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INSTITUT SUPERIEUR DES SCIENCES HUMAINES DE TUNIS

DEPARTEMENT D‟ANGLAIS

Fiction Tutorial

Level: First Year

Academic Year 2013/2014



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HIGHER INSTITUTE OF HUMAN AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Literature Course

Fiction Tutorial (Fall 2013)

Course Description

Objectives

This course targets first-year students. It aims to introduce students to the

fundamentals of literary writing (theoretical framework) as well as to the different techniques

involved in the application of literary concepts in the analysis of literary texts.

Requirements

The course will be conducted through tutorials. Students are required to attend these

tutorials regularly and to perform the assigned tasks. Class participation (asking/ answering

questions) is encouraged. Extra-work is appreciated.

Students sit for two exams throughout the semester. A test is given by mid-November,

representing 30% of the final mark, while a full-term exam is given in January (representing

70% of the final mark). These examinations allow teachers to gauge the students‟ progress

and their assimilation of key concepts introduced in the course, as well as their ability to put

this theoretical background into practice.

Course Outline

Week 1: General Introduction. What is Literature?

Fiction and fact: the fictional/ the real.

Literature as art: imaginative, creative writing.

Week 2: Literary Genres and Subgenres.

Division into three main genres: poetry, drama, and fiction.

Generic properties and conventions of each genre.

Literary subgenres.

Weeks 3 and 4: Setting.

Geographical, historical, and social setting.

Setting, atmosphere and imagery.



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The interaction between character and setting.

Week 5: Characters.

Types of characters: flat/round or static/dynamic.

Week 6: Characterisation. Characterisation techniques: telling/showing.

Weeks 7 and 8: Plot and Story.

Weeks 9/10: The Language of Fiction.

Week 11: Theme and Diction.



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Setting

Text 1:

Eula was growing up to be a strong healthy woman who wanted something else. She had

become tired of Oklahoma and „home‟ when she was about fourteen. During the same time,

she became tired of the farming business: harvesting fields, milking cows for milk she

couldn‟t drink, feeding chickens she had to steal to get a bite of, and sweeping yards

endlessly. Eula married a labourer from the oil fields. She moved into a shotgun shack in a

near town with her new husband until something better came along. Something better could

be almost anything and everything. And Eula wanted something better.

Eula‟s husband was a hardworking man for his wife. By 1912 Eula had given birth to several

children and both husband and wife were tired, waiting for some job to pan out. Money was,

as usual, almost nonexistent. But life continued on somehow, as it usually does. Eula thought

everybody in the world was poor except the owners of the oil wells. There were no schools

her children could attend. Those few schools Negro people managed somehow to make

arrangements for were too far away. Eula was getting too old for those hard, scrambling

times and began to feel it. But she was still young enough to dream, so she set her sight on

Chicago. “Someday,” she would dream as she washed her family‟s clothes at the creek

looking beyond the trees, through space. She cooked her family‟s meals, looking over the

crackling woodstove through a hole in the wall at the far horizon. “Something got to come

my way someday. I know it‟s some money in Chicago.”

Around 1912 a Woodrow Wilson was marked in to become president of the United States. In

1913 Woodrow signed into law that ominous amendment to the Constitution, the federal

income tax laws- even though the US Supreme Court made constant rulings against it, saying

it was unconstitutional. He also signed into law the Federal Reserve System, among other

things, taxes that went hard against the people.

Nineteen thirteen was not a good year for the world because, among other things, there was

no cure for the Spanish flu, which took so many people from the face of the Earth. Eula lost

two children. Eula and her husband wanted desperately to leave Oklahoma, but there was no

way. They both did every kind of job they could just to put a little food in their family ‟s

mouths. Working for food only. No money available for them. They were stuck in place.



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Woodrow Wilson also approved the Underwood Tariff, which reduced duties on foreign

importations and, since they competed with American industry, it created greater problems

for the common working people. Many tens of thousands of American workers were put out

of jobs. Does not that seem strange for an American president to do? […] Because then, a

depression came, bringing with it, of course, huge, widespread despair. With no production

for American working people, starvation, and much misery became nationwide. It will be

done again and again by Earth‟s leaders the people put into office, or those who take

leadership away from the people. It will be done to all peoples, all colours, all over the world.

The love of money is the root of all evil. Believe me.

Eula‟s husband worked for a white landowner who gave him an automobile that did not run

and had no gas even if it could run. The husband worked on it a couple of months, finding

parts, even stealing parts from cars that were discarded because it took money to run a car,

and the previous owners had none. Finally the husband stole some gas. He told Eula: “If we

can get somewhere else, maybe East, maybe I could find some work.” Eula‟s thought was

“Chicago.” They started planning their trip to somewhere, maybe Chicago.

J. California Cooper, Some People, Some Other Place(2004)

Questions:

1. Pick out references to time and place in this text. What kind of setting do these

references create?

2. How does this text inform the reader about its socio-historical context?

3. What particular atmosphere is evoked by the setting?

Commentary:

The setting of this text is Oklahoma in the years 1912 and 1913. The general time and space

in which the events take place help invoke a particular historical context in the reader‟s mind,

namely that of the aftermath of slavery in the rural south of the United States. The reference

to farming and oilfields not only reveals the characters‟ main activities, but also underlines

the agrarian and almost primitive character of this society. Moreover, the specific setting, i.e.

the shotgun shack which is the residence of the characters, Eula and her husband, equally

evinces the latter‟s poverty and limited resources. Such miserable living conditions endured

by the characters also reveal a lot about this traditional society. In fact, Oklahoma in the1910s offered little hope and almost no opportunities for its inhabitants, whose extreme



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the palms and the forest sliding over his skin. He undid the snake-clasp of his belt, lugged off

his shorts and pants, and stood there naked, looking at the dazzling beach and the water.

He was old enough, twelve years and a few months, to have lost the prominent tummy of

childhood and not yet old enough for adolescence to have made him awkward. You could see

now that he might make a boxer, as far as width and heaviness of shoulders went, but there

was a mildness about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil. He patted the palm trunk

softly, and, forced at last to believe in the reality of the island laughed delightedly again and

stood on his head. He turned neatly on to his feet, jumped down to the beach, knelt and swept

a double armful of sand into a pile against his chest. Then he sat back and looked at the water

with bright, excited eyes.

