UNIT 1

Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover: Genres and Titles

Lead In
 Do you pay attention to the design of a book cover? What can you learn
from it? Can you be deceived by it?
 How often do books fail to meet your expectations? Tell the class about
a recent case.
 Look at the images of book covers below. What genres do you think they
belong to? What would you expect from each one?

In which of these novels are you like to meet violence, romance, crime
investigation, psychological insights, magic, humour? Which of these books
would you like to read? Explain your choice.
Exploring Genres
The concept of genre is found across various media. It presupposes division
of material into classes or types according to certain criteria or agreed-upon
conventions. As a result, literary genres are loosely defined with regard to
their content, tone, style, technique length, etc., and certain flexibility in this
matter is acceptable.
The most enduring literary genre division (known since the times of Plato
and Aristotle) relies on the attribution of speech. It groups fictional works
into three major classes: lyric (spoken in the first person), epic / narrative
(the narrator speaks and lets other characters speak) and drama (all
characters speak for themselves). The dichotomy of tragedy and comedy
also goes back to the ancient times. Another common distinction is between
prose and poetry, while the criterion of length accounts for such genres as
novel, novella and short story. Content-related genre definitions are
autobiography, biography, romance, gothic fiction, crime fiction, fantasy,
science fiction, mysteries, historical novel, travel writing, etc.
When a fictional work is written with the intent of fitting within a certain
genre, it is sometimes referred to as genre fiction, which is almost
synonymous with popular fiction. It is assumed that these works are written
mainly to entertain readers and gain commercial success. In contrast, literary
fiction is uncategorised fiction that aspires to artistic expression. Mainstream
literature is an ambiguous term which is used as the counterpart for both
literary and popular fiction.
Each genre has its conventions and characteristic features, as well as
subgenres. For example, fantasy fiction includes such varieties as epic,
heroic, historic, comic, dark, urban and others. A cross-genre (or hybrid
genre) relies on blending themes and elements from two or more different
genres. Since genre attribution is conventional, it is sometimes problematic
to establish the genre of a specific text, especially in cases when boundaries
between genres are uncertain, as between fantasy and magic realism.

Task 1
 What is the difference between literary fiction and genre fiction? Provide
examples of both.
 Have you read any cross-genre works? Did you enjoy them? Why / why
not?
Task 2
Look at the subgenres of science fiction / fantasy below. Do you know their
distinctive features? Use the Internet to help you.

Space Space Post-

Steampunk Cyberpunk
opera Western Apocaliptic

Decide in which of these subgenres you are likely to come across…

 Victorian aesthetics
 interplanetary romance
 artificial intelligence
 robotic horses
 gritty urban settings
 sophisticated technology
 brilliant hackers
 intergalactic battles
 alternative life forms
 social chaos
 lawless frontiers
 zombies
 alternative versions of history

Task 3
Read the following review comments on Salman Rushdie’s novel “The
Enchantress of Florence”. Which of them relate to the novel’s genre? Do
they inspire you to read the book? Why / why not?
“A romance of beauty and power from Italy to India... so delightful an
homage to Renaissance magic and wonder.”
Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World
“This is ‘history’ jubilantly mixed with postmodernist magic realism.”
Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
“Brilliant... Rushdie’s sumptuous mixture of history and fable is
magnificent.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
 Margaret Atwood, a famous Canadian
author, has always been experimenting
with genres and pushing the boundaries
in her fiction. Her collection “The
Tent” (2006) contains diverse short
pieces that are hard to categorise. They
have been called “fictional essays” or
“mini-fictions”, their prominent themes
being feminism, ecology and fiction
itself. Employing a number of
metafictional strategies and reworking
classical mythological and literary motifs,
Atwood addresses the issues of fame,
creativity and responsibility of a writer.
Such stories as “Voice”, “Three Novels
I Won’t Write Soon”, “But It Could
Still”, “Plots for Exotics”, “The Tent”
are poignant and self-consciousness explorations of a writer’s mind, often
with a bitter and satirical slant. Another satire in this collection, “Take
Charge”, is directed at genre fiction and its limitations.
Read the story and say how the author attacks formulaic writing.

Take Charge
by Margaret Atwood
I)
– Sir, their cannons have blown a hole in the ship. It’s below the
waterline. Water is pouring into the hold, Sir.
– Don’t just stand there, you blockhead! Cut a piece of canvas, dive
down, patch it!
– Sir, I can’t swim.
– Bloody hell and damn your eyes, what wetnurse let you go to sea?
No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself. Hold my jacket. Put out that fire.
Clear away those spars.
– Sir, my leg’s been shot off.
– Well do the best you can.
II)
– Sir, their anti-tank missiles have shredded the left tread on our tank.
– Don’t just sit there, you nitwit! Take a wrench, crawl underneath the
tank, fix it!
– Sir, I’m a gunner, not a mechanic. Anyway that wouldn’t work.
– Why in hell do they send me useless twits like you? No help for it,
I’ll have to do it myself. Cover me with your machine gun. Stand by with
grenades. Hand me that spanner.
– Sir, my arm’s been burnt off.
– Well do the best you can.

III)
– Sir, their diabolical worm virus has infected our missile command
system. It’s eating the software like candy.
– Don’t just lounge there, you dickhead! Get going with the firewalls,
or whatever you use.
– Sir, I’m a screen monitor, not a troubleshooter.
– Shit in a bucket, what do they think we’re running here, a beauty
parlour? If you can’t do it, where’s the nerdy spot-faced geek who can?
– Sir, it was him wrote the virus. He was not a team player, Sir. The
missiles have already launched and they’re heading straight for us.
– No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself. Hand me that
sledgehammer.
– Sir, we’ve got sixty seconds.
– Well do the best you can.

IV)
– Sir, the makorin has malfunctioned and set off the pizzlewhistle.
That has saddammed the glopzoid plapoodle. It may be the work of hostile
nanobacons.
– Don’t just hover there, you clonedrone! Dopple the magmatron,
reboot the fragebender, and insert the hi-speed crockblade with the
pessimal-point attachment! That’ll captcha the nasty little biobots!
– Sir, the magmatron is not within my area of expertise.
– What pixelwit deployed you? No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself.
Hand me the mutesuck blandplaster!
– Sir, I have been brain-napped. My brain is in a jar in Uzbekistan,
guarded by a phalanx of virtual gonkwarriors. I am speaking to you via
simulation hologram.
– Well do the best you can.

V)
– Sir, the wild dogs have dug their way into the food cache and they’re
eating the winter supplies.
– Don’t just squat there, you layabout! Pick up your stone axe and
bash them on the head!
– Sir, these are not ordinary wild dogs. They are red-eyed demon-
spirit dogs, sent by the angry ancestors. Anyway, my stone axe has a curse on
it.
– By my mother’s bones, what did I do to deserve such a useless duck-
turd brother’s nephew’s son as you? No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself.
Recite the red-eyed demon-spirit dog-killing charm and hand me my
consecrated sacred-fire-hardened spear.
– Sir, they’ve torn my throat out.
– Well do the best you can.

Comprehension 1. What happens in each of the five episodes of the

story?
2. What is the relationship between the characters in
the episodes?
Discussion 1. What can you say about the genre of each
episode?
2. Comment on the usage of nonce words
(neologisms) in episode IV. What role do they
play?
3. Why are the characters not named?
4. Which phrases are repeated in all five episodes
and why?
5. What is the object of satire in “Take Charge”?
What is the message of the story?
6. What is your attitude to genre fiction as opposed to
literary fiction?
7. What other examples of satire in fiction can you
remember?
Language Practice
Task 1: Pronunciation Tips
The final “e” in the English language is silent in the majority of cases, but
not always. Some words of foreign origin retain their pronunciation, partially
or completely. In certain cases this is marked diacritically, as in café, cliché
or fiancé.
Decide how the final “e” is pronounced in the following words. Practise
reading them aloud.
genre, café, simile, forte, apostrophe, Irene, cliché, recipe, epitome,
hyperbole, fiancé, fiancée, Daphne, synecdoche, anemone, risqué, syncope,
Hermione, catastrophe, manqué, finale
Which of the words are hard for you to pronounce? Make up tongue-
twisters or rhymes to facilitate memorising of these words.

