Lesson 18. Home-reading. Arthur hailey. the final diagnosis. (chapters 10 - 24).

The aim of the lesson is to teach you to give characteristic sketches of personages of a novel, to analyse different kinds of narration and to express your attitude to some universal problems of life.

1. PRONUNCIATION DRILL. Group the words into three categories:

1) parts of human organism; 2) illnesses; 3) proceedings

*** lesion, blood typing, intestinal tract, osteogenic sarcoma, biopsy, a touch of bronchitis, blue nevus, full tissue report, malignant melanoma, Rh negative blood, left (right) ventricle, serum testing, sedative injection, bowels

2. Explain the meaning of the following idiomatic expressions:

e.g.: " to soften the blow " means "to do one's best to console a person, to sympathize with smb.,

to calm smb. down.

to sow one's wild oats (83)

to break the news (91)

a sense of foreboding (96)

to take smb. down a peg (98)

to leave well enough alone (100)

to shield oneself from smth. (104)

to be in labour (108)

not to turn a hair (110)

to get in a rut (159)

to be full of spice and vinegar (161)

3. Make up situations with the phrases above (to be done at home at least the day before) and offer them to your partner for back translation (to be done at home as well). Practise them in class.

4. Reproduce the sentences that can be used to characterize:

1) Lucy Grainger, 2) Kent O'Donnell, 3) Mike Seddons, 4) Vivian Loburton, 5) Joe Pearson.

· It was he who shouldered the responsibility of the "final diagnosis".

· Being practical he would never marry until he was established in practice, his wild oats sown, his future financially secure.

· She had warmth of spirit, strong kindness that was at once soothing and restoring.

· He won the sympathies of his colleagues by his dedication to medicine, analytical mind and straightforward manner.

· At that time she was no longer light-hearted and untroubled. There was a new firm determination in her.

5. Hailey's books are completely absorbing and present a closely-knit web of fiction and reality. The author knows how to keep the reader in suspense. He resorts to a peculiar multilateral type of narrative where everything is brought together.

Explain how minor characters are introduced and how they gradually come into the limelight. Is it sometimes difficult for you to understand who is speaking or thinking? If not, why? Find a passage that may serve as a bright example of the multilateral type of narration.

6. While speaking about different kinds of narration there is one more thing to bear in mind: time density (плотность).

No author can narrate events the way they happen in our real life as it will take too much time and paper. That's why writers resort to the device called " time compression " (take a look at chapter 7).

But in order to stress the importance of an event or a situation they may narrate in a very detailed way, thus stretching time (see chapter 6).

Provide examples of time compression and time stretching and account for them.

7. Hailey is keen on representing his characters in extreme situations when the result of this or that action depends on a momentary decision. It is the problem of human choice that each character of the novel faces and solves. What are the choices the main characters make? Explain

(Recollect Colonel Frank from "Scent of a Woman" and his words: "I always knew what the right path was and I never took it - it was too damn hard".)

8. "Real life is a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually is a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way." (Michael Chrichton, "Jurassic Park")

In "The Final Diagnosis" everything is closely connected: a single action or event causes lots of other consequences. In a word, things ramify. Prove that, provide quotations placing an emphasis on the actual consequences and imagining possible ones.

9. Remember one of the last lines of the novel "It was the hospital world: a living organism, a mirror of the greater world outside."

What is the Tree Counties Hospital? Is it just an ordinary provincial clinic in the middle of nowhere or something larger? Think of the symbolism in the novel.

10. Fiction has always been concerned with the problem of human choice. Does the poem by Robert Frost reflect the ideas expressed in the novel? Or does it sound a bit (very much) different?

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