William Golding, Lord of the F li es (1954)

Questions:

1. Identify the setting of this text.

2. What particular atmosphere does this setting create?

3. How does the setting affect the character’s mood?



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Characterisation

Text 1:

When Anna was nine years old, Brangwen sent her to the dames‟ school in Cossethay. There

she went, flipping and dancing in her inconsequential fashion, doing very much as she liked,

disconcerting old Miss Coates by her indifference to respectability and by her lack of

reverence. Anna only laughed at Miss Coates, liked her, and patronised her in superb,

childish fashion. The girl was at once shy and wild. She had a curious contempt for ordinary

people, a benevolent superiority. She was very shy, and tortured with misery when people did

not like her. On the other hand, she cared very little for anybody save her mother, whom she

still rather resentfully worshipped, and her father, whom she loved and patronised, but upon

whom she depended. These two, her mother and father, held her still in fee.

But she was free of other people, towards whom, on the whole, she took the benevolent

attitude. She deeply hated ugliness or intrusion or arrogance, however. As a child, she was as

proud and shadowy as a tiger, and as aloof. She could confer favours, but, save from her

mother and father, she could receive none. She hated people who came too near to her. Like a

wild thing, she wanted her distance. She mistrusted intimacy. […] She had plenty of

acquaintances, but no friends. Very few people whom she met were significant to her. They

seemed part of a herd, undistinguished. She did not take people very seriously.

She had two brothers, Tom, dark-haired, small, volatile, whom she was intimately related to

but whom she never mingled with, and Fred, fair and responsive, whom she adored but did

not consider as a real, separate thing. She was too much the centre of her own universe, too

little aware of anything outside. The first person she met, who affected her as a real, living

person, whom she regarded as having definite existence, was Baron Skrebensky, her mother‟s

friend. He also was a Polish exile. […] He went to the north of England expecting homage

from the common people, for he was an aristocrat. He was roughly, even cruelly received.

But he never understood it. He remained a fiery aristocrat. […] Anna was very much

impressed by him. He was a smallish man with a rugged, rather crumpled face and blue eyes

set very deep and glowing. His wife was a tall thin woman, of noble Polish family, mad with

pride. He still spoke broken English, for he had kept very close to his wife, both of them

forlorn in this strange, inhospitable country, and they always spoke in Polish together.

Anna loved to watch him. […] The Baron talked endlessly in Polish to Mrs. Brangwen; he

made furious gestures with his hands, his blue eyes were full of fire. And to Anna, there was



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a significance about his sharp, flinging movements. Something in her responded to his

extravagance and his exuberant manner. She thought him a very wonderful person. She was

shy of him, she liked him to talk to her. […] He at any rate represented to the child the real

world, where kings and lords and princes moved and fulfilled their shining lives, whilst

queens and ladies and princesses upheld the noble order. She had recognised the Baron

Skrebensky as a real person, he had had some regard for her. But when she did not see him

anymore, he faded and became a memory. But as a memory he was always alive to her.

Anna became a tall, awkward girl. Her eyes were still very dark and quick, but they had

grown careless, they had lost their watchful, hostile look. Her fierce, spun hair turned brown,

it grew heavier and was tied back. She was sent to a young ladies‟ school in Nottingham. And

at this period she was absorbed in becoming a young lady. She was intelligent enough, butnot interested in learning. At first, she thought all the girls at school very ladylike and

wonderful, and she wanted to be like them. She came to a speedy disillusion: they galled and

maddened her, they were petty and mean. After the loose, generous atmosphere of her home,

where little things did not count, she was always uneasy in the world, that would snap and

bite at every trifle. A quick change came over her. She mistrusted herself, she mistrusted the

outer world. She did not want to go on, she did not want to go out into it, she wanted to go no

further.

D.H Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915)

Questions:

1. How is the character of Anna Brangwen presented to the reader? What

particular traits does she manifest?

2. What type of character does Anna represent? Illustrate.

Commentary:

In this text, the author rather provides a moral portrait of the character Anna Brangwen.

Anna‟s most significant psychological traits are pride and overconfidence. In the first

paragraph, Anna is revealed as a spoiled, immature and irresponsible nine year old girl, but

she is also an impolite and disrespectful pupil who mocks her teacher and patronises her “ in

superb, childish fashion.” Such condescension affects not only Anna‟s teacher, but also

“ordinary people” towards whom Anna manifests a “benevolent superiority.” Moreover, it



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marks her relationship with her parents, whom she envies the innate love and affection she

feel towards them.

The second paragraph highlights contradictions in Anna‟s character. While she shows

kindness and generosity towards people, she resents their intrusion in her problems, a detail

that not only reveals the extent to which she cherishes her privacy but also underlines her

selfishness and confirms her superciliousness: “She could confer favours, but, save from her

mother and father, she could receive none.” It is such an eccentric and misanthropic attitude

that ultimately condemns Anna to a lonely and secluded life where human presence has

become insignificant and irrelevant.

Anna‟s self -centeredness is further underscored in the third and fourth paragraph, where

Martha‟s peculiar relationship with her brothers also appears unsettling. Rather absorbed by

“her own universe” and “too little aware of anything outside” Anna also retains a certain

distance from her brothers, whose presence does not mean much to her. Significantly, Anna

falls under the spell of her mother‟s friend Baron Skrebensky, a character whose excessive

pride, arrogance, and aristocratic belonging reinforce her affinity with him. Voicing her

desires and ambitions, and exhibiting her own character in a more mature and developed

sense, the Baron represents for her “the real world, where kings and lords and princes moved

and fulfilled their shining lives.” Ironically, Anna‟s infatuation with this man unveils her

naiveté, as well as her class-consciousness and her obsession with appearances.

The fifth and last paragraph, however, highlights important developments in Anna‟s life

which affect her personality and psychology. Anna is thus revealed as a dynamic character

since her initial pride and arrogance are supplanted by a rather subdued, indifferent, and

inoffensive mood. Her childish behaviour gives way to a ladylike posture, whereas her

naiveté turns into a deep disenchantment with the people around her, and a bitter realisation

of their terrible nature. Finally, Anna‟s over confidence is transformed into self -distrust,

diffidence and insecurity, features that mark not only her personality, but also her dealings

with the outside world.

Text 2:

Edna had attempted all summer to learn to swim. She had received instructions from both the

men and women; in some instances from the children. Robert had pursued a system of

lessons almost daily; and he was nearly at the point of discouragement in realizing the futility



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of his efforts. A certain ungovernable dread hung about her when in the water, unless there

was a hand nearby that might reach out and reassure her.

But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden

realizes its powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over-confidence. She

could have shouted for joy. She did shout for joy, as with a sweeping stroke or two she lifted

her body to the surface of the water.

A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given

her to control the working of her body and her soul. She grew daring and reckless,

overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.

Her unlooked-for achievement was the subject of wonder, applause, and admiration. Each

one congratulated himself that special teachings had accomplished this desired end.

