Physics and Chemistry, by Jackie Kay

 

Review

Another review

Analysis

A BIT OF BIOGRAPHY
Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh in 1961. Her biological mother was Scottish, and her biological father, Nigerian. She was adopted soon after being born by a politically activist couple, John and Helen Kay from Glasgow. This couple had previously adopter her brother.
As a curiosity, Jackie worked for some months as a cleaning woman for John Le Carré, the spy novels writer.
She wanted to be an actress, but after reading the stories by Alasdair Gray, she decided to be a writer. She studied English at the University of Sterling.
She writes poetry, novels, short stories and plays. Her topics are adoption, gender, sexuality, activism and family relationships.
Her most famous book is Trumpet, about a jazz musician who, once dead, they discovered he was a woman.
Our short story appeared in a book called Why don’t you stop talking?
Now she works as a professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.
About her private life, we can say she had a son with another writer, then she had a long relationship with a poetess who had a daughter with a poet. So, a life full of books and writers.

 

SUMMARY

This is a story about two middle-aged female teachers. In the story, they don’t have names, they are referred only by the subject they teach, Physics and Chemistry. A part of being workmates, they’ve been living together for a long time, and they know each other very well. Physics is serious and introvert, and Chemistry is more open and doesn’t have problems expressing her emotions.

They are good teachers and in general are respected by their colleagues. Perhaps somebody can think they are a typical pair of spinsters, but if somebody does, they keep their opinion by themselves.

One day, after being in a concert they liked very much, they make love for the first time. For both of them it was a very satisfying experience, and it even changed a bit of Physics character: from this day on, she was less shy and maybe a bit daring. However, they go on being cautious about this new twist in their relationship. Moreover, they are modest and avoid talking to each other openly about their physical encounters.

But some time after this new path in their lives, a pupil’s parent comes to the school accusing the two teachers of being lesbians. Of course, the headmaster has to talk to them and explain the resolution he has decided to take.

 

QUESTIONS

-According to you, what is the best way to share the domestics tasks?

-How do you feel talking about sex? Why do you think people are usually shy about this topic?

-When you introduce yourself, do you think you have to define your sexual orientation? What aspects of your life do you think you must communicate to your boss or to your workmates?

-Can someone be fired because of their sexual orientation?

-What do you know about these new terms/concepts: gender versus sex, binary/nonbinary, gender-fluid…?

-In the story, something causal has chanced the life of our protagonists. In your opinion, what is more decisive in our lives, chance or will? Why do you think so?

 

VOCABULARY

poaching, shade of emulsion, serviced the car, seeped, glee, blissfully, put my foot in, wallop, fumed, gaffes, lemon grass, wee jug, marking, shoogle, had…round, bubbling, has been up, giving…notice, bobbles, plain/purl

Tomorrow is too far, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

BIOGRAPHY

About her biography, I send the link of another work in the English Book Club:

https://blanesbookclub.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-thing-around-your-neck-by.html

Analysis

More analysis

Review

A deep essay

Video comment

An interview

Written by Elisa Sola:

A little introduction about Nigeria and its ethnic and linguistic diversity 

Nigeria is a very ethnically diverse country with 371 ethnic groups, the largest of which are the Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo.

In spite of this diversity, Nigeria has one official language: English, as a result of the British colonial rule over the nation. Nevertheless, it is not spoken as a first language in the entire country because other languages are majority in terms of number of native speakers. Nigeria stands out as one of the world’s most linguistically diverse nations, with over 500 languages, spoken among 223 million people. Some of the most popular languages spoken in Nigeria are: Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Edo…

Chimamanda Ngozi was born into an Igbo family in Enugu (Nigeria), and in her formal education, Chimamanda was taught in both, Igbo and English. Although Igbo was not a popular subject, she continued taking courses of Igbo in high school.

 

SUMMARY

 

Tomorrow is Too Far tells the story of a family tragedy and the consequences it has on the protagonist and on all of her family.

The main character is a twenty-eight-year-old woman (we don’t know what is her name) who clearly relives the moment when her older brother (Nonso) died eighteen years earlier, when he was twelve years old. She, who was ten at the time, reveals that she caused Nonso’s death by challenging him to climb an avocado tree and then scaring him by telling him there was a dangerous snake (echi eteka), the “Tomorrow is Too Far” snake.

