The Fishing-boat Picture, by Alan Sillitoe

BIOGRAPHY

Alan Sillitoe was born in Nottingham in 1928 to a working-class family. His father was an illiterate, couldn’t keep a job for long, and was usually violent. His mother worked in factories and, for a short time, as a prostitute. They had, besides Alan, four more children. They often moved house because they couldn’t pay the rent.
Alan left school at fourteen because he failed the entrance exam for the grammar school (the secondary school at the time). He worked in the factories of the county for four years, and then he joined the RAF, although he didn’t serve in the WWII because he was too young. But he did serve as a wireless operator in the war against the rebel communists in Malaya.
When he got back, he discovered he had TB. While in the hospital, he read a lot, but with no judgement nor model, and decided he wanted to be a writer.  He got together with the poet Ruth Fainlight (whom she married ten years later). Then, with a pension from the government, he travelled to France and Spain to try to get over his disease. When he lived in Majorca, he met Robert Graves, who helped him in his career as a writer. Thus, he started writing Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1958. The novel is about the Saturday night-life of a factory worker who gets involved in a booze competition and in a love affair with is mate’s wife, and then, the next morning, the hangover shows him the reality of life.
His other famous novel is The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, published in 1959. It's about the life in a Borstal, a youth detention centre.
In 1968, he was invited to visit the USSR as a working-class writer, but there he denounced the human rights abuses in the communist system, surprising this way the soviet authorities. But, on the other hand, he always supported Israel in front of Palestinian movements.
He belongs, although he doesn’t like being classified like this, to the “angry young men” of the 50s in the UK, a group of artists and intellectual people who rejected the middle-class morals of the post-war Great Britain. He avoided all literary awards, although he accepted honorary doctorates from some universities.
He had two children from his wife.
Alan Sillitoe died in 2010 in London, of cancer. He was 82.
 
SUMMARY

This is a working-class story: the characters are working people, simple, with poor entertainment and poor ambitions, and it typically ends sadly.
Our hero is Harry, a postman who takes his life easily and doesn’t get emotional for anything. His only hobby is reading, mostly books about geography. When he gets a steady position in the post office, he says yes to get married to Kathy, a girl four years older than he.
For six years, they live happily together, although with a lot of rows, sometimes a bit violent. Then, after these six years, they had a silly argument: Kathy throws his book to the fire, he hits her, and she goes away for good. But afterwards he discovers that she had been cheating on him, at least for a year, with a housepainter across the street.
He isn’t sad or angry with Kathy’s departure, and he gets used to living alone, and feels, if not happier, more comfortable. He goes on doing his rounds and reading his books without any of the usually ups and downs of the life.
After six years more, his wife appears again out of the blue. She says she was around there and thought it was worth paying him a visit. Nevertheless, neither of them is excited about this sudden meeting; perhaps they only feel a bit of nostalgia. They sit and have a chat, all the time keeping the distance, but without any resentment. Kathy shows some interest in a picture of a fishing boat hanging on the wall, the last of a collection of pictures her brother gave them as a wedding present, and Harry decides to give her the picture, although at the beginning she declines the offer. They used to say the picture was the last of the fleet.

Some days later, he sees the picture in a pawnshop window; a bit surprised, he buys it and hangs it at the same place, again with any kind of rancour.
Kathy keeps paying him short visits, and all the time their meetings are cold and distant. Initially, neither of them mentions again the picture. Now and then, the postman gives her money and cigarettes, although he only smokes a pipe.
Asked about the housepainter, Kathy tells him he died a long time ago of lead-poisoning. Now, she says, she lives alone in a small flat and has different jobs.
In the end, she asks again for the fishing-boat picture, and he gives it to her again. Afterwards, he finds it again in the window of the same pawnshop, but this time he doesn’t rebuy it.
One day, a lorry runs over her, killing her. The postman goes to the hospital, and there they give him her belongings, and with them there is the fishing-boat picture, broken and dirty with blood. In the cemetery, besides her relatives, there comes a stranger. Harry finds him again in her place, collecting his things: he had been living with Kathy all these six years.
At home again, he thinks he could have kept their pictures and also kept Kathy, and feels that his life had been a waste of time.
At the end, he wonders about the meaning of life, of his life: is it worth living one’s life?
 
QUESTIONS

-What is your advice for a dating couple in order to know each other better and help them to decide on living (or not) together?
-What is better for a couple: a lot of love, or a lot of peace?
-Why do you think the protagonist liked living alone after his wife ran away?
-According to your opinion, why the wife didn’t ask him money?
-What does the picture symbolize for the couple along the story?
-Do you think that, for some people, unhappiness is a kind of happiness?

VOCABULARY

mash-lad, cheeky-daft, ruffled, down payment, hire purchase, prising, rammel, duck, allus, daft, nowt, bleddy dead ‘ead, clocked, skipped off, confined, on the dole, knocking on, clubfoot, rounds, draughts, fag-end, aerials, scooting, in the clock of the walk way, sarky, rouge, wireless, bob, hit it off, in the lurch, dresser, fag, five-packet, dished, wry, triplet, out of pop, doddering skinflint, mildewed, feyther, chinning, measly, scuttle, nippy, got the sack, mystified, blackout, shrapnel, picture house, bloke, sexton, potty, booze, pitted, knight

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (film)

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (film)

Obituary in The Guardian

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 friend or 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 for him.

 

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