“How easy it is!” she thought. “It is nothing,” she said aloud “why did I not discover before

that it was nothing. Think of time I have lost splashing about like a baby!” She would not join

the groups in their sports and bouts, but intoxicated with newly conquered power, she swam

out alone.

She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast

expanse of water, meeting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy.

As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.

Once Edna turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had left there. She had

not gone any great distance-- that is, what would have been great distance for an

inexperienced swimmer. But to her unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her

assumed the aspect of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome.

A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time appalled and enfeebled her

senses. But by an effort she rallied her staggering faculties and managed to regain the land.

She made no mention of her encounter with death and her flash of terror, except to say to her

husband, “I thought I should have perished out there alone.”

„You were not so very far, my dear, I was watching you,‟ he told her. […]

Edna went at once to the bath-house and she had put on her dry clothes and was ready to

return before the others had left the water. She started to walk away alone. They all called to

her and shouted to her. She waved a dissenting hand, and went on, paying no further heed to

their renewed cries which sought to detain her.[…] she had not traversed a quarter of the

distance on her way home before she was overtaken by Robert.



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„Did you think I was afraid?‟ She asked him, without a shade of annoyance.

“No, I knew you weren‟t afraid. […] I never thought of it.”

„Thought of what?‟

„Of anything. What difference does it make?‟

„I‟m very tired,‟ she uttered, complainingly.

„I know you are.‟

„You don‟t know anything about it. Why should you know? I never was so exhausted in my

life. But it isn‟t unpleasant. A thousand emotions have swept through me to-night. I don‟t

comprehend half of them. Don‟t mind what I‟m saying; I am just thinking aloud.‟

Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899)

Questions:

1. How is Edna revealed in this passage?

2. How important is the showing technique to understanding her character trait(s)?

Text 3:

„Christmas won‟t be Christmas without any presents,‟ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

„It‟s so dreadful to be poor!‟ sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.

„I don‟t think it‟s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at

all,‟ added little Amy, with an injured sniff.

„We‟ve got Father and Mother, and each other,‟ said Beth contentedly from her corner.

The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words, but

darkened again as Jo said sadly, „We haven‟t got Father, and shall not have him for a long

time.‟ She didn‟t say „perhaps never,‟ but each silently added it, thinking of Father far away,

where the fighting was.

Nobody spoke for a minute; then Meg said in an altered tone, „You know the reason Mother

proposed not having any presents this Christmas was because it is going to be a hard winter

for everyone; and she thinks we ought not to spend money for pleasure, when our men are

suffering so in the army. We can‟t do much, but we can make our little sacrifices, and ought

to do it gladly. But I am afraid I don‟t.‟ And Meg shook her head, as she thought regretfully

of all the pretty things she wanted.

„But I don‟t think the little we should spend would do any good. We‟ve each got a dollar, and

the army wouldn‟t be much helped by our giving that. I agree not to expect anything from

Mother or you, but I do want to buy Undine and Sintram for myself. I‟ve wanted it so



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long,‟ said Jo, who was a bookworm.

„I planned to spend mine in new music,‟ said Beth, with a little sigh, which no one heard but

the hearth brush and kettle holder.

„I shall get a nice box of Faber‟s drawing pencils. I really need them,‟ said Amy decidedly.

„Mother didn‟t say anything about our money, and she won‟t wish us to give up everything.

Let‟s each buy what we want, and have a little fun. I‟m sure we work hard enough to earn it,‟

cried Jo, examining the heels of her shoes in a gentlemanly manner.

„I know I do— teaching those tiresome children nearly all day, when I‟m longing to enjoy

myself at home,‟ began Meg, in the complaining tone again.

„You don‟t have half such a hard time as I do,‟ said Jo. „How would you like to be shut up for

hours with a nervous, fussy old lady, who keeps you trotting, is never satisfied, and worries

you till you you‟re ready to fly out the window or cry?‟

„It‟s naughty to fret, but I do think washing dishes and keeping things tidy is the worst work

in the world. It makes me cross, and my hands get so stiff...‟ And Beth looked at her rough

hands with a sigh that anyone could hear that time.

„I don‟t believe any of you suffer as I do,‟ cried Amy, „for you don‟t have to go to school

with impertinent girls, who laugh at your dresses, and insult you when your nose isn‟t nice.‟

„Don‟t you wish we had the money Papa lost when we were little, Jo? Dear me! How happy

and good we‟d be, if we had no worries!‟ said Meg, who could remember better times.

„You said the other day you thought we were a deal happier than the King children, for they

were fighting and fretting all the time, in spite of their money.‟

„So I did, Beth. Well, I think we are. For though we do have to work, we make fun of

ourselves, and are a pretty jolly set, as Jo would say.‟

„Jo does use such slang words!‟ observed Amy, with a reproving look at the long figure

stretched on the rug.

Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle.

„Don‟t, Jo. It‟s so boyish!‟

„That‟s why I do it.‟

„I detest rude, unladylike girls!‟

[…] „Birds in their little nests agree,‟ sang Beth, the peacemaker, with such a funny face that

both sharp voices softened to a laugh...

„Really, girls, you are both to be blamed,‟ said Meg, beginning to lecture in her elder -sisterly

fashion. „You are old enough to leave off boyish tricks, and to behave better, Josephine. It



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didn‟t matter so much when you were a little girl, but now you are so tall, and turn up your

hair, you should remember that you are a young lady.‟

„I‟m not! And if turning up my hair makes me one, I‟ll wear it in two tails till I‟m twenty,‟

cried Jo, pulling off her net, and shaking down a chestnut mane. „I hate to think I‟ve got to

grow up, and be Miss March! It‟s bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy‟s games

and work and manners! I can‟t get over my disappointment in not being a boy. And it‟s worse

than ever now, for I‟m dying to go and fight with Papa. And I can only stay home and knit,

like a poky old woman!‟

Louisa May Alcott, L ittl e Women (1868)

Questions:

1. How are the different characters of this text presented to the reader?

2. What particular technique(s) is/are used to characterise them? Illustrate.



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Plot

Text 1:

When she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost every day sometimes,

because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe. She and her younger sister

used to go in and out a lot, often with young men, which of course I didn‟t like. When I had a

free moment from the files and ledgers I stood by the window and used to look down over the

road over the frosting and sometimes I‟d see her. In the evening I marked it in my

observations diary, at first with X, and then when I knew her name with M. I saw her several

times outside too. I stood right behind her once in a queue at the public library down

Crossfield Street. She didn‟t look once at me, but I watched the back of her head and her hair

in a long pigtail. […] Sometimes she wore it up. Only once, before she came to be my guest

here, did I have the privilege to see her with it loose, and it took my breath away it was so

beautiful, like a mermaid.

