SUMMARY
England is the last story of the collection and it gives the
title to the book, so we have to suppose that it is its flagship. But the
“spirit” of “England” is in all the stories, because they tell us about
ordinary people in their country: their lives, their history, their feelings,
their successes and failures. Perhaps, because of the title, someone would think that the
author is a bit of a chauvinist, but his stories prove that it is the other way
round: he doesn’t boast of his country, but neither scoffs at it.
Our story is situated in a remote place in England, in
that extreme England border, the ocean, in the geographical sense as in the
human sense.
Ken Black, a coastguard in the Bristol Channel, goes
to his post very early in the morning, and sees a car stopped on the side of
the road with one of its (“her”) wheels in a ditch. He stops to help and
finds that the driver is a black man who works as a travelling comedian. For
Ken it’s a so extraordinary event (a black man, a comedian, very early in the
morning, in this remote part of the country) that he isn’t going to tell
anybody about it. The comedian, Johnny Dewhurst, explains that a young deer standing in the middle of the road has caused his little accident. Together
they put the car back on the road; then the stranger invites Ken to a coffee from a thermos and explains a bit of his job, that he comes from the north and visits a lot of
places doing his show, a kind of entertaining or comical monologue. Even he
invites Ken and his wife to go and see him. In the end, the coastguard goes on
to his work, not believing what has happened to him and deciding he isn’t going
to see his show. The comedian gets into his old car to go on his itinerary.
Where is England in the story? Perhaps the comedian (a
black man that maybe has ancestors from Jamaica) knows more about England than
Ken (a really typical Englishman), because he travels around it. Perhaps he
knows more about people because he tries to make them laugh, so he has to know
the famous English humour (if that thing does exist), or he knows that one really understands people when one understands their sense of humour. Perhaps the
story is a kind of apology for the English people: they do help strangers, they
do try to be kind to them, they can accept a cup of coffee from them, but they
cannot pay a visit to their performances (that is, as it was their home) … All
in all, they are perplexed and shy in front of the alien. Is the English
character like this, or is it a topic?
QUESTIONS
Let’s talk about driving. Do you think people drive
better or worse than before? Does driving define your personality? Do you think
people become aggressive when they sit behind a wheel?
Would you stop to help someone on the road, if you can
see they are in trouble?
Did you do hitch-hike when you were young? And now, do
you stop your car to take hitch-hikers?
Do you think four-by-four cars should be banned from
cities?
According to the narrator, the comedian has “a thick
bizarre bonnet of frizzy hair”. Do you know the song Buffalo Soldier by Bob
Marley? What does “Buffalo Soldier” stand for? Talking about Bob Marley; what
do you know about Rastafari movement?
The narrator thinks the black man could be Caribbean.
Why? Where do black people in Great Britain come from?
He says he has a “joke voice”: do you know more
examples of “joke voices”?
What can you tell us from Ilfracombe?
“He pronounced the word at full-picth and with
declamatory slowness.” Do you know any anecdote relative to the way we people
talk to foreigners?
“He felt like a policeman”. When do you try to be civilized,
do you feel sometimes like being a policeman? Do you think it’s right to act as
a policeman?
What literary symbol could be the deer in the road?
When sailors talk about ships, they mention them as
feminine: the nautical “lift her”. Do you think that some things are masculine
and others feminine?
They say “close
contact breeds affection” (el roce hace el cariño in Spanish). In this story, working together creates a kind of link between them. Can
you tell us any similar experience?
“The only cloud was retirement.” Was or would be a
cloud for you? Why?
How do you imagine being a travelling comedian?
What type of cities did the comedian visit in his
tour?
Where is the joke here: “Johnny Dewhurst, it no joker’s
name, it a butcher’s name”?
What can you tell about Dewsbury?
Do you usually give money to street artists? Why?
How does anybody decide what to be in the future?
Is the narrator going to tell the story to his mates
and to his family? Why?
What is the meaning of that: “would that risk having
his roadside encounter hurled outrageously back at him”?
What do you think it’s the relation between the title
and the story?
VOCABULARY
brow, pulled up, gullies, tarmac, seldom, starkly, scoops,
overcast, dashboard, plush, four-by-four, dinky, cowering, dip, dodgy, Fookin'
'ell, I is, screechy, hissy, I no, weirdly, de, joost, beguiling, lee-tal, dapples,
reversing, manic, swerved, strutting, her, spin, skipper, looped stripe, arse, bumber,
wrestler, We don't wahnt you messin' de natty tailorin', dents, fleetingly, skip,
log, boot, elated, wizardly, skittering, yanking on, clock on, Tain't, yielding
chuckle, glued, huddle, dishes, decommissioned, cackled, personas, topiary, gig,
inured, shuddered, hee-hawed, bubbled out, corn exchanges, billing, stranded, dregs,
forlorn, yen, buckled, head-in-the-sand, whisked away, SUVs
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)