The story takes place in Nigeria, in Gradmama’s yard, in a humid and warm summer. The atmosphere is important because it shows us an exuberant and ripe nature, which is about to explode, like the feelings of the girl, who was torn between the hate and jealousy she felt towards her brother (for the preferential treatment he received  ̶ patriarchal upbringing) and the love and desire she felt for her cousin Dozie, thirteen years old.

A fatal triangle is drawn that will bring tragic consequences and will dynamite not only the relationship of all family members between themselves, but also their entire lives.

The decision to keep the secret for all these years in order to try to achieve the love and recognition of her parents means that she has not been able to overcome the facts, and at this moment, eighteen years later, she’s still not able to understand what happened in the “amoral kingdom of her childhood”. Things being like this, when she receives the news of her Grandmama’s death, she returns to the scene of the crime in a state of shock.

The fact that the story is told in the second person by an omniscient narrator helps to picture the image of a girl who is shocked, and she has difficulty expressing herself: everything we know about her is told us by this narrator who is inside her, but she is silent, blocked.

The representation that we have of the cousin is of a passive and sad character, overwhelmed by the events. When the girl asks him “what did you want that summer?”, trying to share the blame a little, his answer is categorical: “What mattered was what you wanted”.

The story ends with a beautiful image of ants, because, in fact, she and the entire family is like a “column of black ants making his way up the trunk, each ant carrying” a bit of guilty and a lot of sorrow.

 

QUESTIONS

-Apart from being the name of a snake, has the title another meaning in the story?

-In your view, the "kingdom of childhood" is amoral? Is / was childhood a paradise, for you?

-Why do you think the story is narrated in the second person (you)?

-There is a raw sex scene in all the story, but only one, and there's no more references to it. According to you, what is the purpose of this?

-In your opinion, Nonso's death was a crime out of jealousy, or only an accident due to a misplaced joke?

VOCABULARY

cashew, mat, soggy, pluck, limb-free, nudge down, padded, pods, moult, harmattan, makeshift, coaxed, choking, clogged, petting, clucked, cinnamon, cowries, toddler, mar, inching, fluff, roiling

Enoch's Two Letters, by Alan Sillitoe

Analysis 

Prezi presentation

Another analysis

It's a Long Way to Tipperary

Biography

Enoch's name in the Bible

SUMMARY

Enoch is an eight-year-old boy, the only son of Jack and Edna, although we don’t know for sure that Jack is his biological father.

It seems that Enoch is a good boy: he goes to school, he has friends, he behaves well, that is, he does the normal things for a lad of his age, and he’s a bit afraid of his father’s authority.

The Boden family appears to be a happy family, or at least a peaceful family that stays together. But almost at the beginning of the story, we find out that things aren’t what they seem, because Jack is going to leave his wife and home, and, on the very same day, his wife is going to do the same. However, neither of them knows anything at all about their partner’s plans. Jack is running away with his lover, a workmate, and Edna is fed up with her married life.

When Enoch comes home after school, he doesn’t find anybody there; but he isn’t very worried because he thinks they are just getting late. He imagines that his mother is paying a visit to a relative, and that his father has had an accident at the foundry where he works and that maybe he’s dead. But not even this worries Enoch too much.

The boy decides to make the most of the situation while waiting for them. He has something to eat, watches television, sits in his father’s armchair… As it gets dark and nobody appears, he decides to go to bed in the living room, on the sofa, in front of the stove and watching TV. And for blanket he uses a carpet.

The next morning, since neither his mother nor his father has come back home, he resolves to go to his grandmother’s to tell her what has happened. There, he finally loses his courage and determination (or his indifference) and cries.

His grandma and he returns to Enoch’s to try to understand what has happened to his parents, and there the boy finds, lying on the rug in the hall, the two letters his parents had written.

 

QUESTIONS

-According to you, how true is love at first sight? Can you tell us any example that confirms your opinion?

-In the house, the clock is turned against the wall. The mother turns it to see the time, and the boy to wind it? For you, what can be the meaning of a clock facing the wall?

-The story happens in early spring. In your opinion, what would be the best tome of the year to change your life?