[…] The year she was still at school I didn‟t know who she was, only how her father was

Doctor Grey and some talk I overheard once at a Bug Section meeting about how her mother

drank. […] Well, then there was the bit in the local paper about the scholarship sh e‟d won

and how clever she was, and her name as beautiful as herself, Miranda. So I knew she was up

in London studying art. It really made a difference, that newspaper article. It seemed like we

became more intimate, although of course we still did not know each other in the ordinary

way.

I can‟t say what it was, the very first time I saw her, I knew she was the only one. Of course I

am not mad, I knew it was just a dream and it always would have been if it hadn‟t been for

the money. I used to have daydreams about her, I used to think of stories where I met her, did

things she admired, married her and all that. Nothing nasty, that was never until what I‟ll

explain later.

The only times I didn‟t have nice dreams about her being when I saw her with a certain

young man, a loud noisy public-school type who had a sports car. I stood beside him once in

Barclays waiting to pay in and I heard him say, I‟ll have it in fivers; the joke being it was

only a cheque for ten pounds. They all behave like that. Well, I saw her climb in his car

sometimes, or them out together in the town in it, and those days I was very short with the

others in the office, and I didn‟t use to mark the X in my entomological observations diary

(all this was before she went to London, she dropped him then). Those were days I let myself



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have the bad dreams. She cried or usually knelt. Once I let myself dream I hit her across the

face as I saw it done once by a chap in a telly play. Perhaps that was when it all started.

John Fowles, The Collector (1963)

Questions:

1. Read the text carefully and pick out any references to the past? What do they

reveal about the characters?

2. Pick out references to the future and study their effect on the reader.

Text 2:

I now work in a delicatessen shop and go to London University at night to study English

literature. London is a monstrous city full of people moving in and out, side by side on the

same pavement, like automatons. Baba works in wild Soho […]. She's learning to be a

receptionist in a big hotel. We share a small bed-sitting-room, and my aunt sends a parcel of

butter every other week. Even though I keep telling her that butter is not rationed here; that

we are in 1960 and not in 1942, she still sends it with a note from the Bible: "His children

shall seek to please the poor, and his hands shall restore their goods. Amen!" It's all she can

do to prove her love.

Baba and I are two pieces of land, separated by an ocean, I hate being like her. She's too

wildly unromantic. I met her at a pub on a day I wish I could erase for ever from my mind. I

had just arrived from Dublin, and was in such a state that, every today, the slightest thought

of it makes me feel very uncomfortable. Shame and bitterness, impose themselves as

unwelcome company. - I was reading Blake, and tears were showering my face, when, like a

May-day sunshine whispering warmth to my shivering body, I heard this voice, lively and

caressing. I lifted my eyes. Baba‟s eyes were shut asleep, but her lips were awake:

My silks and fine array,

My smiles and languish‟d air,

By love are driv‟n away.

His face is fair as Heav'n.

When springing buds unfold

Why to him wasn‟t giv'n,

Whose heart is wintry cold?



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It is hot summer, and customers are scarce. I miss the fields and the soft breeze. I‟m there,

young and inexperienced, walking with him along that brown mountain stream, hopping and

singing, unaware of the passing time. I sometimes steal a glance at him. He is tall and

majestic. […]

He wrote to me after I came here --a very nice letter, saying what a nice girl I was, and what a

pity that he hadn't been younger, at least in mind, or I hadn't been older. If I saw him again, I

would run to kiss him, but even if I don‟t see him, I have a picture of him in my mind,

walking through the woods, saying, in answer to my fear of him leaving me. That life is a

stream, the experience of knowing love and of being destined, one day to remember it, is the

common lot of most people.

'I believe in facts,' he said, 'I'm very practical, indeed. We all leave one another. We die. we

change --it's mostly change-- we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, and if

you do leave me, if we do leave each other, we will have passed on something of ourselves;

we will be different because of knowing each other; it's inescapable, and that's mere fact....'

He had conquered me, and I was left speechless.

It's quite true. Even Baba notices that I‟m changing, and she says if I stop learning these

useless theories at night; all that literature and poetry, I'll be a better person: I'll be

fashionable. What Baba doesn't know is that I'm finding my feet, that I'm not so alone. Or so

very far away from the world she tries to draw me into, too soon.

Life is a stream. We all leave one another. We die. We change. Too early? Too late? Does it

matter, anyway?

Edna O’brien, A Gi rl with Green Eyes(1962)

Questions:

1. What do the narrator’s references to the past reveal about her character?

2. Are there any references to the future? What do they reveal about the attitude of

her lover?

Text 3:

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you‟ll probably want to know is where I was

born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all

before they had me […] but I don‟t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In



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the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two

haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They‟re quite touchy

about anything like that, especially my father. […] Besides, I‟m not going to tell you my

whole autobiography or anything. I‟ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to

me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take

it easy. I mean that‟s all I told D.B. about, and he‟s my brother and all. He‟s in Hollywood.

That isn‟t too far from this place, and he comes over and visits me practically every weekend.

He‟s going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One

of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him near

four thousand bucks. He‟s got a lot of dough, now. He didn‟t use to. He used to be just a

regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret

Goldfish, in case you never heard of him […].

Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this school that‟s in

Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You‟ve probably seen the ads, anyway.

They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hotshot guy on a horse

jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never

even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And underneath the guy on the horse's

picture, it always says: “Since 1888 we have been moulding boys into splendid, clear-

thinking young men.” […] And I didn‟t know anybody there that was splendid and clear-

thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way.

Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon

Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and

you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn ‟t win. I remember

around three o‟clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill

[…]. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each

other all over the place. […] You could hear them all yelling, deep and terrific on the Pencey

side, because practically the whole school except me was there […].

The reason […] I wasn‟t down at the game was because I was on my way to say good-bye to

old Spencer, my history teacher. He had the grippe, and I figured I probably wouldn‟t see him

again till Christmas vacation started. He wrote me this note saying he wanted to see me

bef ore I went home. He knew I wasn‟t coming back to Pencey. I forgot to tell you about that.

They kicked me out. I wasn‟t supposed to come back after Christmas vacation on account of Iwas flunking four subjects and not applying myself and all. They gave me frequent warning



19

to start applying myself--especially around midterms, when my parents came up for a

conference with old Thurmer-- but I didn‟t do it. So I got the axe. They give guys the axe

quite frequently at Pencey. It has a very good academic rating, Pencey. It really does.