Task 2: Vocabulary
Study the words in the table below and translate the examples into
your first language.
To evoke is to call up, trigger The story abounds in descriptive passages
or produce an emotional that evoke the colours and smells of exotic
reaction, a memory, an lands.
association, etc. The adjective The author’s style is his forte: the language
evocative is often used to of the novel is richly evocative.
describe artistic elements.
Poignant is an adjective used It’s a poignant coming-of-age story set in the
to refer to phenomena that post-war London.
evoke strong emotional The film was subject to some poignant
reactions, especially sorrow, criticism.
distress and compassion. It Revisiting the memories of his childhood
may imply keenness and gave him a poignant pleasure.
intensity in certain contexts.
Atmospheric elements in The book cover and illustrations are
fiction and art create a certain haunting and atmospheric.
atmosphere and evoke an Atmospheric descriptions of autumnal
emotional and aesthetic landscapes lend the story a lyrical element.
response.
Things that teasingly attract A tantalising book title piqued her curiosity.
attention and arouse desire Have you seen the trailer of the “Game of
but stay out of reach are Thrones” final season? Wasn’t it
tantalising. tantalising?
When artistic creations or The book has a risqué cover, but don’t let it
their elements are shocking, put you off.
suggestive or contain George Carlin couldn’t think of a more
innuendos they may be called provocative title for his book than “When
risqué or provocative. Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?”: it
offends three major religions in one go.
To catch one’s eye is to attract The provocative title caught my eye, as well
attention visually. The as the glaring pink of the cover.
adjective is eye-catching. The cover artist had a hard time trying to
produce an eye-catching design for this
novel.
The term open loop is used in Stephen Colbert’s book “I Am America
several spheres. As a (And So Can You!)” cunningly employs an
rhetorical device, it means a open loop in the title: one can’t help
phrase / text that instills wondering how they might become
curiosity and creates America.
anticipation for what will A question in a book’s title often works as
come next. (Also known as “a an open loop.
tension loop”).
Work in pairs. What do you think of the three book covers on the next
page?
Flip through the textbook and look at the covers and illustrations you’ll find
there. Comment on them using the vocabulary above.

Task 3: Phrasal Verbs

Study the phrasal verbs in the table below and find equivalents for
them in your language.
To fall for something means The author uses open loops in the
to allow oneself to be beginning of every story. I know it’s a
persuaded, led or deceived by cliché, but I always fall for it anyway.
something. Another meaning I started watching the series and I soon fell
is to be attracted, to come to for the main heroine. I hope she won’t die
admire someone or in the finale.
something.
To live up to (a promise, a Despite the atmospheric artwork the
claim, reputation, hype, etc.) graphic novel didn’t live up to the
is to reach the expected expectation.
standard. Adaptations seldom live up to their source
material.
To conjure up means to The cover conjures up a vision of high-tech
evoke or suggest (a visual futuristic world.
image). It also means to Do you expect me to just conjure up a
summon something by magic. diploma for you?
To have somebody on is to I don’t believe it’s a real title! You are
persuade someone that having me on!
something is true when it is They called her the epitome of beauty? I’m
not, usually as a joke. afraid they were having her on.
To draw someone in / into You won’t stay away from the argument:
something means to cause they’ll draw you into it sooner or later.
(slowly but firmly) their I picked this book on a whim at the library
involvement. because it had a funny title, and I soon got
drawn in.
Work in pairs. Discuss incidents from your experiences when you were
drawn into something or fell for someone to your own surprise.

Exploring Titles
The title of a fictional work is its integral and significant part. It is one of the
first elements to attract and intrigue potential readers by creating certain
expectations. As the story unfolds, the reader may return to the title again to
confirm or dismiss their initial perceptions and gain new insights. Since titles
often rely on intertextuality, a broader context is sometimes needed to
decipher its message.
Read the passage on titles taken from David Lodge’s “The Art of Fiction”
and say how the tradition of naming novels has changed with time:
“The titles of the earliest English novels were invariably the names of the
central characters, Moll Flanders, Tom Jones, Clarissa. Fiction was
modeling itself on, and sometimes disguising itself as, biography and
autobiography. Later novelists realized that titles could indicate a theme
(Sense and Sensibility), suggest an intriguing mystery (The Woman in
White), or promise a certain kind of setting and atmosphere (Wuthering
Heights). At some point in the nineteenth century they began to hitch their
stories to resonant literary quotations (Far From the Madding Crowd), a
practice that persists throughout the twentieth (Where Angels Fear To
Tread, A Handful of Dust, For Whom the Bell Tolls), though it is now
perhaps regarded as a little corny. The great modernists were drawn to
symbolic or metaphorical titles – Heart of Darkness, Ulysses, The Rainbow
– while more recent novelists often favour whimsical, riddling, off-beat titles,
like The Catcher in the Rye, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, For
Black Girls Who Consider Suicide When The Rainbow Is Not Enuf.”1

Task 1
Symbolic and metaphorical titles are still widely used in contemporary
fiction. Comment on the concepts and ideas expressed figuratively in the
following titles of famous novels:
 “The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris
 “The Devil Wears Prada” by Lauren Weisberger
 “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold.
What can you add to this list?

Task 2
Titles often contain various stylistic devices. Identify the tropes used in the
titles of novels and plays given below and group them accordingly. There
should be at least 5 groups. Some of the titles may belong to more than one
group.
“Equal Rites” “Of Mice and Men” “How to Lose Friends and Alienate
People” “Nostradamus Ate My Hamster” “The Importance of Being
Earnest” “Alone Together” “A Dance with Dragons” “The Fifth Elephant”
“Neverwhere” “The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse” “The
Sound of Silence” “Deaf Sentence” “Pygmalion” “Up the Down Staircase”
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” “Cabbages and Kings” “This is Not a
Novel” “Wintersmith” “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

1
David Lodge, “The Art of Fiction”, p.193 – 194.
Task 3
Look at the covers and the titles and guess what these books are about:

Choose one of the books you have recently read and show its cover to the
class. Can they guess the genre of the book and what it is about?
Use the words and expression from the vocabulary section above in your
answers.

Writing
Task 1: Games with Titles
There are online generators of novel titles. Use one of those or
make up your own title and give it to your classmate. They must
choose the genre for this title and write a short summary of the plot.

Task 2: It Caught My Eye

Write a post for social media about a book with an intriguing title
you have read. Explain what your expectations were and whether
the book lived up to them.
PROJECT
The Cover Code
Choose a famous novel that has been published many times in
different editions. Look at the selection of covers and study them
from a multimodal perspective. What concepts does each cover
represent? What images are used to convey these concepts? How are they
connected with the story in the book? Do you think they reflect its tone /
atmosphere / style? Do any of the covers evoke the feeling of cognitive
dissonance? Which ones are your most and least favourite and why?
Answer these and other questions that may be relevant and present your
ideas in class.
 UNIT 4
Food for Thought: Ideology and Narrative
Lead In
 Do you like reading ideologically charged books or watching films that
deal with current burning issues? Why / why not?
 Think of a fictional world that portrays a parallel / post-apocalyptic /
dystopian society. How was it different from our contemporary society?
What impressed you most about this world?
 Do you think a happy Utopian society is possible in real life? Will
humanity ever achieve it?