-Both parents take two suitcases to make their escape. What would you take in a similar case (hypothetically)?

-Do children, teenagers… have different feelings about death, illness, divorce than adults? Why do you think so?

 

VOCABULARY

scullery, foundry, stint, mantelshelf, tackling, for good, settee, moulds, wind, torch, swivel, pumice, fare, mangle, upper/bottom deck, nowt

Manhood, by John Wain

 

Prezi presentation

Audiobook

BIOGRAPHY

John Wain was born in the Midlands in 1925. He studied at St Jonh’s College, Oxford, and later he taught at Reading University and also at Oxford. But he was essentially a man of letters: he wrote poetry, novels, short stories, plays, essays and biographies. Nevertheless, nowadays, his works are less read.
As a poet, he belonged to a group of writers called “The Movement”, active in the 1950s. They wanted to give a sense of Englishness in their poems and go back to traditional literature, a reaction to the exuberance and exoticism of the modernists, such as Dylan Thomas. Other members were Kingsley Amis (Martin Amis’s father), Philip Larking and Ted Hughes (Sylvia Plath’s partner).
As a narrator, he was associated with the “Angry Young Men”, a group of writers highly critical of the political system and the social order; so, their literature would be more realistic, and their topic the lives of the working class. Here we find Allan Sillitoe and John Osborne, whose play Looking Back in Anger was the seed of this tendency. We also can say that Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch shared some of their ideas.
Perhaps Wain’s most interesting work was Hurry on Down, a comical novel that follows the adventures of a young man after finishing his university studies.

He died in at the age of 69.

SUMMARY

Mr Willison is somebody who wasn’t very happy with his youth and childhood. He wasn’t satisfied with his physical education. He would have exercised more, played more sports. He had studied hard to get a good job and so all the time was working on books and exams.

Now he has a teenage son, Rob, and he wants to give him another kind of education. Not so much school academic subjects and a little bit more of sport. So, he takes his boy for long bike rides and prompts him to inscribe in the school rugby team. But Rob isn’t very fond of physical activities; nevertheless, he loves his father and wants to make him happy.

One day, after several miles of cycling, Mr Willison gives his son a boxing punch-ball and a pair of boxing mittens. Rob isn’t really interested in boxing, but he doesn’t reject his father’s present, and he even tries to hit the ball with all his strength.

Then, at school, we suppose because of his father’s insistence, tries, or says he tries, to join the rugby team. But, as in the end he isn’t selected, he makes up for saying he was chosen for the boxing team; this way he doesn’t disappoint his father. Mr Willison is very excited with this piece of news, and he takes on himself to train him. However, his wife says boxing is a dangerous sport for the brain, and there is a heated discussion about the topic between husband and wife. Mr Willison is overjoyed, and Mrs Willison is furious.

So everyday Rob trains very hard with his father, but, when the day of the tournament arrives, he says he doesn’t feel very well and that he cannot fight in the contest. His mother is very worried and blames his husband for the situation and tells him to call the doctor. Mr Willison is so bewildered that his suspects his son of faking his illness out of fear. In the end, he decides to call the manager of the boxing team.

 

QUESTIONS

-What do you think is going to happen after the father discovers the truth?

-Mrs Willison mentions “her big night” referring to the night her son was born. What was your “big night / day”?

-What do you know about Baroness Summerskill, Ingemar Johansson and Marquess of Queensberry?

-There is a lack of communication between father and son. According to you, should there always be complete frankness between parents and children?

-In general, is “suffering” something profitable in order to shape a person’s character?

-Is it essential for a teenager to come through a rite of passage?

-When, in your opinion, does pushing our children to study, or play sports become necessary, and when does it become harmful?

 

VOCABULARY

short cut, dale, beamed, mittens, scrum, cramming, trunks, catches, parried, bullet-headed, louts, take a grip, fit as a fiddle, bout, M.A.

