Never, by H. E. Bates

Summary

Wikipedia

H.E. Bates's books in films

Bates's website

Bates: The Modern Short Story

 

H. E. Bates, Never, by Elisa Sola

 

BIOGRAPHY

Herbert Ernest Bates was born on the 16th of May, 1905 (nineteen o five), in Rushden, Northamptonshire. Therefore, he was an English author.

His grandfather Charles Lucas was a shoemaker and led Herbert to walk around the countryside, and this is where he learnt to appreciate the plants and wildlife of the area of North Bedfordshire, where his grandmother's family came from. In fact, many of his stories describe life in rural areas of England.

He was educated at Ketting Grammar School, where he enjoyed football and athletics. His English teacher there was Edmund Kirby, who was to influence his studies of literature and poetry. He left school at sixteen and became a junior reporter in the Northampton Chronicle, but he hated his job. Then he took a job as a clerk for a leather merchant and it was there where he wrote his first novel The Two Sisters, when he was merely twenty years old. in 1925, when he was 21 years old, he found a company willing to publish this book.

In 1931 he married Marjorie Hellen and they moved to Little Chest, in Kent. There they bought a granary which they converted in a beautiful garden. In this environment he could write and quickly gained a reputation for writing stories about country ways.

During World War II he continued writing stories, alongside with his duties in the RAF, under the pseudonym of "Flying Officer X". In some of his stories, he wrote about several people who were identifiable to the locals. In fact, he dedicated several of his books to the people who had influenced his life: the character Uncle Silas (in a series of stories) is his great uncle Joseph Betts. Another famous character was Sam Smith, who was a friend whom he had learnt about poaching (stealing game).

Marjorie and Herbert had four children: Ann, Judith, Richard and Jonathan who were grown with the same love for nature. Herbert wrote also a book about gardening and an autobiography.

H.E. Bates died in 1974, aged 68, after a serious illness, but his greatest success came after his death, when his son Richard produced a television series based on the Pop Larkin family in The Darling Buds of May, and its sequels as well as adaptations of My Uncle Silas, A Moment in Time, Fair Stood the Wind for France, and Love for Lydia.

H. E. Bates has a road named after him in his town of Rushden.

 

NEVER

In the short story “Never” by H. E. Bates, a teenage girl by the name of Nellie decides that she wants to leave home, because her life is monotonous, but in reality, she doesn’t want to leave, or she can't leave.

The author describes a shading landscape and a depressed mood of the girl. All the elements in the story are chosen to recreate a sad and depressing atmosphere. Everything suggests that the girl is suffering from a mental illness. I think that she has a depression. Even at one point of the story she acknowledges that she isn’t well: "I hate everyone. I've changed until I hardly know myself". Some elements used by the author to create this atmosphere are:

1. The constant hesitation: "what shall I take? The blue dress with the rosette? What else? What else" / "Should she go to Elden or Olde?"

2. The repetition: "It was all confused. It was all confused" (she is confused and the landscape is confused too (clouds, half-dark room) / "I'm going away, I'm going away (she had said hundred times during the afternoon)", "She counted the money a dozen times", he moved her fingers anxiously.

3. The obsessive tune of the waltz in her mind, with the train schedule: "Elden 6.13, Olde 6.18"... The domestic sound of the tea cups reveals us the routine that she hates.

4. The cold throughout the story and the heat at the climax, when she thinks that she is about to leave. In the beginning she is in a drowsy, half-dark room, a sunset, with great clouds across the sky. We imagine a cold atmosphere. In the middle of the story, at the climax, she "felt warm", her breast rises and falls, her body felt a light thrill and she wishes she had no more fear, but in the end cold returns: "she felt cold... It was cold."

4. The weight: In the beginning her luggage is light, but after her euphoria, the luggage is heavy.

5. The light: The story begins in a "drowsy, half-dark room" (it was afternoon) and ends in the same "drowsy room", but "absolutely dark" (it was black night), like the future of the girl. The last words of the story "Some day! Some day!", are in contrast with the title: Never! From this point of view, it's a circular story.

With all these sensory elements: light, height, temperature, sound..., the author creates an atmosphere of deep discomfort. The familiar environment of the girl is also negative because her father is moaning about his lack of luck, and her routines are empty of excitement or energy. She acts only to fill up the day.

Faced with this, the girl wants to break this dynamic, but she is so afraid that she is unable to take the step in order to change her life.