Anyway, it was December and all, and it was cold […] especially on top of that stupid hill. I

only had on my reversible and no gloves or anything. The week before that, somebody ‟d

stolen my camel‟s-hair coat right out of my room, with my fur-lined gloves right in the

pocket and all. Pencey was full of crooks. […] The more expensive a school is, the more

crooks it has —I‟m not kidding. […] What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to

feel some kind of a good-bye. I mean I‟ve left schools and places I didn‟t even know I was

leaving them. I hate that. I don‟t care if it‟s a sad goodbye or a bad goodbye, but when I leave

a place I like to know I‟m leaving it. If you don‟t, you feel even worse.

J.D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Questions:

1. What is the main event dramatised in this text?

2. Read the text carefully and pick out all references to the past. What do they

reveal about the character of the narrator?

3. In the first paragraph, the narrator makes several references to the future. What

do these references reveal about his relationship with his family?

4. Comment on time changes in this text. What effect do they have on the reader?



21

engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of

melancholy madness.

It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more

like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the

same hours, with the same sound upon the same payments, to do the same work, and to

whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of

the last and the next.

These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by which it was

sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of life, which found their way all over the

world, and elegances of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who

could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and

they were these.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854)

Questions:

1. Comment on the author’s use of imagery.

2. Identify a figure of speech used to describe Coketown.

3.

What kind of atmosphere does the author’s use of imagery and figurativelanguage invoke?

Text 3:

The traveller who at the present day is content to travel in the good old style, neither rushed

along by a locomotive, nor dragged by a stage-coach; who is willing to enjoy hospitalities at

far-scattered farmhouses […]; who is not to be frightened by any amount of loneliness, or to

be deterred by the roughest roads or the highest hills; such a traveller in the eastern part of

Berkshire, Massachusetts, will find ample food for poetic reflection in the singular scenery of

a country, which, owing to the ruggedness of the soil and its lying out of the track of all

public conveyances, remains almost unknown to the general tourist.

Travelling northward from the township of Otis, the road leads for twenty or thirty miles

towards […] Massachusetts. For nearly the whole of the distance, you have the continual

sensation of being upon some terrace in the moon. […] In fine clear June days, the bloom of

the mountains is beyond expression delightful. Last visiting these heights ere she vanishes,

Spring, like the sunset, flings her sweetest charms upon them. Each tuft of upland grass is



22

musked like a bouquet with perfume […]. On one side the eye follows for the space of an

eagle‟s flight, the serpentine mountain chains, southwards from the great purple dome of St.

Peter‟s of these hills--northwards to the twin summits of the cathedral of Berkshire [...]. At

this season the beauty of everything around you populates the loneliness of your way. You

would not have the country more settled if you could. Content to drink in such loveliness at

all your senses, the heart desires no company but Nature.

With what rapture you behold, hovering over some vast hollow of the hills, or slowly drifting

at an immense height […] some lordly eagle, who in unshared exaltation looks down equally

upon plain and mountain. Or you behold a hawk sallying from some crag, like a baron from

his pinnacled castle, and darting down towards the river for his prey. Or perhaps, lazily

gliding about in the zenith, this fowl is suddenly beset by a crow, who with stubborn audacity pecks at him, and, spite of all his bravery, finally persecutes him back to his stronghold [...].

The yellow-bird flits like a winged jonquil here and there; like knots of violets the blue-birds

sport in clusters upon the grass; while hurrying from the pasture to the grove, the red robin

seems an incendiary putting torch to the trees. Meanwhile the air is vocal with their hymns,

and your own soul joys in the general joy […].

Such, at this day, is the country which gave birth to our hero: prophetically styled by his

parents, since, for more than forty years, poor Potter wandered in the wild wilderness of theworld‟s extremest hardships and ills. How little he thought, when, as a boy, hunting after his

father ‟s stray cattle among these New England hills he himself like a beast should be hunted

through half of Old England, as a runaway rebel. Or, how could he ever have dreamed, when

involved in the autumnal vapours of these mountains, that worse bewilderments awaited him

three thousand miles across the sea, wandering forlorn in the coal-foes of London. But so it

was destined to be. This little boy of the hills […] was to linger out the best part of his life a

prisoner or a pauper upon the grimy banks of the Thames.

Herman Melville, I srael Potter: H is F if ty Years of Exi le (1855)

Questions:

1. Comment on the author’s use of imagery.

2. Identify a figure of speech used by the author and comment on its effect on the

reader.

3. How is character of Israel Potter presented to the reader?



23

4. Identify references to time that help classify Israel Potter as a round character.

What do these references represent in terms of plot?



24

Theme

It was early evening of a day in the late fall and the Winesburg County Fair 1 had brought

crowds of country people into town. The day had been clear and the night came on warm and

pleasant. The road left town stretched away between berry fields now covered with dry

brown leaves, the dust from passing wagons arose in clouds. Children, curled into little balls,

slept on the straw scattered on wagon beds. Their hair was full of dust and their fingers black

and sticky. The dust rolled away over the fields and the departing sun set it ablaze with

colours. In the main street of Winesburg crowds filled the stores and the sidewalks. Night

came on, horses whinnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly about [...].

Pushing his way through the crowds in Main Street, young George Willard concealed himself

in the stairway leading to Doctor Reefy‟s office and looked at the people. With feverish eyes

he watched the faces drifting past under the store lights. Thoughts kept coming into his head

and he did not want to think […]. All that day, amid the jam of people at the Fair, he had

gone about feeling lonely. He was about to leave Winesburg to go away to some city where

he hoped to get work on a city newspaper and he felt grown up. The mood that had taken

possession of him was a thing known to men and unknown to boys. He felt old and a little

tired. Memories awoke in him. To his mind his new sense of maturity set him apart, made of

him a half-tragic figure. He wanted someone to understand the feeling that had taken possession of him after his mother‟s death.

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of

life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking

through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the

world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him [...]. Ghosts of old things creep into his

consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of

life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. As if a door is

open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in

procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of

nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness.

With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of

his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in

uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. He

1 Fair: a social meeting held at a specified time and place for the buying and selling of goods; a market.



26

Round-up Session

“The Story of an Hour”

Kate Chopin (1894)

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to

her as gently as possible the news of her husband‟s death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half

concealing. Her husband‟s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in

the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently

Mallard‟s name leading the list of „killed‟. He had only taken the time to assure himself of its

truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in

bearing the sad message.She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to

accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister‟s

arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would

have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank,

pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her

soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with

the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler

was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her

faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and

piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except

when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep

continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain

strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder

on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a

suspension of intelligent thought.