 

free-wheeling, haunches, fatigue, endurance, sullen, clambered, doggedly, physique, prone, rebellion, simultaneously, mittens, landmark, tournament, trials, acutest, satchel, to, limber, up, keened, louts, compel, appendicitis, jabbering, defensive, queries

The Most Beautiful Woman in Town, by Charles Bukowski

Analysis

Audiobook

Tales of Ordinary Madness, Wikipedia

Factotum, Wikipedia

Factotum, movie

Barfly, Wikipedia

Barfly, movie

Tales of Ordinary Madness, movie

Charles Bukowski chez Bernard Pivot

SUMMARY, by Begoña Devis

Despite the nice title, that story is in fact a very sad one, very Bukowski-esque. The most beautiful woman in town is also the unhappiest. She feels her beauty is a curse, believing no one can see beyond the obvious: her perfect body, her attractive and unique face. That’s why she attacks herself, constantly at war with herself and with everyone else; and even having found someone capable of seeing her inner beauty, and with whom she could perhaps be happy, she doesn’t allow it, probably because she doesn’t feel worthy of it, and finally decides she can no longer live in a world that seems too cruel and heartless to her. Her soul is too sensitive to bear it, and she’s also too angry, too young and too immature to have the ability to see things any other way and give herself a chance.
    In a few sentences, Bukowski gives us very important details about this beautiful girl so we can understand her behaviour. What happiness could she feel as a child in her family with an alcoholic father, who probably plunged them into poverty and abandonment? How could she believe she deserved happiness after being abandoned by her mother along with her four sisters following her father’s death? How could she trust others if all she received was envy from her sisters and sexual abuse from men? Even during the years she spent in a convent with her sisters, she didn’t live in peace; she was too beautiful not to be envied and rejected. It was only natural that she hated her beauty and decided to put an end to it once and for all.

 
PERSONAL OPINION
 
Childhood abandonment, alcoholism, and the sensitivity hidden behind rudeness and outbursts are recurring themes in Bukowski, who narrates his own miserable life through his stories. This one, coming from its author, is as heartbreaking as it is predictable, though always interesting to read, due to his direct, abrupt, and at times almost pornographic style, which makes it unique and compelling.
    Aside from the story itself, I personally —although I understand it couldn’t be any other way— have always found it deeply unfair that an unhappy childhood leads to a difficult life, while a happy one greatly contributes to making adulthood much more enjoyable. It’s like a win-or-nothing game, and only a few manage to turn things around, reconcile with their past, and live a full and happy life despite a difficult start. This wasn’t the case for the most beautiful woman in town.

QUESTIONS

-Cass was misusing her beauty. What do you think of working as a model? Is it a job as any other one, or it isn't a job you wouldn't like for your children? Is it a sexist job?
-Would you like to live for a time in a convent? Do you think it would be a benefit for people who lead a stressing life?
-What can be the reason of a self-inflicted wound? Has it anything to do with masochism?
-After making love, the narrator asked the girl her name. What would be the first questions you ask in a first date?
-"Once you accept a drink, you create your own trouble". How true / sexist is this sentence, in your opinion?

VOCABULARY

zap, of age, forged, fair, dramatics, schitzi, elephant ear, bail, fad, hustling, haggle, wearing, pecker, pace, shack, offhand

Collector, by Raymond Carver

Summary and analysis

Review

Deep analysis

BIOGRAPHY: click here

SUMMARY

Mr Slater is at home alone. Outside, it’s raining. He is out of work and has been waiting for the post man for some time. He’s expecting an important letter.

Then somebody knocks at the door, but it isn’t the postman, because he knows his tread. Mr Slater doesn’t move at the knocking, but the man outside insists. It turns out to be a salesman, Mr Audrey Bell. He was looking for Mrs Slater, because he says she had won a prize. But there is no Mrs Slater in the house. Later we learn that the “prize” is a free vacuuming of the house.

Mr Bell comes into the house a little bit as if he was invading it: Mr Slater doesn’t really invite him to come in, but, although he puts up some resistance at the beginning, he soon seems a bit indifferent to the intrusion. The salesman takes off his coat and his galoshes and starts to assemble a contraption that turns out to be a vacuum cleaner. He behaves as if he were at home, and even asks for an aspirin because he says he has a headache.

Once the machine is ready, he goes to the next room and starts to clean a mattress. It is an easy task because the blankets are on the floor, as if nobody wanted to sleep on it anymore.