Many people had dreamed of some new exciting adventures, new experiences, something very different from the same old existence. Some of them take this step, others are still questioning whether they're ready for it, and finally, others give it up. 

QUESTIONS

Describe the protagonist: age, interests, personality

What is the meaning of “sat in a heap”?

Talk about her family.

Why do you think she wants to go away?

What’s her biggest worry about going away?

What are her daily routines?

What things did she put in her bag to go away?

What is Elden 6.13 and Olde 6.18?

Where can you find the rhythm of a waltz in Elden 6.13 and in Olde 6.18?

What will be the best moment (day, week, year) to run away? Why?

There’s a big ellipsis of time in the story. What ellipsis is this one and why?

When she packed her things the bag “was not heavy” (page 392, line 17), but then it “grew heavy” (page 393, line 24). What is your opinion about this change?

Did she really want to go? How do you know?

Why the “red ring” was mocking her?

What weather elements pictured her disappointment?

Do you think she even went out of the house? Why?

What is a rite of passage? What rites of passage do you know?

Tell us about any “rite of passage” (yours, your children...) or any anecdote, any moment you remember of your adolescence, something that was decisive in your life.

VOCABULARY

guide, rotten, rosette, mending, hand, ace, trump, mournful, utter, prattle, strum, thrill, bottom G, flat, fitful

Telemachus, friend, by O. Henry

BIOGRAPHY, by Begoña Devis
 
William Sydney Porter was born in North Carolina in 1862 and died in New York in 1910. He was a great writer known as O. Henry after a cat he lived with for a time. He is considered one of the masters of the short story. His admirable treatment of surprise narrative endings popularized in English the expression "an O. Henry ending".
He had an eventful life. His mother died when he was three, and he and his father moved to his paternal grandmother's house. As a child he was a good student, and a great reader. He graduated from his aunt's school, who continued teaching him until he was 15. He then began working in his uncle's pharmacy and finally graduated as a pharmacist.
In 1882 he went to Texas, hoping that a change of scenery would improve his persistent cough. There he worked there as a ranch hand, as a cook and as a nanny. When his health improved, he went to Austin, where he worked as a pharmacist and where he began writing short stories. He was popular in the social life in Austin for his storytelling and musical talent. At this time, his problems with alcohol abuse began. In 1887, he eloped with the young Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy family. In 1888 they have a child, who died. In 1889, a new daughter, Margaret, was born.
In 1894, Porter founded a humorous weekly magazine called The Rolling Stone.  Then that magazine collapsed, and he moved to Houston, where he was a journalist at the Houston Post.
The most transcendental event occurred in 1895, when he was accused by the First National Bank of appropriating money that he had under his responsibility. On the eve of the trial he sailed for Honduras, where he lived for seven months, and where he wrote several stories, many of which appear in the book Cabbages and Kings, in which he coined the term «banana republic», phrase subsequently used to describe a small, unstable tropical nation in Latin America.
In 1897 he returned to Austin when he knew that his wife was dying, and after a few months he was arrested and convicted, spending three years in the Columbus (Ohio) prison. There he continued writing short stories to support his daughter. When he was released from prison, he changed his name to O. Henry and moved to New York, where he lived until his death.
In New York, the city the writer loved and the setting for many of his stories, O. Henry gained public recognition, but he had a deep problem with his alcoholism. Indeed, there is an anecdote that his most famous story, "The Gift of the Magi", was written under the pressure of a deadline, in just three hours and accompanied by a whole bottle of whiskey.
From December 1903 to January 1906, he wrote a story a week for the New York World, his most prolific period. He remarried in 1907 to his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Lindsey Colem, who left him in 1909.
O. Henry died on June 5, 1910 of cirrhosis of the liver. His funeral was held in New York and he was buried in Asheville, North Carolina. His daughter, Margaret Worth Porter, died in 1927 and was buried next to her father.
In the United States, the O. Henry Award for short stories, one of the most important in the world, was created in his memory. Among other writers, it has been awarded to William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Truman Capote, Raymond Carver, Saul Bellow and Woody Allen.
 