27

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She

did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky,

reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the colour that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that

was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as

powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a

little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under the

breath: “free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went

from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood

warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and

exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would

weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never

looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter

moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she

opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself.

There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and

women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind

intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that

brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could

love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she

suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for

admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are

you doing, Louise? For heaven‟s sake open the door.”

“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through

that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and

all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It

was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.



28

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister ‟s importunities. There was a feverish

triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She

clasped her sister ‟s waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for

them at the bottom.

Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a

little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from

the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at

Josephine‟s piercing cry; at Richards‟ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.



29

HIGHER INSTITUTE OF HUMAN AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Literature Course

Fiction Tutorial (Fall 2013)

Course Description

Objectives

This course targets first-year students. It aims to introduce students to the

fundamentals of literary writing (theoretical framework) as well as to the different techniques

involved in the application of literary concepts in the analysis of literary texts.

Requirements

The course will be conducted through seminars. Students are required to attend these

seminars regularly and to perform the assigned tasks. Class participation (asking/ answering

questions) is encouraged. Extra-work is appreciated.

Students sit for two exams throughout the semester. A test is given by mid-November,

representing 30% of the final mark, while a full-term exam is given in January (representing

70% of the final mark). These examinations allow teachers to gauge the students‟ progress

and their assimilation of key concepts introduced in the course, as well as their ability to put

this theoretical background into practice.

Course Outline

Weeks 1 and 2: Mediation

Points of view and narrative techniques: types of narrators.

Weeks 3 and 4: Symbolism

Symbolism in literature: most common symbols.

Symbol vs. allegory.

Weeks 5 and 6: Style and Rhetoric

Style vs. rhetoric

Major stylistic devices: allegory, allusion, ambiguity, wit, humour, satire, parody,irony, understatement, overstatement, etc.

Weeks 7 and 8: Tone

Tone and diction in literature.

Further Reading:

Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Orlando: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1988.

Print.

Johnston, Ian. “Dramatic Structure: Comedy and Tragedy: English Studies in Shakespeare .”

2000 Vancouver Island University. 17 December 2011. Lecture.



30

Lethbridge, Stefanie and Jarmila Mildorf. “Basics of English Studies: An Introductory

Course for Students of Literary Studies in English.” Universities of Tübingen,

Stuttgart and Freiburg. 17 December 2011. Lecture.

Shipley, Joseph Twadell. Dictionary of World Literature: Criticism, Forms, Technique. Philosophical Library, 1953. Print.



31

Mediation

Text 1: Extract from James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914):

Why had he married the eyes in the photograph?

He caught himself up at the question and glanced nervously round the room. He found

something mean in the pretty furniture which he had bought for his house on the hire system.

Annie had chosen it herself and it reminded him of her. It too was prim and pretty. A dull

resentment against his life awoke within him. Could he not escape from his little house? Was

it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher? Could he go to London? There was the

furniture still to be paid for. If he could only write a book and get it published, that might

open the way for him.

A volume of Byron's poems lay before him on the table. He paused. He felt the rhythm ofthe verse about him in the room. How melancholy it was! Could he, too, write like that,

express the melancholy of his soul in verse? There were so many things he wanted to

describe: his sensation of a few hours before on Grattan Bridge, for example. If he could get

back again into that mood....

Text 2: Extract from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915):

This is written from memory, unfortunately. If I could have brought with me the

material I so carefully prepared, this would be a very different story. Whole books full ofnotes, carefully copied records, firsthand descriptions, and the pictures —that‟s the worst loss.

We had some bird's eyes of the cities and parks; a lot of lovely views of streets, of buildings,

outside and in, and some of those gorgeous gardens, and, most important of all, of the women

themselves.

Nobody will ever believe how they looked. Descriptions aren‟t any good when it

comes to women, and I never was good at descriptions anyhow. But it‟s got to be done

somehow; the rest of the world needs to k now about that country. I haven‟t said where it was

for fear some self-appointed missionaries, or traders, or land-greedy expansionists, will take

it upon themselves to push in. They will not be wanted, I can tell them that, and will fare

worse than we did if they do find it.

It began this way. There were three of us, classmates and friends — Terry O.

Nicholson, Jeff Margrave, and I, Vandyck Jennings. We had known each other years and

years, and in spite of our differences we had a good deal in common. All of us were

interested in science. Terry was rich enough to do as he pleased. His great aim was

exploration […] He had a lot of talents — great on mechanics and electricity. Had all kinds of



32

boats and motorcars, and was one of the best of our airmen […]. Jeff Margrave was born to

be a poet, a botanist — or both — but his folks persuaded him to be a doctor instead. He was a

good one, for his age, but his real interest was in what he loved to call “the wonders of

science.” As for me, sociology‟s my major. You have to back that up with a lot of other

sciences, of course. I‟m interested in them all.

Text 3: Extract from Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out (1915)

As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very narrow, it is

better not to walk down them arm-in-arm. If you persist, lawyers‟ clerks will have to make

flying leaps into the mud; young lady typists will have to fidget behind you. In the streets of

London where beauty goes unregarded, eccentricity must pay the penalty, and it is better not

to be very tall, to wear a long blue cloak, or to beat the air with your left hand.

One afternoon in the beginning of October when the traffic was becoming brisk a tall

man strode along the edge of the pavement with a lady on his arm. Angry glances struck upon

their backs. The small, agitated figures--for in comparison with this couple most people

looked small--decorated with fountain pens, and burdened with despatch-boxes, had

appointments to keep, and drew a weekly salary, so that there was some reason for the

unfriendly stare which was bestowed upon Mr. Ambrose‟s height and upon Mrs. Ambrose‟s

cloak. But some enchantment had put both man and woman beyond the reach of malice and

unpopularity. In his guess one might guess from the moving lips that it was thought; and in

hers from the eyes fixed stonily straight in front of her at a level above the eyes of most that it

was sorrow. It was only by scorning all she met that she kept herself from tears, and the

friction of people brushing past her was evidently painful. After watching the traffic on the

Embankment for a minute or two with a stoical gaze she twitched her husband‟s sleeve, and

they crossed between the swift discharge of motor cars.

Identify the types of narrators in the three texts and comment on the different

narrative techniques used by the authors.



33

Symbolism

The Tell-Tale Heart

TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will

you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled

them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the

earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how

healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it

haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old

man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I

think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue

eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees —

very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the

eye for ever.

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should

have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded — with what caution — with

what foresight — with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man

than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the

latch of his door and opened it — oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening

sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, so that no light shone out,

and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in!