The central panel from the triptych “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by
Hieronymus Bosch

Ideological Dimensions of Fiction

Ideology is a system of beliefs and values, belonging to an individual or a
group. Ideologies are mostly concerned with political and economic
organisation of society and address the issues of race, gender, religion and
other significant matters. Fictional narrative is often used as a tool of
implementing an ideology since telling a story in a certain way may persuade
the reader to accent a certain point of view and the underlying values. While
some narratives remain ideologically neutral (especially those that are
written to entertain), many books have an agenda, expressed implicitly (e.g.
via a conflict between some of the characters) or explicitly, urging the reader
to embrace a particular set of ideas.
According to Marxist theory, narratives impose the ideology of the ruling
class which owns the means of production. The masses are seen, therefore,
as “passive dupes of dominant ideologies”4, making the concept of resistance
to hegemony crucial. Contrary to this, Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism showed
that narratives can offer diverse and conflicting perspectives that enter into
dialogue, encouraging readers to be active and elucidate their own views and
beliefs. According to feminist critique, traditional narratives have been
endorsing patriarchal ideology that sees women as subordinate to men in all
spheres of life. Consequently, what was considered “great literature” was
predominantly written by men and for men, marginalising and objectifying
women. An emphasis nowadays is laid on the necessity of a “revisionary
rereading” (seeing through traditional gender biases) and on writing fiction
with the female perspective in mind.
Numerous authors construct elaborate fictional worlds with their own
political agendas and social structures to critique the existing societies. Such
worlds are often portrayed as post-apocalyptic and dystopian or set in
alternative historical settings and parallel universes. Such seminal dystopian
novels as George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (1949) and Margaret
Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” (1986) have been hugely influential and
demonstrated the topicality of ideological dimensions of fiction.

4
Thomas B. “Narrative. The Basics.” p. 63- 66.
Task 1
Go back to the excerpts from “Past Imperfect” by Julian Fellowes. Do you
think the narrative is ideologically neutral or does it have an implicit or
explicit political agenda?

Task 2
Watch the video “Narrative and Ideology: Part 1 – What is ideology? (VCE
Media 2018)” and answer the questions:
 What metaphor is used in the video for ideology?
 What examples of different ideologies are given?
 The term “male gaze” is employed in the video regarding the
character of Wonder Woman. What does it mean?
 What opposing ideological “lenses” can be applied to the film “Okja”
(2017)?
Think of your own examples of books films that can be perceived
differently because of one’s political and other views.

Task 3
The Bechdel test (pronounced as /ˈbɛkdəl/) is a famous tool to measure the
representation of women in fiction. The test is named after the American
cartoonist Alison Bechdel who was the first to apply it in her 1985 comic
strip. A character in that comic strip said that she would only see a film
which meets three simple requirements:
 It has at least two female characters
 These two characters talk to each other
 They talk about something beside a man.
The test has been very popular ever since and it has been applied to fiction
in general. The requirement that the two women must have names is
sometimes added. It has been noted that a huge amount of creative works
fail to pass the test. It should be mentioned, however, that failing the test
does not necessarily make the work discriminatory to women, while passing
the test does not automatically indicate a feminist agenda.
Work in pair. Discuss the films and books you have recently read or
watched. Which of them pass the Bechdel test?
There are other ways of assessing gender (in)equality in art. Study the chart
below and explain which criteria are used in it.

Inside a Dystopian World

Suzanne Collins (born in 1962) is an American author, best known for her
widely popular series “The Underland Chronicles” and The Hunger Games
trilogy for young adults. Her father was a military officer in the US Air Force
and his experiences of war, starvation and poverty gave Collins many
insights for her creative work. Her novels have been hugely successful and
praised, among other things, for featuring strong female characters and
passing the Bechdel test.
The Hunger Games trilogy (2008 – 2010) consists of “The Hunger Games”,
“Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay”, all of which have been adapted for the
screen. Set in post-apocalyptic dystopian nation of Panem, these novels trace
the journey of the young protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, who challenges the
power of despotic Capitol, Panem’s capital city. In the first book of the
trilogy Katniss is a 16-year old girl from a very poor coal-mining district
(District Twelve), living with her mother and younger sister and struggling
daily for survival. Taught by her father, Katniss is a skilled hunter,
undaunted by the ban on hunting. When her sister is chosen as Tribute (a
player in the cruel reality show, the eponymous Hunger Games), Katniss
volunteers to take her place. The premise of the story resembles the Greek
legend of Theseus and the Minotaur, as well as gladiator games, held in
Ancient Rome.
Read the excerpts below and decide how the author construes social
unfairness of Panem.

Episode One
Our house is almost at the edge of the Seam1. I only have to pass a few gates
to reach the scruffy field called the Meadow. Separating the Meadow from
the woods, in fact enclosing all of District 12, is a high chain-link fence
topped with barbed-wire loops. In theory, it’s supposed to be electrified
twenty-four hours a day as a deterrent to the predators that live in the woods
— packs of wild dogs, lone cougars, bears — that used to threaten our streets.
But since we’re lucky to get two or three hours of electricity in the evenings,
it’s usually safe to touch. Even so, I always take a moment to listen carefully
for the hum that means the fence is live. Right now, it’s silent as a stone.
Concealed by a clump of bushes, I flatten out on my belly and slide under a
two-foot stretch that’s been loose for years. There are several other weak
spots in the fence, but this one is so close to home I almost always enter the
woods here.
As soon as I’m in the trees, I retrieve a bow and sheath of arrows from a
hollow log. Electrified or not, the fence has been successful at keeping the
flesh-eaters out of District 12. Inside the woods they roam freely, and there
are added concerns like venomous snakes, rabid animals, and no real paths
to follow. But there’s also food if you know how to find it. My father knew
and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion.
There was nothing even to bury. I was eleven then. Five years later, I still
wake up screaming for him to run.
Even though trespassing in the woods is illegal and poaching carries the
severest of penalties, more people would risk it if they had weapons. But
most are not bold enough to venture out with just a knife. My bow is a rarity,
crafted by my father along with a few others that I keep well hidden in the
woods, carefully wrapped in waterproof covers. My father could have made
good money selling them, but if the officials found out he would have been
publicly executed for inciting a rebellion. Most of the Peacekeepers turn a
blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they’re as hungry for fresh meat
as anybody is. In fact, they’re among our best customers. But the idea that
someone might be arming the Seam would never have been allowed.
In the fall, a few brave souls sneak into the woods to harvest apples. But
always in sight of the Meadow. Always close enough to run back to the safety
of District 12 if trouble arises. “District Twelve. Where you can starve to
death in safety,” I mutter. Then I glance quickly over my shoulder. Even
here, even in the middle of nowhere, you worry someone might overhear
you.
When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt
out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from
the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only
lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my
features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my
thoughts. Do my work quietly in school. Make only polite small talk in the
public market. Discuss little more than trades in the Hob, which is the black
market where I make most of my money. Even at home, where I am less
pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping2, or food
shortages, or the Hunger Games. Prim might begin to repeat my words and
then where would we be?
In the woods waits the only person with whom I can be myself. Gale. I can
feel the muscles in my face relaxing, my pace quickening as I climb the hills
to our place, a rock ledge overlooking a valley. A thicket of berry bushes
protects it from unwanted eyes. The sight of him waiting there brings on a
smile. Gale says I never smile except in the woods.
“Hey, Catnip,” says Gale. My real name is Katniss, but when I first told
him, I had barely whispered it. So he thought I’d said Catnip. Then when
this crazy lynx started following me around the woods looking for handouts,
it became his official nickname for me. I finally had to kill the lynx because
he scared off game. I almost regretted it because he wasn’t bad company.
But I got a decent price for his pelt.
“Look what I shot,” Gale holds up a loaf of bread with an arrow stuck in it,
and I laugh. It’s real bakery bread, not the flat, dense loaves we make from
our grain rations. I take it in my hands, pull out the arrow, and hold the
puncture in the crust to my nose, inhaling the fragrance that makes my
mouth flood with saliva. Fine bread like this is for special occasions.
“Mm, still warm,” I say. He must have been at the bakery at the crack of
dawn to trade for it. “What did it cost you?”
“Just a squirrel. Think the old man was feeling sentimental this morning,”
says Gale. “Even wished me luck.”
“Well, we all feel a little closer today, don’t we?” I say, not even bothering
to roll my eyes. “Prim left us a cheese.” I pull it out.
His expression brightens at the treat. “Thank you, Prim. We’ll have a real
feast.” Suddenly he falls into a Capitol accent as he mimics Effie Trinket,
the maniacally upbeat woman who arrives once a year to read out the names
at the reaping. “I almost forgot! Happy Hunger Games!” He plucks a few
blackberries from the bushes around us. “And may the odds —” He tosses a
berry in a high arc toward me.
I catch it in my mouth and break the delicate skin with my teeth. The sweet
tartness explodes across my tongue.
“— be ever in your favor!” I finish with equal verve. We have to joke about
it because the alternative is to be scared out of your wits. Besides, the
Capitol accent is so affected, almost anything sounds funny in it.
I watch as Gale pulls out his knife and slices the bread. He could be my
brother. Straight black hair, olive skin, we even have the same gray eyes. But
we’re not related, at least not closely. Most of the families who work the
mines resemble one another this way.
That’s why my mother and Prim, with their light hair and blue eyes, always
look out of place. They are. My mother’s parents were part of the small
merchant class that caters to officials, Peacekeepers, and the occasional
Seam customer. They ran an apothecary shop in the nicer part of District
12. Since almost no one can afford doctors, apothecaries are our healers.
My father got to know my mother because on his hunts he would
sometimes collect medicinal herbs and sell them to her shop to be brewed
into remedies. She must have really loved him to leave her home for the
Seam. I try to remember that when all I can see is the woman who sat by,
blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to
forgive her for my father’s sake. But to be honest, I’m not the forgiving type.
Gale spreads the bread slices with the soft goat cheese, carefully placing a
basil leaf on each while I strip the bushes of their berries. We settle back in
a nook in the rocks. From this place, we are invisible but have a clear view
of the valley, which is teeming with summer life, greens to gather, roots to
dig, fish iridescent in the sunlight. The day is glorious, with a blue sky and
soft breeze. The food’s wonderful, with the cheese seeping into the warm
bread and the berries bursting in our mouths. Everything would be perfect if
this really was a holiday, if all the day off meant was roaming the mountains
with Gale, hunting for tonight’s supper. But instead we have to be standing
in the square at two o’clock waiting for the names to be called out.
Notes:
1. Seam is the poorest neighbourhood in District 12, inhabited by miners
and their families.
2. Reaping is the annual ceremony of choosing players for the Hunger
Games. The events in this excerpt take place just before the reaping.