TELEMACHUS, FRIEND
 
The story begins when a hunter asks a man named Telemachus about his damaged ear, because it seems mutilated by a beast. Telemachus tells him that this ear is a mark of a really deep friendship between he and a man named Paisley, a friendship as strong as the one Damon and Pythias had.
He explained him that Telemachus and his friend spent seven years together, doing several jobs and living different experiences. Once they were in the town Los Piños and here they met a widow named Jessup, and both friends were attracted to her and each one wanted to marry her. But they didn’t want to lose their friendship and decided that if one of them reached her first, he would wait to the other to come before making advances, and would not do anything in secret. They decided to stay friends whoever won.
This situation ended up tiring the widow, who was most interested in Hinks and saw that he didn’t make any advance without being in the presence of his friend.
In spite of this, she still decided in the favour of Hicks and decided to marry him. At the wedding ceremony, Hicks asked the priest to wait until Paisley came. He finally came looking in his best, just in case the priest confuses them and marry Jessup to him instead Telemachus.
At night, after the wedding ceremony, Jessup waited in the room while Hicks sat outside. She asked him to come inside. He said her that he was waiting for his friend to come. After that Hicks felt as if somebody had shot his ear. In fact, it was a blow by Mrs. Hicks’s broom handle. This is the mark of his deep and truly friendship.

 

Audiobook

QUESTIONS

Describe the two friends.
What kind of friendship do they have?

Which is the first threat to this friendship?

What do you know about Damon and Phytias?

What is the meaning of this phrase: "anchovy to forget his vows"?

Describe Mrs Jessup.

What did Telemachus mean with "fidus Diogenes"?

What was the problem with Spring Valley / Big Spring Valley?

What is "to make a movement that leads up the widow to change her name to Hicks"?

Try to explain this image: "The smiles of a woman is the whirpool of Squills and Chalybeates into which the vortex of the good ship  Friendship is often drawn and dismembered"?

What is the "hot biscuit of Mrs Jessup"?

What are the "medicinal whirpools"?

What is a jew's harp?

What was the woman reaction to their idea of shared courtship?

Describe their different kind of courtshiping.

-Paisley

-Telemachus

Give some information about

-Rider Haggard

-Lew Dockstader

-Parkhurst

What does this mean: "when she can be referred as 'née Jones'"?

What happened exactly in the paragraph "One night... but I didn't"? (page 171, lines 25-29)

Who marries Mrs Jessup at last?

Why did his friend come to the wedding?
What happened to Lem's ear and why?

VOCABULARY

intent, dipper, graft, entitlement, churn, surcease, habiliment, pry, anchovy, in hoc signo, dogwood, chip, accrue, japonica, hiatus, railroad tie, Squills and Chalybeates, opodeldoc, hoss, synonymously, gallivantery, dough, crock, cinctured, drought, pipeful, hike yourself down the gulch, disresume, Lem, nix cum rous, Hubbard squash, wear the willow, cinch, cuff, bowery, durn, 

Lifeguard, by John Updike

Lifeguard: review

Lifeguard: analysis

Lifeguard: academic task

Lifeguard: audio

Your next reading is Lifeguard, by John Updike (author of The Witches of Eastwick), page 539.

It’s a very difficult story for its vocabulary and its imagery. Also, it has no action, it’s only a meditation about God and saving lives and souls the young lifeguard does.

In order to help you in this reading I’m going to give some information about different people that appears on the first pages:

Tillich, Father D’Arcy, Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain are philosophers who speculate about religion, mostly about catholic religion and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Kierkegaard, I suppose you know; Berdyaev was a Russian writer with deep religious convictions; Barth was a Calvinist theologian; Cardinal Newman, a protestant Anglican converted to Catholicism. I can’t think it’s necessary to say anything about Pascal, Saint Paul and Saint Augustine. G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and Graham Greene are catholic writers in the Anglican world of Great Britain.

Biography, by Rafel Martínez

John Hayen Updike was born on the 18^th of March,1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He was the son of teachers, and he was raised in a white and Protestant middle-class environment, which influenced greatly his later literary work.

As a teenager, John Updike started to like literature and writing influenced by his own mother, who also instilled in him a deep love for art. His father was a high school teacher who, having suffered the adversities of the 1929 crisis, supported the whole family with great sacrifices and a meagre salary.

Subsequently, Updike studied at Harvard University thanks to a scholarship. When he finished his studies, he moved to the United Kingdom and started to study Art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts in Oxford.

His work as a writer explores regularly  human motivations about sex, faith, the ultimate reason for existence, death, generational conflicts, and interpersonal relationships.

Updike's most important work were the series of novels about his famous character Harry Rabbit Angstrom (Rabbit Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; Rabbit at Rest and the novel of evocations and remembrances of the same character, Rabbit Remembered). Of the tetralogy, Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest allowed him to win two Pulitzer Prizes in 1982 and in 1991.

In his long and long literary life, he was the author of numerous works.