After that, Mr Bell goes to the sitting room and asks for some dirt or a full ashtray. Mr Slater gives him a full ashtray and Mr Bell empties its contents onto the carpet there; he wants to demonstrate how well the machine works. All the while, the owner of the house has been watching the salesman’s operations without complaining, but also keeping telling him he isn’t going to buy anything.

While the salesman is doing his demonstration, the letter Mr Slater was waiting for arrives. The postman has slid it inside through the mail slot. But neither Mr Slater nor the Mr Bell go to pick it up.

When the salesman has finished his work, picks the letter up, reads the recipient (that was Mr Slater), folds the letter, puts it in his pocket, puts on his coat and galoshes, and goes away. Never Mr Slater tries to get the letter; he only makes sure he was indeed the addressee. He doesn’t buy the vacuum cleaner.

 

QUESTIONS

 

-I suppose you had paid attention that in the story the dialogues are not marked (with quotations marks, for example). Why do you think the author uses this stylistic device?

-In your view, why does the salesman mention some important writers? What do you know about Auden, Rilke, Voltaire and Madame Châtelet?

-Mr Bell pulled his lips? What can be the meaning of this gesture? Do you remember some other curious gestures or grimaces?

-In your opinion, what is the relation between the title and the story?

-The story is very simple, but it has to have a deeper meaning: for you, what is its true meaning?

 

VOCABULARY

 

notices, railhead, corns, matted, churchly, scoop, tugged

Atrophy, by Edith Wharton

 

To read her BIOGRAPHY by Nora Carranza, click here.
Notes for Atrophy

SUMMARY, by Josep Guiteras

Nora Frenway was a young, beautiful and elegant woman. She was married to Mr. George Frenway, a semi-invalid man with a bad temper which made him a desolate and pathetic figure.
They had two sons who were Nora’s jewels. George had a possessive and domineering mother, before whom the entire family cowered, lied and flattered.
Nora had once had a lover, Christopher, who lived in Oakfield near Westover. He was currently very ill and his life was in danger, so Nora Frenway secretly decided to take the train and visit him.
Her lover lived with his spinster sister, Jana Aldis, a dishevelled, old and insignificant woman.
Jana Aldis made it as difficult as she could to prevent Nora from seeing her brother Christopher. Nora suspected that Jana knew about her relationship with her brother, and just in case there was any doubt about this, when Nora was about to board the taxi that would take her to Westover station to return home, Jane Aldis called from the threshold “I’ll be sure to write to thank your husband Mr. Frenway for your visit.”

QUESTIONS
-Has been there a moment when you had the feeling of being "flung naked to the public scrutiny"?
-Do you feel you have adopted all the inhibitions of your parents and grandparents? What inhibitions do you regret more?
-In your opinion, does a sister have more power upon her brother than a wife upon her husband?
-According to your view, is the partner the first one to feel being cheated, or the last one, when everybody already knows?
-In the story there is a beautiful love gesture: to stroke the dog on the same place her lover's hand had rested. Do you remember any other tender gesture, in real life or in fiction?
-What would you be your best option when you feel your adversary (in a match, in a debate...) is much weaker than yourself?
-Miss Aldis speaks several times about "tree moving". What is its symbolism, on your view?
-What could be the relation between the title and the story?

VOCABULARY
quailed, humbugged, fibbed, fawned, holds-up, welter, tarred, inferences, dowdy, brim, panelled, brink, prying, cared for a fig, upholsterer, moping, groping, caller, beech, twaddle, platitudes, blighting