Comprehension 1. What do we learn about the social order of Panem

from this episode?
2. Where do Katniss and Gale meet and what do
they do?
3. Why do they joke about the Hunger Games?
Discussion 1. Focus on the protagonist and her attitude to…
…Panem
…Gale
…her parents.
How is her attitude expressed in the text?
2. How are the events narrated? What effect does it
produce?
3. What role does food play in this episode?
4. Have you ever been in a situation when a certain
rule was broken but the person in charge /
authorities just turned a blind eye to it? Describe
the situation and your attitude to it.
Translate the following sentences from the text, paying particular attention
to the rendering of the idioms and phrasal verbs.
1. Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt
because they’re as hungry for fresh meat as anybody is.
2. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I
learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent
mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.
3. I try to forgive her for my father’s sake. But to be honest, I’m not the
forgiving type.
4. The sight of him waiting there brings on a smile.

Episode 2
After Katniss volunteered at the reaping, she was taken to the Capitol to
prepare for the Hunger Games. In the excerpt below she meets Cinna, her
personal stylist, whose task is to get her ready for the opening ceremony.

The door opens and a young man who must be Cinna enters. I’m taken
aback by how normal he looks. Most of the stylists they interview on
television are so dyed, stenciled, and surgically altered they’re grotesque. But
Cinna’s close-cropped hair appears to be its natural shade of brown. He’s in
a simple black shirt and pants. The only concession to self-alteration seems
to be metallic gold eyeliner that has been applied with a light hand. It brings
out the flecks of gold in his green eyes. And, despite my disgust with the
Capitol and their hideous fashions, I can’t help thinking how attractive it
looks.
“Hello, Katniss. I’m Cinna, your stylist,” he says in a quiet voice somewhat
lacking in the Capitol’s affectations.
“Hello,” I venture cautiously.
“Just give me a moment, all right?” he asks. He walks around my naked
body, not touching me, but taking in every inch of it with his eyes. I resist
the impulse to cross my arms over my chest. “Who did your hair?”
“My mother,” I say.
“It’s beautiful. Classic really. And in almost perfect balance with your
profile. She has very clever fingers,” he says.
 I had expected someone flamboyant, someone older trying desperately to
look young, someone who viewed me as a piece of meat to be prepared for
a platter. Cinna has met none of these expectations.
“You’re new, aren’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” I say. Most of
the stylists are familiar, constants in the ever-changing pool of tributes. Some
have been around my whole life.
“Yes, this is my first year in the Games,” says Cinna.
“So they gave you District Twelve,” I say. Newcomers generally end up with
us, the least desirable district.
“I asked for District Twelve,” he says without further explanation. “Why
don’t you put on your robe and we’ll have a chat.”
Pulling on my robe, I follow him through a door into a sitting room. Two
red couches face off over a low table.
Three walls are blank, the fourth is entirely glass, providing a window to the
city. I can see by the light that it must be around noon, although the sunny
sky has turned overcast. Cinna invites me to sit on one of the couches and
takes his place across from me. He presses a button on the side of the table.
The top splits and from below rises a second tabletop that holds our lunch.
Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of
pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and
for dessert, a pudding the color of honey.
I try to imagine assembling this meal myself back home. Chickens are too
expensive, but I could make do with a wild turkey. I’d need to shoot a
second turkey to trade for an orange. Goat’s milk would have to substitute
for cream.
We can grow peas in the garden. I’d have to get wild onions from the
woods. I don’t recognize the grain, our own tessera1 ration cooks down to an
unattractive brown mush. Fancy rolls would mean another trade with the
baker, perhaps for two or three squirrels. As for the pudding, I can’t even
guess what’s in it. Days of hunting and gathering for this one meal and even
then it would be a poor substitution for the Capitol version.
What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the
press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing
the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all
day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting
around for a new shipment of tributes to roll in and die for their
entertainment?
I look up and find Cinna’s eyes trained on mine. “How despicable we must
seem to you,” he says.
Has he seen this in my face or somehow read my thoughts? He’s right,
though. The whole rotten lot of them is despicable.
Notes:
1. Tessera is an additional food supply a family can get in District 12. If a
young person signs up for it, his or her chances of being chosen for the
Hunger Games will increase.

Comprehension 1. Does Cinna live up to Katniss’ expectations?

2. What is she thinking about during the meal?
3. What is her attitude to the Capitol? What do we
learn about people’s lifestyle there?
Discussion 1. What imagery is used in the excerpt to describe
appearance and food?
2. Compare and contrast the way Katniss interacts
with Gale and with Cinna.
3. How is Katniss’ attitude to the Capitol expressed
on the linguistic level?
4. How do you usually react to the cases of social
injustice? Describe a specific example.

