Comments. First Variant

1. The text belongs to the initial portion (not the very beginning) of a novel or a long-short story.

2. The genre of the book (or a story) is, judging by the title, a work of a detective fiction with a tingle of melodrama. Evidently it includes an unhappy love story. The literary trend, if it is possible to assess it by a comparatively short text is either realism or naturalism.

3. The author is surely an American (but the extraction is not certain), modern, judging by the time of publication. Whether it is “he” or “she” is not clear. Most probable we deal with an authoress, well-read in American short stories (Theodore Deiser, Sherwood Anderson). Since the text reads well, is a detective cum love story, the authoress might be pretty profilic. She is not a classic with the aspirations of a classic, but she has a style of her own: terse, dry and suggestive.

4. The text is dedicated to growing and maturing of a handsome man who inherited his mother’s ambitions and snobbishness and who is ready not to remain something as insignificant as his father. The part is but a start of a career of a hard, calculating man. Probably he will turn out the villan of the story.

5. The predominant impression as apprehension. Nothing is stated (or emphasized) definitely but some details are suggestive enough (understanding personal beauty, the cruelty in the fight, becoming a ring-leader, using an unattractive girl etc.)

6. a) The character is an anonymous “he”. This only shows the attitude – negative – of the authoress.

b) The mother is a “bitter and unhappy” woman because of the frustration of her youthful hopes: “a mere oiler” sounds contemptuous.

Her snobbishness is stressed by her attitude to the Portuguese (not shared by his husband) and by not encouraging the son to play with them.

c) The selfish character of the boy is clear in his using “an unattractive girl”.

d) His hypocrisy is clear in the part describing his school-days. The repetition of the verb “like” and parallel structures make it clear.

e) The repeated mention of “the better part of the town” and his mother’s repeated joke about his eventually marrying a rich man’s daughter is another means of stressing the snobbishness.

f) The abundance of superlatives in the last paragraph of the text shows his success and realization of ambitions hopes.

In conclusion it is possible to suppose that the part “One” was devoted to the prospective victim of this worthy son of his mother. Should anyone, by any chance be in the way of “His” success, the outcome is clear.

The text surely belongs to an American author if only because the geographical names, mention of different nationalities and the use of “hazers” (meaning “bullies”).

Tasks: 1) Comment upon the sentences containing: “…world come”, “admonishingly”, “anonymous”, “again and again”, “cloackroom kisses”, “sparring”.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-15