I moved it slowly — very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man‟s sleep. It took

me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay

upon his bed. Ha! — would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my head

was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously — oh, so cautiously — I undid it just so

much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights —

every night just at midnight — but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to

do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning,

when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling

him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he had passed the night. So you see he

would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve,

I looked in upon him while he slept.



34

And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the

sense? - now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes

when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's

heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern

motionless. I tried to maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart

increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's

terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! - do you mark me

well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid

the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable

terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder,

louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me - the sound would

be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the

lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once - once only. In an instant I dragged him to

the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done.

But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex

me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I

removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. […]. His eyewould trouble me no more.

If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise

precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily,

but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the

legs. I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between

the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye - not

even his - could have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out - no stain of

any kind - no blood-spot whatever.

I smiled, - for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said,

was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my

visitors all over the house. I bade them search - search well. I led them, at length, to his

chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my

confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues,



35

while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very

spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.

The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease.

They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt

myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my

ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct: - It continued and

became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and

gained definiteness - until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.

No doubt I now grew very pale; - but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened

voice. Yet the sound increased - and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound - much

such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath - and yet the

officers heard it not. I talked more quickly - more vehemently; but the noise steadily

increased. […] Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides,

as if excited to fury by the observations of the men - but the noise steadily increased. Oh

God! what could I do? I foamed - I raved - I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been

sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It

grew louder - louder - louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it

possible they heard not? Almighty God! - no, no! They heard! - they suspected! - they knew!

- they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was

better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those

hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! And now - again! - hark!

louder! louder! louder! louder!

“Villains!” I shrieked, “[…] I admit the deed! - tear up the planks! here, here! - It is the

beating of his hideous heart!”

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843)

Identify a dominant symbol used by the author and comment on its relevance to the

whole story.



36

Style

Text 1:

The excellent Mr. Morris was an Englishman, and he lived in the days of Queen

Victoria the Good. He was a prosperous and very sensible man; he read The Times and went

to church, and as he grew towards middle age an expression of quiet contented contempt for

all who were not as himself settled on his face. He was one of those people who do

everything that is right and proper and sensible with inevitable regularity. Everything that it

was right and proper for a man in his position to possess, he possessed; and everything that it

was not right and proper for a man in his position to possess, he did not possess. And among

other right and proper possessions, this Mr. Morris had a wife and children. They were the

right sort of wife, and the right sort and number of children, of course; nothing imaginative

[…] about any of them, so far as Mr. Morris could see; they wore perfectly correct clothing,

neither smart nor faddy2 in any way, but just sensible; and they lived in a nice sensible house

in the later Victorian sham3 Queen Anne style of architecture, with sham half-timbering of

chocolate-painted plaster in the gables, a terrace of terra cotta to imitate stone, and cathedral

glass in the front door. His boys went to good solid schools, and were put to respectable

professions; his girls, in spite of a fantastic protest or so, were all married to suitable, steady,

oldish young men with good prospects. And when it was a fit and proper thing for him to do

so, Mr. Morris died.

He underwent various changes according to the accepted custom in these cases, and

long before this story begins his bones even had become dust, and were scattered to the four

quarters of heaven. And his sons and his grandsons and his great-grandsons and his great-

great-grandsons, they too were dust and ashes, and were scattered likewise. It was a thing he

could not have imagined, that a day would come when even his great-great-grandsons would

be scattered to the four winds of heaven. If anyone had suggested it to him he would have

resented it. He was one of those worthy people who take no interest in the future of mankind

at all. He had grave doubts, indeed, if there was any future for mankind after he was dead.

It seemed quite impossible and quite uninteresting to imagine anything happening

after he was dead. Yet the thing was so, and when even his great-great-grandson was dead

and decayed and forgotten, […] and all that Mr. Morris had found real and important was

2 Fashionable.

3 A false copy or imitation: a fraud.



38

either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands occasionally slipped round on the pivot,

and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the

hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and

shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects by constant

comparisons with and observations of the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the

glass of his neighbours‟ windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the green -faced

timekeepers within. It may be mentioned that Oak‟s pocket being difficult of access, by

reason of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a

remote height under his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by throwing the

body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account

of the exertion, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well.

But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of his fields on a

certain December morning might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In

his face one might notice that youth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his

remoter crannies some traces of boyhood. His height and breadth would have been sufficient

to make his presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due consideration. But there is a

way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than the

body: it is a quiet modesty which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no

great claim on the world‟s room. Oak walked unassumingly and with a faintly perceptible

bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an

individual if he depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his capacity to

wear well, which Oak did not.

He had just reached the time of life at which “young” is ceasing to be the prefix of “man”

in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and

his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of

youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at

the stage wherein they become united again by the influence of a wife and family.

Thomas Hardy, Far fr om the Madding Crowd (1874) (Abridged)

1. Comment on the use of irony in this passage. Justify your answer with clear

examples.

2. Identify and analyse the tone of this text.



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Tone and Diction

Text 1: Extract from Lawrence Sterne’s Tr istram Shandy (1760).

CHAP. V.

On the fifth day of November, 1718, which to the era fixed on, was as near nine

calendar months as any husband could in reason have expected, was I, Tristram Shandy,

Gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous world of ours. I wish I had been

born in the Moon, or in any of the planets, (except Jupiter or Saturn, because I never could

bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them than it has

in this vile, dirty planet of ours, —which o‟ my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, I take

to be made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest; not but the planet is well enough,

provided a man could be born in it to a great title or to a great estate; or could any how

contrive to be called up to public charges, and employments of dignity or power; — but that is

not my case; - and therefore every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in

it; — for which cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever was made;

for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew my breath in it, to this, that I can now scarce

draw it at all, for an asthma I got in skating against the wind; I have been the continual sport

of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not wrong her by saying, She has ever

made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil; yet with all the good temper in the world,

I affirm it of her, That in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could

get fairly at me, the ungracious Duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures

and cross accidents as ever small HERO sustained.

CHAP. VI.

In the beginning of the last chapter, I inform‟d you exactly when I was born; — but I

did not inform you, how. No; that particular was reserved entirely for a chapter by itself; — besides, Sir, as you and I are in a manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have

been proper to have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once. You

must have a little patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my

opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind

of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other. As you proceed

further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into

familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship. [...]



40

Therefore, my dear friend and companion don‟t [...] fly off, but rather courteously

give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside; — and as we jog on,

either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do anything, only keep your temper.