There are a lot of Hunger Game inspired food recipes online and in
puslishes cookbooks. There are similar publications in many other popular
franchises. What is your attitude to this phenomenon? Have you ever
cooked anything related to a fictional world? If not, would you like to?
Language Practice
Task 1. Pronunciation Tips
There is no definitive rule as to the pronunciation of the letters “i”
and “y”: both can turn into /aɪ/ or /ɪ/, while “i” is sometimes pronounced as
/i:/. In a number of cases both /aɪ/ and /ɪ/ are acceptable variants:
 The prefixes multi-, anti-, semi- can be pronounced both ways. It is
more typical, however, to say /mʌltɪ/, etc. in British English, while
/mʌltaɪ/ is widespread in the USA.
Which variant do you prefer? Read the following words and phrases:
A multinational company, an antihero, anti-immigration laws, a
semidetached house, a multilingual community, a semifinal.
 A number of words can be pronounced with /aɪ/ or /ɪ/: ideology,
direct, privacy, dynasty, primer, dilemma, itinerary, divert,
advertisement, diverse, albino. Some of them are more typical for
British or American speakers (e.g., (Americans say /ˈpraɪvəsɪ/, while in
the UK /ˈprɪvəsɪ/ is common), but it is not the general rule.
Which variant do you prefer? Read the following sentences:
There is an innuendo in this advertisement.
When it comes to his privacy, he will fight like a tiger.
It’s always a dilemma: to make your pile or to preserve your integrity.
I’ve had enough of vague hints. Just say it directly.
 While /-aɪl/ is standard pronunciation of the ending –ile in British,
Canadian and Australian English, it is common for American speakers
to resort to schwa /ə/. For example, “fragile” becomes /ˈfrædʒəl/.
Other words that are pronounced with schwa in the USA include:
sterile, mobile, fertile, volatile, tactile, agile, futile, hostile, juvenile.
Do you pronounce these words in a British or American way?
Tactile imagery, hostile attitude, a fragile peace, a futile attempt, volatile
nature, juvenile tantrums.
 In other cases it is not always possible to predict the pronunciation.
Look at the words below and decide how they are pronounced.
Which of them have alternative variants?
Group these words according to their pronunciation and practise reading
them:
Blind, typical, routine, linen, driven, famine, resilient, hind, wind, dynamic,
prestige, climb, fatigue, scythe, regime, whilst, tyrant, Vaseline, indict, bikini,
machine, minute, reptile, cynical, plasticine, hinder, exile, pivotal, cuisine,.

Task 2: Gerund vs. Infinitive

While there are verbs that can be followed only by a gerund or only by an
infinitive, there are also verbs that can be followed by either. In the latter
case gerunds and infinitives can either be used interchangeably, without any
difference in meaning, or in different situations, according to the speaker’s
meaning or the patterns that are applied.
Study the examples in the table below and translate them into your
language.
Common verbs appear, ask, decide, She appeared to look out of
that are followed encourage, expect, force, place.
by an infinitive hope, intend, invite, I decided not to change my
offer, order, plan, usual routine.
promise, refuse, remind, The teacher encouraged us
seem, tell, warn, would to brainstorm the problem.
like, etc.
Common verbs appreciate, avoid, I enjoyed working with you.
that are followed consider, delay, discuss, Would you mind holding my
by a gerund enjoy, give up, finish, scythe for a moment?
keep / keep on, We can’t put off testing the
mention, mind, machine any longer.
postpone, put off, quit,
suggest
Verbs that can be Begin, continue, hate, I love talking posh / I love to
followed by either like, love, start, can’t talk posh
with no changes bear, can’t stand She can’t bear to lose her
in meaning. privacy / She can’t bear
losing her privacy
Verbs that can be Advise can be followed He advised turning a blind
followed by by a gerund if there is no eye on the matter / He
either, depending object. advised me to turn a blind
on the pattern Prefer is used with eye on him.
different patterns. I prefer reading a book to
watching a film / I’d prefer to
read a book (rather) than (to)
watch a film.
Verbs that can be Forget, regret, They saw each other in the
followed by remember, stop, try street and stopped to talk.
either, depending They stopped talking when
on the meaning the teacher reprimanded
them.

Study the example below and explain what differences in meaning the usage
of infinitive or gerund creates:
 I regret to tell you that you failed the test.
 I regret blurting out the truth to her.
 She tries to hold her tongue, but it’s too hard to her.
 She tried talking to her mother about the problem, but it didn’t help,
so she tried phoning a helpline.
 Don’t forget to invite them / Remember to invite them.
 I’ll never forget tasting peanut butter for the first time / I’ll always
remember tasting peanut butter for the first time.
Work in pairs. Practise using the verbs forget, regret, remember, stop, try
with infinitive / gerund in everyday situations (reminding your friends about
something important, sharing memories, discussing recent events, etc.).

Rewrite the sentences below using the verbs in the brackets as infinitives or
gerunds depending on the situation.
1. I can’t stop (read) now: it’s the pivotal moment in the story!
2. Your essay lacks logic and concrete examples. Try (find) better
arguments and (be) less vague next time.
3. She had a perfect punchline in mind. She regrets (not use) it.
4. The jury is expected (indict) him for murder.
5. We appreciate your (pursue) the truth in this matter.
6. I ran into Lynn while jogging and we stopped (catch up).
7. Nothing can force her (laugh). I tried (be) ironic, (use) double entendres,
(create) puns, even (do) slapstick – and then I gave up (try).
8. I’m sure you’d prefer (maintain) fragile peace rather than (continue)
fighting.
9. I’ll never forget (watch) my first Charlie Chaplin film: the memory always
brings on a smile.
10. The counsellor advised me (not be) too modest and (take) credit for
this achievement.

Writing
Watch a review of “The Hunger Games” by a popular YouTuber
Laci Green (“Messages in The Hunger Games”). Do you agree with
her interpretation?
Write a comment for this video, expressing your attitude to her vision. Here
are some expressions you can use to show that…
 You agree with her:
I couldn’t agree with you more.
This exactly how I feel about the book.
You have a point there.
Your interpretation rings true / sounds convincing because…
 You have doubts about some of her conclusions:
I’m not sure about your interpretation of… because…
I’d go along with this view to a point…
I agree up to a point, but…
I find it difficult to accept that…
I still have my doubt about…
 You disagree with her:
I’d say the opposite is true.
I beg to differ on this point.
There is no way I could agree with… / accept that…
I think you got the wrong end of the stick when you said that…
We’ll have to agree to disagree about it.
Project
Food and Ideology
Food has always been an ideologically charged notion. Both in
pagan belief systems and monotheistic religions there have always
been food limitations and taboos, as well as products or dishes linked to
divinity. Contemporary philosophy and ethics address the morality of food
consumption, while dieticians voice numerous health concerns. Such issues
as vegetarianism, genetically modified food, organic produce, hunger relief
and many others are hotly debated in the media and widely reflected in
fiction.
Choose a book or a film that focuses on food-related ideological issues and
explore its major themes. Trace the ideas and values inherent in the story
and say how they are conveyed. Analyse imagery and / or symbolism
connected with food and the ways characters interact with it. Present the
results of your investigation in class.

In “Marie Antoinette” (2006) directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Kirsten

Dunst the luxurious and decadent lifestyle of the famous French queen
Marie Antoinette is underpinned by her fixation on fanciful cakes.
 UNIT 5
The Role of the Reader