The Principles of Newspeak, from the novel 1984, by George Orwell

GEORGE ORWELL, a short biography

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. He drew the inspiration for this pseudonym from the River Owell and from the patron saint of England.
He was born in 1903 in India and died at the age of 46 in London as a result of tuberculosis.
His most famous books are Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm and Homage to Catalonia.
When he was one year old, his mother took him and his sisters to England. As a child, he attended a Catholic school, and later he studied at Eton, the famous boarding school for the elite. There, Aldous Huxley taught him French.
As he wasn’t a particularly good student, his parents decided he should apply to the Indian Imperial Police. He went to a training police school in India, and then he worked as a policeman there.
After contracting dengue fever, he went back to England, having spent five years in India. He decided to leave the police force and to become a writer. He started with a memoir of his days in India with a book called Burmese Days, which he managed to publish several years after: at the time his manuscript was refused by all the publishers.
In 1927 (he was 24), he went to live on Portobello Road, where you can find a plate bearing his name.
The following year he went to Paris, where he wrote some articles for Le Monde, whose editor was Henri Barbusse. After six months, he went back to England, this time to Suffolk, where his parents were living. He went on trying to publish articles and sending his writings to various editors, but they were rejected.
At 29, he started working as a teacher at a boy’s secondary school in London. While working there, he was able to publish A Scullion’s Diary, a report on his visits to the London slums; then he also got published Down and Out in Paris and London, a book about his experiences in both cities. He got ill again and stopped teaching forever.
His new job was in a second-hand bookshop; there he began his novel A Clergyman’s Daughter, inspired in his days as a teacher. In the bookshop he contacted with Esperantists and with the Independent Labour Party. He also wrote literary reviews for some magazines. His book The Road to Wingan Pier was an investigation into the living conditions of the working class in the Northern England.
At the age of 33, he got married, but the same year he came to Spain to fight against the fascists, and he joined the POUM, a Trotskyist party; he fought in the Aragon Front, where he was wounded. He was taken to a hospital in Barcelona, where he witnessed the violent clashes between the Communist Party and the rest of leftist groups in May 1937. He was arrested, but he managed to escape and flee from Spain and the Stalinist agents. He told his experiences in the Spanish Civil War in his Homage to Catalonia.
Due to his serious health problems, his friends sent him to the French Morocco for recovery, but he came back before the start of the WWII.
During the war, he worked for the BBC, wrote articles for newspapers and finished Animal Farm. In 1945, he was appointed editor of the Tribune, but the following year he moved to an isolated farm to try to recover from his deteriorating health and to finish his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in 1949, some months before his death.

THE PRINCIPLES OF NEWSPEAK

The text we’re going to discuss is a kind of summary of the new language invented by George Orwell for the dystopian society depicted in the novel 1984.

But first, let’s talk a little bit about the novel. A dystopia is an imaginary place or time where people live in subhuman conditions. It’s a kind of opposite to utopia, where people live happily as in a paradise.

In the 1984 novel, the world is divided in three superstates in perpetual war with each other, but it’s a war of low intensity and the battles usually take place on the borders, and the alliances shift frequently, but none of the belligerents can achieve a definite victory, so the war never ends.

Our protagonist lives in a group of regions forming the state of Oceania under a totalitarian regime. The only political party with his leader, Big Brother, controls everything and everybody, and its ultimate objective is the absolute control of the human mind.

All the time, the regime tells its subjects that they live in the best of the worlds, but you know all are lies that everybody believes without question.

Our hero, Winston Smith, is a kind of civil servant who becomes aware of the big falsehood of the system and the tyrannical nature of the government, and wants to rebel against the establishment. He has a lover, and together they try to get in contact with the opposition, a Brotherhood whose leader is Goldstein. But the Thought Police is always watching.

The Thought Police is the most efficient police of the world, and its goal is to uncover any form of heterodoxy and suppress it. The only way to remain all the time orthodox is through Doublethink, that is, being able to think at the same time two opposite and excluding statements, i.e., “two and two is four, but sometimes two and two is five”, and genuinely believing that both are true. It isn’t hypocrisy, that is, thinking one thing and saying another, but really believing there isn’t a contradiction between both declarations.

The Party is working to maintain orthodoxy, and the way to reach this goal is the Newspeak, a new language designed to keep all the thought between the limits of goodthink. This new language will reduce all possible ambiguities eliminating unnecessary words such as synonyms or opposites, and simplifying grammar and spelling. So, the new Dictionary will contain fewer and fewer words each new edition. At the end it would be impossible to commit crimethink because the worlds to express such thoughts will no longer exist.

QUESTIONS

-How do you see the future of Humanity? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about it? Why do you think so?

-What is solipsism? Do you think reality exist out of our minds, or it's only an invention of our minds?

-In your view, are we spied and controlled all the time? According to you, is it good or bad for people?

-Our languages, are becoming poorer and poorer?