Questions

1. Identify the tone of this text.

2. What particular diction is used to convey it?

Text 2: Extract from George Eliot’s Sil as Marner (1861)

In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses […], there

might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain

pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnantsof a disinherited race. The shepherd‟s dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking

men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure

bent under a heavy bag?--and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious

burden. The shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing

but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was not quite

sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely

without the help of the Evil One. In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every

person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the

visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men had their homes

or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who

knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world outside their own direct

experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their untravelled thought a state of

wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the

spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed with

a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any surprise if a long course of

inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had

any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All cleverness, whether in

the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to

villagers, was in itself suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly

not overwise or clever--at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the

weather; and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so

wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring. In this way it came to pass that



41

those scattered linen-weavers--emigrants from the town into the country--were to the last

regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits

which belong to a state of loneliness.

In the early years of this century, such a linen-weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at

his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of

Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit. The questionable sound of Silas‟s

loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler

rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leave

off their nutting or birds‟ nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage,

counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of

scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises, along with the bent,tread-mill attitude of the weaver. But sometimes it happened that Marner, pausing to adjust

an irregularity in his thread, became aware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his

time, he liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from his loom, and, opening the

door, would fix on them a gaze that was always enough to make them take to their legs in

terror. For how was it possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas

Marner ‟s pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not

rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp […] at any boy who happened to be in the

rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure

folks‟ rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still more darkly, that if you could only speak

the devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes

of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among

the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and

benignity. A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain

from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds

of men […] to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic

religious faith.

Questions

1. Comment on the tone of this text.

2. What particular diction is used to evoke it?



43

Complication

An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and

develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work. Frank O'Connor's story "Guests of

the Nation" provides a striking example, as does Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal."

Conflict

A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the

work. The conflict may occur within a character as well as between characters. Lady

Gregory's one-act play The Rising of the Moon exemplifies both types of conflict as the

Policeman wrestles with his conscience in an inner conflict and confronts an antagonist in the

person of the ballad singer.

Connotation

The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets,

especially, tend to use words rich in connotation. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into

That Good Night" includes intensely connotative language, as in these lines: "Good men, the

last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, / Rage,

rage against the dying of the light."

Convention

A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the

inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a

villanelle. Literary conventions are defining features of particular literary genres, such as

novel, short story, ballad, sonnet, and play.

Denotation

The dictionary meaning of a word. Wr iters typically play off a word‟s denotative meaning

against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications. In the following

lines from Peter Meinke's "Advice to My Son" the references to flowers and fruit, bread and

wine denote specific things, but also suggest something beyond the literal, dictionary

meanings of the words:

To be specific, between the peony and rose

Plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes;

Beauty is nectar and nectar, in a desert, saves--

...

and always serve bread with your wine.

But, son,

always serve wine.



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Denouement

The resolution of the plot of a literary work. The denouement of Hamlet takes place after the

catastrophe, with the stage littered with corpses. During the denouement Fortinbras makes an

entrance and a speech, and Horatio speaks his sweet lines in praise of Hamlet.

Dialogue

The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed

within quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names.

Diction

The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction forms one of its centrally

important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply

attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. We can speak of the diction particular to a

character, as in Iago's and Desdemona's very different ways of speaking in Othello. We can

also refer to a poet's diction as represented over the body of his or her work, as in Donne's or

Hughes's diction.

Exposition

The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is

provided. Ibsen's A Doll's House, for instance, begins with a conversation between the two

central characters, a dialogue that fills the audience in on events that occurred before the

action of the play begins, but which are important in the development of its plot.

Fable

A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author. Fables typically include animals

as characters. Their most famous practitioner in the west is the ancient Greek writer Aesop,

whose "The Dog and the Shadow" and "The Wolf and the Mastiff" are included in this book.

Falling action

In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it

towards its denouement or resolution. The falling action of Othello begins after Othello

realizes that Iago is responsible for plotting against him by spurring him on to murder his

wife, Desdemona.

Fiction

An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. Ibsen's Nora is fictional, a "make-

believe" character in a play, as are Hamlet and Othello. Characters like Robert Browning‟s

Duke and Duchess from his poem "My Last Duchess" are fictional as well, though they may

be based on actual historical individuals. And, of course, characters in stories and novels are

fictional, though they, too, may be based, in some way, on real people. The important thing to



45

remember is that writers embellish and embroider and alter actual life when they use real life

as the basis for their work. They fictionalize facts, and deviate from real-life situations as

they "make things up."

Figurative language

A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal

meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or

understatement, simile and metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and

metonymy, in which a part of a thing stands for the whole.

Flashback

An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior

to the main time frame of a work's action. Writers use flashbacks to complicate the sense of

chronology in the plot of their works and to convey the richness of the experience of human

time. Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" includes flashbacks.

Foil

A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story. Laertes, in

Hamlet, is a foil for the main character; in Othello, Emilia and Bianca are foils for

Desdemona.

Foreshadowing

Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story. Ibsen's A Doll's House includes

foreshadowing as does Synge's Riders to the Sea. So, too, do Poe's "Cask of Amontillado"

and Chopin's "Story of an Hour."

Hyperbole

A figure of speech involving exaggeration. John Donne uses hyperbole in his poem: "Song:

Go and Catch a Falling Star."

Image

A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the

pattern of related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by

recurring throughout the work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot. Often writers use

multiple images throughout a work to suggest states of feeling and to convey implications of

thought and action. Some modern poets, such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams,

write poems that lack discursive explanation entirely and include only images. Among the

most famous examples is Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro":

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.



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Point of view

The angle of vision from which a story is narrated. See Narrator. A work's point of view can

be: first person, in which the narrator is a character or an observer, respectively; objective, in

which the narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader; omniscient, in which

the narrator knows everything about the characters; and limited omniscient, which allows the

narrator to know some things about the characters but not everything.

Protagonist

The main character of a literary work--Hamlet and Othello in the plays named after them.

Recognition

The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is. Sophocles'

Oedipus comes to this point near the end of Oedipus the King; Othello comes to a similar

understanding of his situation in Act V of Othello.

Resolution

The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story. See Plot.

Reversal

The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist.

Oedipus's and Othello's recognitions are also reversals. They learn what they did not expect

to learn. See Recognition and also Irony.

Rising action

A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot leading up to the

climax. See Climax, Denouement, and Plot.

Satire

A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies.

Swift's Gulliver’ s Travels is a famous example. Chekhov's Marriage Proposal and O'Connor's

"Everything That Rises Must Converge," have strong satirical elements.

Setting

The time and place of a literary work that establish its context. The stories of Sandra Cisneros

are set in the American southwest in the mid to late 20th century, those of James Joyce in

Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century.

Simile

A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though.

An example: "My love is like a red, red rose."

Style

1st year booklet

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