Apart from award-winning series like Rabbit, he wrote Henry Bech's books, 1960-1971, and also he wrote plays: Buchanan Dying (1974); novels: The Witches of Eastwich, (1984; made into a movie 1987), Scarlet Letter Trilogy (1975), The Asylum Fair (1959), Couples (1968), Coup d'État (1978); short stories: The Lifeguard (1932), The Same Door (1959), What I Have Left to Live (1994), Tears of Love (2001), My Father’s Tears and other stories (2009).

He also wrote poetry, essays and memories.

For several years his name was among the candidates for the Nobel Prize.

He remarried Martha Ruggles in 1977. His first wife was Mary Pennington. He was the father of two daughters and two sons.
John Updike died in Danvers, Massachusetts, on January the 27th, 2009, at the age of 76, after years of battling with lung cancer.

Analysis of Lifeguard

This work by John Updike was first published in the magazine The New Yorker, on June 17th, 1961.

Of the prolific work of J. Updike, I hope and wish to read some of his most recognized works. Because, in this work, the author shows the life, dreams and desires of a young man, with a rich and very literary prose, which when reading it seems simple, but which hides and speaks of the deepest and most complex thoughts of the human being, that they turn this short story into a literary work that looks like fiction, but is actually a living and existentialist story.

To begin with, John Updike seems to be playing with the word of the title LIFE-GUARD.

Life, (other synonyms): existence, being, entity, goods ...

Guard, (other synonyms): protect, cover, stand guard over, watch over, look after, keep an eye on…

For the author, the protagonist, in his two facets of life, always tries to see his fellow men as beings that need his help and his qualities to save them.

The boy who waits for the call, as he refers to at the end of the story, and who until then had not reached him and who had studied for 9 months the books and biblical texts, is longing for the day when he’ll be able to address his parishioners and transmit the word and work of God to them.

And, on the other hand, when summer comes, he has a job as a lifeguard on a beach for 3 months, and when he climbs to his watchman turret, he has thoughts that from his height he dominates all the beachgoers who depend on his vigilance and help, as if he was a divine entity who sees his acolytes from above and can observe and save them.

But he also feels sorry for the older people whose life is ending, and he feels sorry too for the women who lost their feminine forms after bringing several children to this world, and he cannot help being pleased and desired, when, with his skin tanned by the sun and with his athletic figure, the young women approach the stairs of his watchtower.

I admit that I have had to read the story several times to make sense of it, and I hope I have understood it.

It is not a work that I would recommend, but it has made me work hard, and for that I am grateful to have chosen this work.

Questions

What's a "student of divinity"?
What does it mean: "I disguise myself in my skin"?
What are "teenage satellites"?

What does he refer to with "umber anthers dusted with pollen"?

When do "theologians surmount the void"?

Do you know the story about "the man who on the coast of Judaea who refused in dismay to sell all the he had"? Look up Mark, 10.

Explain "a sheet of brilliant sand painted with the runes of naked human bodies".

Why "the humanism has severely corrupted the apples of our creed"?

"Scabs of land upon we draw our lives to their unsatisfactory conclusions are suffused by science with vacuous horror"?": What is it?

Explain the parable: "Swimming offers a parable..."

Where is the irony? "I'm not yet ordained, I'm too disordered."

"The cinema of life is run backwards..." Why backwards?

"brazen barrel chests, absurdly potent bustling with white froth." What's this "froth"?

Why when "children toddle blissfully into the surf" does he "bolt upright on his throne"?

Who "lift their eyes in wonder as a trio of flat-stomached nymphs parades past"? And why?

Can you imagine this: "a girl is pushing against her boy and begging to be ducked"?

What do you know about the "section aurea"?

Can you see "the arabesque on the spine" in a musical instrument?

Define "mesomorph, endomorph and ectomorph".

Why do you think that "to desire a woman is to desire to save her"?

What do you know about Solomon and Sheba?

Explain the image: "no memento mori is so clinching as a photograph of a vanished crowd".

"Is it as a maiden, matron or crone that the females will be eternalized"?

What is it the "Adjustments Counter"?

"Mankind is a plague racing like fire across the exhausted continents". What do you think of this pessimistic point of view?

Can you understand this image: "the sea itself is jammed with hollow heads and thrashing arms like a great bobbing blackwash of rubbish"?

Do you think is possible to obey this commandment: "Be joyful"?

Has he ever saved anyone? How do you know?

What do you think of philosophy? Is it something deep with difficult language or is it something trivial with difficult language?

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