Lead In
 Remember a story you read as a child or teenager and were impressed by
it. Have you reread it since then? If yes, compare your responses to it.
Has your perception of the story changed?
 Discuss which of the factors influence your response to a film or TV
series most:
 The plot of the film
 The genre of the film
 Your favourite actors starring
 The way actors play / their credibility
 Visual effects, costumes, settings, etc.
 Sound editing / musical score
 The themes and ideas presented in the film
 Your current mood
 Your previous experience / your present life circumstances
 Presence of your friends or loved ones when you watch
 Other factors.
In Search of the Ideal Reader
It is often claimed that literature cannot be properly analysed, if the role of
the reader is not taken into account. Reader-response criticism is concerned
with the active role of the reader and studies the act of reading itself with its
corresponding processes. The belief that the reader is not a passive
consumer of the meaning presented by the text stems from the fact that two
readers may construe the meaning of the same work in different ways.
Moreover, readers may return to the same text at a later point and perceive
it differently due to their new experiences, motivation or a change in mood
or circumstances. The main premise of reader-response criticism is that
readers create meaning rather than extract it from the text.
The act of reading gets a lot of critical attention. It is viewed as transaction
between the text and the reader, in which the latter, being aware of the
associations and feelings that the text triggers, returns to it elaborating and
correcting the interpretation until it is complete. The important part of this
process is indeterminacy, or “gaps” in the text, which readers fill in with
regard to their individual experience and aesthetic predilections. Therefore,
readers may come up with a whole range of acceptable interpretations of the
same text. Readers’ mental processes that are activated by the text are also
studied from cognitive, psychological, social and linguistic perspectives. The
fact that many texts elicit very diverse, even conflicting responses from
readers testifies to the problematic nature of text interpretation and reflects
the complexity of the interpretation of the world itself.
When discussing the notion of the reader, critics often refer to a
hypothetical reader, preferably an informed reader who is ready to
appreciate the text “in the fullness of its linguistic and literary complexity,
and who conscientiously tries to suppress the personal or idiosyncratic
dimension of his or her response”5. This hypothetical reader is also known
as implied, optimal or ideal, and should not be confused with the narratee,
who is a fictional entity inside the text to whom the narrator is speaking.
Contrary to this, such representatives of reader-response criticism as
Norman Holland and David Bleich gather empirical data by working with
actual readers and their subjective responses, studying how they might
project their own beliefs and desires onto fictional characters.

5
Tyson L. Critical Theory Today. P.187
Task 1
Remember the responses the excerpts in this textbook have elicited from
you. Write down three words that describe your reactions to each text best,
as in the example:
“Take Charge”: puzzlement, amusement, curiosity.
“Take Charge”
“A Year in the Merde”
“Past Imperfect”
“The Hunger Games”

Walk around the class and talk to students in your group. Find people who
have the same or similar words in their lists. Discuss your responses.

Task 2
In 1990 Umberto Eco gave a famous lecture on interpretation and
overinterpretation in which he stated that, although there is a range of
possible interpretations, it is not unlimited: “What I want to say is that there
are somewhere criteria for limiting interpretation”. He also ridicules the
notion of “ideal reader” by saying that “I know that there are poetic texts
whose aim is to show that interpretation can be infinite. I know that
Finnegan’s Wake was written for an ideal reader affected by an ideal
insomnia.”6
Work in groups of 3 or 4. Discuss the possibilities of interpretation. Are
they infinite or limited? If limited, what by? Brainstorm the arguments in
favour of both opinions.

6
Eco U. Interpretation and Overinterpretation: World, History, Texts. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. P.159.
Responding to Characters

Celeste Ng (born in 1980) is an American author. Her parents immigrated

to the USA from Hong Kong and became successful scientists. Ng obtained
education at Harvard University and University of Michigan and turned to
writing. She published a number of short stories and was awarded a
Pushcart Prize for her story “Girls, at Play” (2012). Her debut novel
“Everything I Never Told You” (2014), which dealt with the life of a mixed-
race Chinese-American family, was a significant success for Ng. Her next
novel “Little Fires Everywhere”, also concerned with American families,
came out in 2017 and drew a lot of critical attention.
“Little Fires Everywhere” is set in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a town where Ng
herself grew up. The 1990s Shaker Heights’ community is portrayed as well-
planned and orderly, with an emphasis on high standard of living and
educational excellence. The Richardsons are the epitome of Shaker values:
the parents are successful and well-off, providing their four teen-age children
with everything they need. This family is juxtaposed to the family of Mia
Warren, a travelling artist, and her daughter Pearl. Mia takes on menial part-
time jobs that give her enough free time for creative work in photography,
while Pearl follows her from town to town, reluctantly quitting her schools
and friends and acquiring new ones. Pearl is drawn towards the Richardson
children with their established, affluent home, while they, in their turn, are
fascinated by Mia and Pearls’ volatile lifestyle. Lexie, the glamorous older
daughter of the Richardsons, becomes Pearl’s friend, while Moody, their
younger son, falls in love with Pearl. Since he was the first to meet her, he
later regrets introducing her to the rest of his family. There is also a lot of
tension between Mia and Pearl, since the latter knows nothing about her
own birth and parentage, but this mystery is eventually revealed to the
reader.
Read the excerpts from the novel and note your response to different
characters in it.

Episode 1
Moody, listening to his mother describe their new tenants, was intrigued less
by the artist than by the mention of the “brilliant” daughter just his age. A
few days after Mia and Pearl moved in, his curiosity got the better of him.
As always, he took his bike, an old fixed-gear Schwinn that had belonged to
his father long ago in Indiana. Nobody biked in Shaker Heights, just as
nobody took the bus: you either drove or somebody drove you; it was a
town built for cars and for people who had cars. Moody biked. He wouldn’t
be sixteen until spring, and he never asked Lexie or Trip to drive him
anywhere if he could help it.
[…]
In front of the house, Pearl was carefully arranging the pieces of a wooden
bed on the front lawn. Moody, gliding to a stop across the street, saw a
slender girl in a long, crinkly skirt and a loose T-shirt with a message he
couldn’t quite read. Her hair was long and curly and hung in a thick braid
down her back and gave the impression of straining to burst free. She had
laid the headboard down flat near the flowerbeds that bordered the house,
with the side rails below it and the slats to either side in neat rows, like ribs.
It was as if the bed had drawn a deep breath and then gracefully flattened
itself into the grass. Moody watched, half hidden by a tree, as she picked her
way around to the Rabbit, which sat in the driveway with its doors thrown
wide, and extracted the footboard from the backseat. He wondered what
kind of Tetris they had done to fit all the pieces of the bed into such a small
car. Her feet were bare as she crossed the lawn to set the footboard into
place. Then, to his bemusement, she stepped into the empty rectangle in
the center, where the mattress belonged, and flopped down on her back.
On the second story of the house, a window rattled open and Mia’s head
peered out. “All there?”
“Two slats missing,” Pearl called back.
“We’ll replace them. No, wait, stay there. Don’t move.” Mia’s head
disappeared again. In a moment she reappeared holding a camera, a real
camera, with a thick lens like a big tin can. Pearl stayed just as she was,
staring up at the half-clouded sky, and Mia leaned out almost to the waist,
angling for the right shot. Moody held his breath, afraid the camera might
slip from her hands onto her daughter’s trusting upturned face, that she
might tumble over the sill herself and come crashing down into the grass.
None of this happened. Mia’s head tilted this way and that, framing the
scene below in her viewfinder. The camera hid her face, hid everything but
her hair, piled in a frizzy swirl atop her head like a dark halo. Later, when
Moody saw the finished photos, he thought at first that Pearl looked like a
delicate fossil, something caught for millennia in the skeleton belly of a
prehistoric beast. Then he thought she looked like an angel resting with her
wings spread out behind her. And then, after a moment, she looked simply
like a girl asleep in a lush green bed, waiting for her lover to lie down beside
her.
“All right,” Mia called down. “Got it.” She slid back inside, and Pearl sat up
and looked across the street, directly at Moody, and his heart jumped. “You
want to help?” she said. “Or just stand there?”
Moody would never remember crossing the street, or propping his bike in
the front walkway, or introducing himself. So it would feel to him that he
had always known her name, and that she had always known his, that
somehow, he and Pearl had known each other always.

