is sometimes wearisomely didactic and focused more about topics than about form.

She is considered a feminist writer, although she doesn’t like being labelled.

She died in 2013 in London, when she was 93.

If you'd like to know more about her life, you can read her autobiography Under my Skin, in two volumes of more of 400 pages each one.

Through the Tunnel This is a story about an eleven-year-old boy on holiday on the coast with his widow mother. Every year they go there, and sunbathe and swim on the same big beach, but now he feels boring spending the time with his mother on this beach, because he thinks he has grown up, and this big and safe beach is for small children and mothers. So he decides to explore a cove near the big beach. There he sees some boys doing feats of old boys or adults; for example, they dive to the sea from a high rock, or swim under a long rock. The boys ignore him, because when he sees that he cannot do the same as them, he behaves like a child. Then, when he’s alone, he studies the passage under the long rock that they have crossed, and tries to cross it too. But it’s very long and dark. He’s going to need some goggles and is going to have to practise his breathing… because he’s decided to go through the tunnel whatever happens. Is he going to get it at the end?

QUESTIONS

Why do you think the author talks about the “woman’s arm” instead of talking simply about the “woman”?

In the lines 20-21 we find the expression “impulse of contrition – a sort of chivalry”. How can you identify contrition with chivalry?

There are two beaches: the big one and the small cove or ravine. It seems that the big beach is for children and the ravine for adults. What characteristics does the author give to each one in order to identify the big one with children and the rocky ravine with adultness?

What kind of relationship is there between the mother and her son?

Jerry tries to talk to the group of boys that are having a swim; but they speak the local language and Jerry doesn’t. How difficult is to make friends with someone who speaks a different language? Do children and young people make friends more easily than mature people?

The gang of local boys have a leader. Do all the gangs have to have a leader? What are the qualities that a leader has to have (according to your opinion)?

There is a moment when Jerry acts out a foolish dog. Why do you think he reacts like this?

Jerry asks (in fact, demands) for some goggles and wants to have them immediately. What is the best way to behave in front of a demanding child?

Do you think that every child needs, in order to grow up, to get through a rite of passage?

The narrator says, “He would do it if it killed him”. Do you think this is a sign of maturity? Was his a sensible decision?

Why, when he could be a member of the gang, “he did not want them”?

It seems that the mother was unconscious of the dangers her child was in. Are we usually aware of the dangers our children are in?

What do you think is the meaning of the blood filling the goggles in relation to coming of age?

Why wasn’t Jerry’s mother impressed when he told her he could stay for more than two minutes under water?

VOCABULARY

blurted out, villa, worrying off, scoop, inlets, surf, craving, poised, bog, blank, feat, nagged, sequins, groped, frond, dizzy, overdo, weed, gout, scooped, glazed looking

The Rocking-Horse Winner, by D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence at the Wikipedia

The Rocking-Horse Winner at the Wikipedia

A Summary and Analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner

The Rocking-Horse Winner Study Guide

Audiobook

D. H. LAWRENCE, by Adriana Cruz

BIOGRAPHY

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, his birth name, was born in Eastwood,

England, the 11th of September 1885, and he died in Vence, France, on the 2nd of March 1930 (the cause of death was tuberculosis). He was married to Frida von Richthofen, a German literate.

Lawrence was an English writer, author of novels, poems, plays, essays, short stories, travel books, paintings, translations, and literary criticism. His literature exposes an extensive reflection on the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. Lawrence views on all these matters caused him many personal problems. As a consequence, he had to spend most of his life in voluntary exile, which he himself called a “wild pilgrimage”. Among his most notable works there are Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He got distinctions like the James Tait Black Award.

In his childhood, he studied at Beauvale Board School, becoming the first local student to win a county council scholarship to Nottingham High School.

He also studied at the University of London, where served as a teacher and received a teaching diploma in 1908. In the autumn of the same year, Lawrence left the home of his youth for London, although he continued to work as a teacher for a few more years.

Lawrence had a very close relationship with his mother. 

He had an affair with a married woman six years older than him with three small children, and they flew to Freida’s parents’ home in Metz. Afterwards, they got married.

He spent the rest of his life travelling in the company of his wife around several countries. Finally, they arrived in the United States in September 1922, where they met Mabel Dodge Luhan, a public figure, and contemplated establishing a utopian community on what was then Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico.

They acquired the property, known today as the D. H. Lawrence Ranch.

 

SUMMARY

The story tells of a middle-class family with three children (a boy and two girls), who live in a good house with a garden, with discreet servants. Although so that everyone could notice, they kept up appearances. The mother is haunted by a sense of failure, always thinking that she needs more than she has. Her husband did not earn as much as she wanted and the life he would like to have with her luxuries and extravagance. Her children feel this anxiety, even claiming they can hear the house whisper, “There must be more money.”
The boy Paul was playing with his wooden horse in search of luck and ordered his horse to take him where the luck is.
Basset, the gardener, told him about horse racing and the two became partners.
One day, the boy is questioned by his uncle on the subject, and he is surprised when he tells him the name of the winner. Uncle Oscar, intrigued, asks how he knows who will win, but Paul tells him that he only knows who wins and doesn’t tell him his secret. That’s how the guy finds out about his earnings and successes.
Uncle Oscar Cresswell becomes a partner with them. The boy and Bassett make huge bets on the horses Paul names.
When Paul decides to give the mother a gift of £1,000, on her every birthday, for five years, so that he can ease her commitments, but only makes her spend more.
Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be “lucky.” As the Derby draws near, Paul is determined to meet the winner.
The mother, returning from a party, discovers his secret; She has spent hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night, until he “arrives”, in a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner’s name.
Her uncle and the Gardener bet and won big on the investment of 14 to 1 of everything he had.
The mother now had a lot of money, but she did not have her son.

The boy told his mother, “Mom, I’ll ever leave you: I’m lucky”.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the main characters:

Paul
His mother
His father
His uncle
The gardener
Why do you think the mother couldn’t love her children?
Do you think money can make happiness?
And what about luck? Can it make you happy?
Being lucky is something that depends on the causality, or can you do something to be lucky? Remember the saying “Fortuna helps the brave”.
Are you pro or against lotteries? Why?
Paul’s mother became unlucky when she got married? Do you think marriage can change people so much?
Mantra is a commonly repeated word or phrase, especially in advocacy or for motivation. In the story we can find two or more mantras (“There must be more money”, “I want luck”). Do you think mantras can be useful or effective? (Perhaps you remember old people saying the rosary.)
Why do you think uncle Oscar is lucky?
Do you believe in intuitions or hunches?
The mother got some money for her birthday. Was she happy then? Why?
Does our childhood determine the way we are as adults?
Some interpretations of this story say that the boy has the Oedipal complex and that his rocking on the horse is like a kind of masturbation. What is your opinion about this interpretation?
What is the symbolic meaning of the story according to your point of view?

VOCABULARY

thrust, grinding, racked, champing, smirking, pram, brazening it out, peer, careered, steed, batman, blade, sport, honour bright, daffodil, romancer, fiver, spinning yarns, writs, writhed, drapers, sequins, overwrought, quaint, prance, uncanny, Master, as right as a trivet, tossing