VOCABULARY

lice, root, arising, utter, telescoped, devised, rook, severed

The Last Leaf, by O. Henry

 

Film (minute 41:24)

SUMMARY

Greenwich Village was, and is, a quarter in New York where artists like to live. They could be famous artists or poor artists, but all of them strove to produce a masterpiece. However, in order to make booth ends meet, they had to do menial works, usually related to decorative arts.

In a building in this place, there lived a pair of young women, Johnsy and Sue. As most of the artists there, they had their own difficulties with money; but money wasn’t the only trouble: that year, November was very cold, and Johnsy caught a pneumonia. In the beginning of the twentieth century, a pneumonia was a serious illness and sometimes a fatal one.

The doctor visited Johnsy and gave her some remedies, but she didn’t get better, and according to the doctor, it was because she was in low spirits, she didn’t have the strength of mind to overcome her disease and she felt depressed and suspected she was going to die soon; in short, she imagined that her life depended on the number of leaves of an old ivy vine that climbed the wall opposite her window; as fewer leaves were left in the vine, less life was left for her. So, falling leaves were a kind of final countdown for her.

Sue and Johnsy had a neighbour, old Behrman. He was also a poor artist trying to start to paint what had to be his masterpiece; but he never could find the inspiration. Although he was in want all the time, he tried to help his neighbours artists and sometimes posed for them.

Sue told old Behrman about Johnsy’s illness and about her strange obsession with the falling leaves, and perhaps he thought about her strange superstition.

Well, in the end, the vine had only a leaf left. Johnsy believed it was her last hope to live: if the leaf fell, she would die; if the leaf stood stuck to the vine, she would live.

That night was windy and snowy, so her chances to live were few, and her friend wouldn't allow her to be watching the last leaf during the night.

But the next morning, the leaf was still there: it had withstood all the attacks of the tempest. And because of this, Johnsy recovered her spirits and her desire to live, and soon she felt better.

When she was a bit stronger, Sue told her a piece of bad news: her good old neighbour was found dead on the snow, on the street below their window, the night of the tempest, with his painting tools near him.

What was he doing there?

QUESTIONS

-A big question: what is art? Or better: what is art for you?

-Are you superstitious? What can be a definition of superstition? Do you know a superstition that has a scientific basis?

-Johnsy didn't have spirits to fight for her life. When a disease can be considered psychosomatic?

VOCABULARY

paid on account, gable, pewter, bishop sleeves, duffer, smote, Ducht window, jew's harp, goosey, imp, hem, daub, juniper berries

The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry

Film (minute 1:28:43) 

SUMMARY

This is a very romantic story. It’s, of course, a love story, but also a story of self-sacrifice.

A married couple lived very poorly. The husband, Jim, was a mere worker, and his wife was a housewife. They lived in a cheap flat in the big city. Christmas was near, and each one wanted to give their partner a present, but neither of them had enough money to buy the gift they would like. So, they have to contrive something to get the money. Della, the wife, wanted a chain for Jim’s pocket watch, a trinket the Jim loved very much. Jim had only a strap to hold his watch. But the chain was too expensive, and the only idea she got to get some money was selling her own hair. Della had a mass of long, beautiful hair and was very proud of it, and Jim adored it. But she sold it, and then she could buy the chain.

For his own part, Jim also had to do something to get some cash for the present he wanted to buy for Della. He also sold something he loved very much, and, with the money, he could buy a set of combs for Della's beautiful hair (here with "combs" we mean convex combs to adorn a woman’s hair, not the tools to arrange one’s hair).

But now you can imagine the wife’s disappointment when he saw her present. And until the end of the story, we won’t know what Jim had to sell to buy the combs, and, you know: having read some of O. Henry stories, we must have the suspicion that it will be another surprise.

But, besides surprises, the story has a morality. For you, what is it, this morality?

 

QUESTIONS
-What are your habits about presents? 
-What do you know about the Three Wise Men? Are they historical figures?
-And what about Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas?

-Do you think the couple of the story are being romantic or only irresponsible? Are there any other, cheaper, ways to be romantic?

-Our couple is a bit traditional. Nowadays, how can one be chivalrous without being sexist?

-What differences could you find between the original story and the film adaptation?

VOCABULARY

bulldozing, parsimony, flop down, lookout, sterling, pier-glass, hashed, fob chain, sly, truant, dog, quail, wails, tresses, singed (/singd/), manger