Episode 2
College applications had been increasingly on Lexie’s mind. Shaker took
college seriously: the district had a ninety-nine percent graduation rate and
virtually all the kids went on to college of some kind. Everyone Lexie knew
was applying early and, as a result, all anyone could talk about in the Social
Room was who was applying where. Serena Wong1 was applying to Harvard.
Brian2, Lexie said, had his heart set on Princeton. “Like Cliff and Clair 3
would let me go anywhere else,” he’d said. His parents were really named
John and Deborah Avery, but his father was a doctor and his mother was a
lawyer and, truth be told, they did exude a certain Cosbyish vibe, his father
sweatered and affable and his mother wittily competent and no-nonsense.
They’d met at Princeton as undergraduates, and Brian had pictures of
himself as a baby in a Princeton onesie.
For Lexie, the precedent was not quite so clear: her mother had grown up in
Shaker and had never gone far – just down to Denison for her undergrad
before boomeranging back. Her father had come from a small town in
Indiana and, once he’d met her mother at college, simply stayed, moving
back with her to her hometown, finishing a JD at Case Western, working his
way up from a junior associate to partner at one of the biggest firms in the
city. But Lexie, like most of her classmates, had no desire to stay anywhere
near Cleveland. It huddled on the edge of a dead, dirty lake, fed by a river
best known for burning; it was built on a river whose very name meant
sadness: Chagrin. Which then gave its name to everything, pockets of agony
scattered throughout the city, buried like veins of dismay: Chagrin Falls,
Chagrin Boulevard, Chagrin Reservation. Chagrin Real Estate. Chagrin
Auto Body. Chagrin reproducing and proliferating, as if they would ever run
short. The Mistake on the Lake, people called it sometimes, and to Lexie,
as to her siblings and friends, Cleveland was something to be escaped.
As the deadline for early applications approached, Lexie had decided to
apply early to Yale. It had a good drama program, and Lexie had been the
lead in the musical last year, even though she’d only been a junior. Despite
her air of frivolity, she was near the top of her class – officially, Shaker did
not rank its students, to reduce competitive feelings, but she knew she was
somewhere in the top twenty. She was taking four AP classes5 and served as
secretary of the French Club. “Don’t let the shallowness fool you,” Moody
had told Pearl. “You know why she watches TV all afternoon? Because she
can finish her homework in half an hour before bed. Like that.” He
snapped his fingers. “Lexie’s got a good brain. She just doesn’t always use it
in real life.” Yale seemed a stretch but a distinctly possible one, her
guidance counselor had said. “Plus,” Mrs. Lieberman had added, “they
know kids from Shaker always go on to do well. They’ll give you an edge.”
Lexie and Brian had been together since junior year, and she liked the idea
of being just a train ride away. “We can visit each other all the time,” Lexie
pointed out to him as she printed the Yale early application. “And we can
even meet up in New York.” It was this last that finally swayed her: New
York, which had exuded a glamorous pull on her imagination ever since
she’d read Eloise6 as a child. She didn’t want to go to school in New York;
her guidance counselor had floated the idea of Columbia, but Lexie had
heard the area was sketchy. Still, she liked the idea of being able to jaunt in
for a day – a morning at the Met7 looking at art, maybe a splurge at Macy’s
or even a weekend away with Brian – and then zip away from the crowds
and the grime and the noise.
Before any of that could happen, though, she had to write her essay. A good
essay, Mrs. Lieberman had insisted, was what she needed to set herself apart
from the pack.
“Listen to this dumbass question,” she groaned that afternoon in Pearl’s
kitchen, fishing the printed-out application from her bag. “‘Rewrite a famous
story from a different perspective. For example, retell The Wizard of Oz
from the point of view of the Wicked Witch.’ This is a college app, not
creative writing. I’m taking AP English. At least ask me to write a real essay.”
“How about a fairy tale,” Moody suggested. He looked up from his
notebook and the open algebra textbook before him. “‘Cinderella’ from the
point of view of the stepsisters. Maybe they weren’t so wicked after all.
Maybe she was actually a bitch to them.”
“‘Little Red Riding Hood’ as told by the wolf,” Pearl suggested.
“Or ‘Rumpelstiltskin,’” Lexie mused. “I mean, that miller’s daughter
cheated him. He did all that spinning for her and she said she’d give him
her baby and then she reneged on their deal. Maybe she’s the villain here.”
With one maroon fingernail she tapped the top of the Diet Coke she’d
bought just after school, then popped the tab. “I mean, she shouldn’t have
agreed to give up her baby in the first place, if she didn’t want to.”
“Well,” Mia put in suddenly. She turned around, the bowl of popcorn in
her hands, and all three of them jumped, as if a piece of furniture had
begun to speak. “Maybe she didn’t know what she was giving up until
afterward. Maybe once she saw the baby she changed her mind.” She set the
bowl down in the center of the table. “Don’t be too quick to judge, Lexie.”
Lexie looked chastened for an instant, then rolled her eyes. Moody darted a
look at Pearl: See how shallow? But Pearl didn’t notice. After Mia had gone
back into the living room – embarrassed at her outburst – she turned to
Lexie. “I could help you,” she said, quietly enough that she thought Mia
could not hear. Then, a moment later, because this did not seem like
enough, “I’m good at stories. I could even write it for you.”
“Really?” Lexie beamed. “Oh my god, Pearl, I’ll owe you forever.” She
threw her arms around Pearl. Across the table, Moody gave up on his
homework and slammed his math book shut, and in the living room, Mia
jammed her paintbrush into a jar of water, lips pursed, paint scrubbing from
the bristles in a dirt-colored swirl.

Notes:
1. Serena Wong is one of Lexie’s friends.
2. Brian is Lexie’s African-American boyfriend.
3. Cliff and Clair are characters from “The Cosby Show”, a popular sitcom
featuring an upper middle-class African-American family living in
Brooklyn, New York.
4. JD (the Juris Doctor) is the Doctor of Jurisprudence degree, a
professional degree in law.
5. AP stands for Advanced Placement, which is a program in the USA and
Canada that offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school
students.
6. “Eloise” is a series of children’s books written by Kay Thompson
illustrated by Hilary Knight about a girl who lives in New York City, at
the Plaza Hotel, with her Nanny and her pets. There are many Eloise-
inspired films, merchandise and events (see the images below).
7. The Met is The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
8. Macy’s is Macy’s Herald Square in New York City, an iconic department
store, one of the world’s largest and most famous, offering top fashion
brands and luxurious window displays.
 Comprehension 1. How did Moody and Pearl first meet?
2. What was Moody’s reaction to Mia’s photos?
3. What was Lexie worried about?
4. What associations did she have with Cleveland?
5. Why was Lexie attracted to the idea of Yale?
6. How did Moody feel about his sister?
7. Why did Lexie dislike the assignment on the
college application?
8. What effect did Mia’s comment produce on the
teenagers?
Discussion 1. Compare your responses to the characters. Which
of them did you like and dislike? Explore your
reactions and say what might have caused them.
2. Focus on the characters of Moody. Which traits of
his personality are revealed in the episodes?
3. What role does the image of the bed play in
Episode 1? How is Mia’s artistic nature conveyed?
4. Focus on the character of Lexie. She is about to
make a choice that will have a huge impact on her
life. What are her concerns in this matter? Which
of them are rational and which are emotional?
5. What is your attitude to Lexie’s decision to cheat
and Pearl’s willingness to help her in this?
6. When you are faced with a crucial decision, are
you usually governed by your intellect, intuition or
emotions?
7. Describe how you made the decision to enter the
university you are studying at. What factors
influenced you and why?

