Analysis “The Lumber-Room”.

“The lumber-room” was written by a british novelist Nector Munro. He was known as a best short story writer. In his childhood he was brought up by his grandmother and aunts. One of became a prototype for his short story the lumber room. The author satirized the unsympathetic methods of upbringing.

This story tells about a boy, named Nicholas, who was in disgrace for his bad conduct. He was left at home while other children were walking around the sands at Jagborough. His aunt-by-assertion banned him to enter the gooseberry garden. That’s why she occupied the garden to control the Nicholas invasion. But the boy took the important-looking keys and entered the lumber-room. The treasures of the room geminated his imagination. For a moment he forgot about the aunt until she began shouting. The boy refused to rescue his aunt referring that it is the Evil one who tempted him.

The author tried to convey the following idea. It is highly difficult to bring up the children. They feel the insincerity and falsity of the adults. In the case when Nicholas put deliberately a frog into his basin of bread-and-milk, the aunts neglected his pleas. They didn’t see his basin and just punished him. They denied the presence of any frog in Nicholas’s basin with the utmost assurance. And the author accentuates the attention to this point. That can be interpreted as if the adults can tell lie about everything with full assurance. The adults can overlook the facts and interpret them as they want without penetration into the essence of the matter.

Such attitude of the adults to the children can create the unfriendliness and cruelty of the last ones. Nicholas mischievously told that Bobby’s boots were hurting him. The author used a lot of words with high negative stylistic colouring (a grim chuckle). But the aunt replies in the same way (with asperity, loftily). The author shows the reader the effect of boomerang. The indifferent attitude of the aunt towards the children (you often don’t listen when we tell you important things) generate the same attitude of Nicholas towards the aunts and other children.

This text can be conventionally divided into three parts. The first part is an introduction. It tells about the breakfast. Nicholas was in disgrace forfeiting the walk around the sands at Jagborough. His aunt-by-assertion forbids him to enter the gooseberry garden. The second part is the absorbing tale about the lumber-room. Nicholas was impressed by the treasures of the lumber. He was represented from the other side. The reader’s attitude can be shifted to the positive attitude to the boy. The last part is a climax. The aunt was slipped into the rain-water tank and could not get out without any help. The boy refused fetching the ladder.

The text is largely represented through the dialogues between the characters. Direct speech allows the reader to hear the voices of the characters. The description of the lumber-room was executed as a piece of narration. Describing the lumber-room the author used more high-flown words (to feast on, quaint, to leap to the conclusion). The words are positive, they reflect the inner side of the boy. But the other two parts contain a fair amount of negative words (fearsome, undignified, unmerited detention, disastrous, punitive). The author opposes these parts on purpose to emphasize the true Nicholas’s nature. He was really impressed by the treasures of the lumber-room. It gave him a push to imagination. For a long time he wanted to enter this room. He trained in school to open the door with the keys. He said the room came up to his expectations. That means he thought about the room for a long. The tapestry, the whole portrait gallery claimed his attention.

The author characterized the boy as a skilled tactitian and an aunt as a woman of few ideas. The author described the aunts like older and wiser and better people. He used this phrase twice to exaggerate the degree of their narrow-mindedness.

The full text is penetrated throughout with irony and sarcasm. The author is very ironic towards the aunt in the end. The boy named the aunt with the Evil One. Not without the grounds the author used such simile (aunt – the Evil One). I suppose that the methods of upbringing were highly similar to the unfair approaches. The aunts did not have a way with children. They were hypocritical and deceitful telling lie about the nonexistent circus.

To sum up, in spite of ironical atmosphere it is a pity to realize if people bring up children in such a way, it is not surprise that children become cruel. And there is nothing but reap.

Analysis.

Дата добавления: 2015-08-13