Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Home reading

TOMORROW, TOMORROW AND TOMORROW

by a contemporary American writer Kurt Vonnegut (1922--2007)

1. Study the information about the author of the story. Be ready to share the facts of his biography you were stunned by. Do you remember reading his stories before?

2. Read and scrutinize the text “Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow”.

Tasks to be accomplished in pen:

1. Write out, the underlined words and expressions; find their synonyms or equivalents in your mother tongue.

2. Write a short comment on the story expressing your opinion of the text.

3. Write a literary translation of the passage (p.299)

Conversational tasks:

1. Express your attitude to the story. Did you like it? Why? Comment on the title of the text. Think out your own title.

(Team work: divide into 2 teams and share your titles. Choose the best title and write it on the blackboard. Why did you choose this very title?)

2. Out of the statements adduced choose the ones that define the story in the best way.

3. Dwell upon the setting of the story (the time and place of the action).

4. Take up a card with the words from the text, paraphrase or explain them and illustrate with the situations they were used in.

5. Individual task (match set expressions from the text with their English equivalents)

6. Relate the main characters:

a) How many personages are mentioned in the text?

b) Present a family tree of the Schwarz family.

c) Why are there 23 people living in one apartment? How old are they?

d) Who is the head of the family? What member of the family can be described as an absolute despot? Why? How did he spend his free time?

e) What did everything and everybody depend on?

7. Describe the Schwarz’ family relations.

Illustrate them by acting out dialogues between:

v Lou and Em (husband & wife)

v Gramps & one of his descendants

v Two women complaining of their difficult life in one-room apartment with 22 other relatives

8. Describe the world people of the year 2158 AD lived in:

Ø why people lived long

Ø what people ate

Ø how people died and why

Ø adverse ecological situation

9. What do you think led the world to such aggravating situation? What eternal problems are touched upon in the story?

10. If you were to write the ending of the story, what would it be like?

11. Would you like to have a chance to choose to live a very long earthly life or pick up when to die? Why? (Team work: Pros & Cons- table)

Which of the assertions below are the best to encourage your friend to read this story?

Write a 5-7 sentence review of the story as if you were a critic.

1. It has access to the deepest parts of ourselves.

2. Well-thumbed and well-used plot and upshot.

3. A prophetic book… The author has done something far beyond the simple weaving of an entertaining yarn.

4. Absorbing, sensational, staggeringly unexpected…

5. An extraordinary feat (мастерство) of sustained narrative.

6. Epic drama very satisfying

7. Remarkable…Gripping…totally credible…

8. Astonishing…everyone who can read English should read it.

9. Should appeal with equal power to anyone who cherishes the world of nature, or who savors a taut tale of suspense, hot pursuit, and derring-do.

10. A true, sold winner, an original invention, a terrific read.

11. A marvel, a wise and sunny story, a suspenseful epic that readers twelve and up are going to enjoy for a long time to come.

12. One of those great ones that every once in along while lets us know that the universe has something really great going for humanity.

13. Thought provoking and profound writing

14. A work of distinction and originality

15. …his black-logic extensions of today's absurdities into an imagined society of tomorrow at once gives us something to laugh at and much to fear...

16. "Quite marvelous... A powerful new vision of the great chain of being."

17. "A novel for just about everyone... An instant classic. It's a book that has just about everything—depth, suspense, style, and substance."

18. "A splendid story, gripping and as wonderfully real as it is unreal."

19. This novel will inevitably compel you into its reality, replenish, and renourish... Do not miss this book."

20. The author is a compelling storyteller, who ties plots and images into an interlocking whole.

21. "_____has argued that a strong narrative matters more than a distinctive voice, because style is vulnerable to time and translation. Despite the narrator's occasional pomposities, the book reads like fast-flowing conversation, elegant and lively. It sometimes slips into verbosity, as do some of the stories. "

22. Vonnegut colors his oft-wondrous works with memorable characters, fantastic realities, pitch-perfect dialogue and heapings of satire and humor.

23. "There are (almost no) characters in this story, and (almost no) dramatic confrontations, because…

24. Joyous and imaginative. A paean (хвалебная песня) to life.

25. Spellbinding…magical…

Learn the following words and expressions and illustrate the with situations they were used in:

1. To dilute anti-gerasone (p.293) 2. To disinherit sb (294) 3. Fat chance (295) 4. To be smeared by a subway(295) 5. A few diseases kicking around (295) 6. Processed seaweed and sawdust (296) 7. To lick overpopulation (297) 8. Withered and bent (298) 9. A stark tragedy (298) 10. To be cut off without a dollar (298) 11. Age zero (298) 12. Petrified descendants (299) 13. Smeared and dog-eared (299) 14. In a deep portentous monotone (300) 15. To revoke codicils (300)

16. To change the trifle (300) 17. Merely insufferable & harrowing (302) 18. Imperceptible smell (302) 19. Sacred room (303) 20. To toy apathetically (304) 21. To slow every heart (304) 22. To shelter (304) 23. In a sweep of one’s hand (305) 24. To be underway (306) 25. Cross your fingers (306) 26. To get solitary(306) 27. The whole kit & caboodle (306) 28. Stiffness of joints and discoloration of hair 29. Straighten the place up (307) 30. To reveal equanimity (308)

Match the following set expressions with their equivalents:

1. bust one’s neck (293) 2. to be dying for smth (293) 3. to knock off (294) 4. to kick about (295) 5. to pop into one’s head (296) 6. to crack up (301) 7. down the drain (302) 8. to splinters (302) 9. for a real kick (305) 10. to be underway (306) 11. to pull the wires (306) 12. the whole kit (and caboodle) (307) 13. to straighten smth up (308)

a) to come to mind, to occur (to) b) for nought, for nothing, without result; in vain c) be in existence; live, subsist d) to experience a psychological or, sometimes, physical breakdown, usually because of stress (informal) e) to give smb. a dressing-down to get a good telling-off; to get into hot water, to get it in the neck f) to eat up g) to long/crave for smth. h) a lot of things, or a group of things or people i) to become, or make something, upright or in line j) with an exciting, pleasurable, or satisfying feeling k) completely, thoroughly, all to pieces l) to pull the strings m) in motion or progress

ETERNAL earthly life

Pros	Cons

VERY LONG earthly life

Pros	Cons

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Дата добавления: 2015-11-04