Language Practice
Task 1. Pronunciation Tips (Silent Consonants)
Read the list below and underline the silent letters:
Dumb, wrath, pneumonia, poignant, debt, bristle, knit, reign, solemn,
muscle, chasten, rendezvous, tomb, corps, gnat, sword, doubt, aisle, indict,
castle, wrinkle, column, scythe, yacht, folklore, mnemonic, cupboard,
psalm, receipt, debris, mortgage, rapport.
Work in pairs. Make up short tongue-twisters and rhymes to practise the
pronunciations of these words.
Task 2: Vocabulary
Study the words in the table below and translate the examples into
your first language.
To sway means to convince, He made a solemn promise to help her
influence or control someone; to and it finally swayed her: she joined the
change someone’s opinion. project.
We describe someone’s attitude The professor has a cut-glass British
(tone, approach, etc.) as no- accent and no-nonsense approach to
nonsense if it is sensible, her lectures and classes, which helps
businesslike, practical or her build rapport with her students.
straightforward.
The word edge is frequently used The story lacks Stephen King’s usual
to refer to 1) force, keenness or edge.
effectiveness; 2) a margin of The promise to pay off the national
superiority or an advantage over debt gave the party a slight edge over
someone else. the opposition.
To float an idea means to offer it When we discussed our methodology
for consideration. of teaching vocabulary, I floated the
idea of applying mnemonic techniques.
Shallow, meaning superficial and I regret drawing him into the
lacking depth, is often used to discussion: all of his ideas seem to be
characterise a person, as well as flippant and shallow.
mindset, ideas, arguments, etc. She is just a shallow social climber,
hungry for glamorous lifestyle.
A pull on something is an informal Fantasy stories have a pull on my
word for the ability to draw or imagination.
attract someone or something. One of the pulls of rural life is its
pastoral tranquility.
To chasten someone is to restrain, The teachers often turned a blind eye
subdue or rebuke them, often to cheating, but they felt chastened
causing a change in behaviour or after the lecture on the dangers of
attitude. plagiarism.
A sketchy idea may be existing I have an idea for my term paper, but it
only in outline or superficial, is still sketchy.
uncertain or unreliable. The book contains explicit ideological
concerns expressed with the help of
rather sketchy arguments.
To renege on something is to go I can’t believe he reneged on our deal!
back on one’s promise or to fail to
fulfill a commitment.
React to the following sentences using the vocabulary from the table above:
1. I had a hard time explaining Mark why his behaviour is unacceptable.
2. I spent 3 hours yesterday writing my essay on the future of higher
education.
3. My mother can’t bear to leave New York even for a week.
4. My attempts to engage Randal in our project were futile. Perhaps you can
try to change his mind about it.
5. If you want to impress your tutor, try talking posh.
6. Should I mention my volunteering experience in my CV?
7. What was the uproar about? What did you say to the committee?
8. Vincent keeps bragging about his achievements and annoys people, but
you just turn a blind eye. Isn’t it time you talked to him?
9. I remember reading some very poignant stories by this author. But these
new ones are rather insipid.
10. The president’s speech conjured up the vision of a better future.
Work in pairs. Practise using the words above in everyday situations
(discussing choices, promises, good and bad decisions you have made, etc.)

Task 3: Idioms
Study the idioms in the table below and provide your own examples.
To run short (of sth) is to use something I wanted to break the ice with
up until supply is insufficient. humour but I soon ran short of
jokes.
To change one’s mind or to have a change You can’t just renege on your
of heart means to change one’s decision or promise! – Sorry, I’ve changed
attitude. my mind / I’ve had a change of
heart.
When someone starts from a humble She started as a secretary but
position, but then rises in status, worked her way up to a senior
importance or influence through hard manager.
work and perseverance, we use the idiom
to work one’s way up.
To get the better of someone or I was determined not to watch
something is to gain superiority, control or the new season of the show, but
an advantage over someone or something. my curiosity got the better of me.
To have one’s heart set on something is to The protagonist has his heart set
have a strong desire or expectation of breaking into show business.
something.
Work in groups of 3 or 4. Role-play the following situations, suing the
idioms and vocabulary above.
 You are members of a student council at a university. You are supposed
to organise a charity event and you need to brainstorm ideas for it.
 You are a family of two parents and a teen-aged son or daughter. You are
discussing which university the child should choose after school.
 You are undergraduate students discussing whether to start a career, take
a gap year or go for postgraduate studies.
 You are a group of students who are doing a project to collect artwork
that invite the viewer to look at traditional stories from a new perspective.
Find several images online and discuss which ones should be included in
your project.

An illustration of “Little Red Riding Hood” by Fernando Pérez Hernando

Writing
Choose a well-known fairy story and rewrite it from a different
perspective. If you do not feel creative, read your classmates’ work
and write a review. Compare different responses to the stories
written in your class. Discuss what factors influenced your appreciation of
the stories.
Project
Being a Student
What kinds of students have you seen in books and films? Do they
have the same problems and dilemmas as you have? What choices
regarding education (what, where, how to study) do they make and why?
How will these choices influence their future? Explore the themes related to
contemporary students’ life and their choices, singling out the most
significant issues. How are these issues presented in terms of genre, style,
tone and humour?
Present your findings in class giving your audience an opportunity to
compare and contrast the highlighted aspects to their own experience.

In “Mona Lisa Smile” (2003) a group of female students at a prestigious

conservative college are getting ready to become housewives with a college
degree. An inspirational and progressive teacher (played by Julia Roberts)
gets them to reconsider their attitudes and life goals.
 UNIT 8
The Language of Emotions
Lead In
 Are you good at recognising other people’s emotions? How do you know
that someone is upset / suspicious / bored / delighted?
 Do you sympathise with characters’ emotions in fiction? Which emotions
are hard for you to bear?
 Are you familiar with the experience of vicarious shame (the feeling of
shame on behalf of another person)? Do you feel it when you read or
watch about characters in embarrassing situations? Speak about your
experience using specific examples.

Fiction and Empathy

A common argument in support of reading fiction is that it develops one’s
empathy. It is proved by the research that traces the correlation between
reading literary fiction and reading other people’s feelings. Social
psychologists Kidd and Castano published a study containing experimental
evidence that reading passages of literary fiction, in comparison to
nonfiction or popular fiction, enhances the reader’s ability to understand
other people’s mental states. Looking at the phenomenon from the
cognitive perspective, Lisa Zunshine suggests that “fiction engages, teases,
and pushes to its tentative limits our mind-reading capacity”8.
Emotional intelligence, usually defined as one’s capability to discern other
people’s emotions, as well as one’s own, makes people more socially
effective. Sometimes, emotional intelligence is viewed as not only the ability
8
Lisa Zunshine. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, p 4.
to read emotions, but also to express and manage them. This presupposes
the mastery of emotion-relevant concepts and language. The relationship
between feeling and thinking is of particular interest to scientists, who now
challenge the long-standing opposition between “feeling” and “reason”. It
has been shown, for example, that emotions play a pivotal role in good
decision-making. Thus, depictions of mental states in fiction boost the
reader’s awareness of different emotions, emphasise their complexity and
give us a language to describe them.
The history of world literature reflects human desire to grasp the nature of
emotion and express it in prose, poetry and drama. The oldest genre
division of tragedy and comedy relates to two basic emotions of sadness and
joy. Countless characters succumbed to anger and fear, suffered from
despair, shame or embarrassment, enjoyed triumph, relief and happiness.
Authors have always counted on the element of surprise in their stories and
attempted to give amusement to their audiences. There have been whole
literary movements that centred on emotions in one way or another, such as,
most famously, Sentimentalism of the 18th century with its focus on “true and
natural feelings”. Various stories have shown the complexity of human
emotional life and enabled readers to plunge into someone else’s inner
turmoil. Contemporary fiction and poetry are carrying on with this quest,
exploring both age-long and entirely new dimensions of mental states.
Task 1
Watch a TED talk by historian Tiffany Watt Smith entitled “The history of
human emotions” (2017). As you watch, note down the words she uses to
name emotions. Compare your list to those of other students.
 Why does the speaker mention unusual emotions from various
cultures? What point does she make?
 Why does she call the knowledge of emotions “an extremely
important commodity”?
 The speaker suggests that emotions are not simple physiological
reflexes. What evidence does she use to support this claim?
 Which examples from history does she use in her talk? Which one
impressed you most?
 Find an interesting emotion from a different culture. Say whether you
have ever experienced it personally and describe the occasion.

Task 2
Work in groups. Discuss the way
you use emoticons in your daily
life.

 How often do you use

them and in which media?

 Which ones do you use?

Which one is your favourite?

 Do you think the use of

emoticons promotes one’s
emotional intelligence or
decreases it? Explain your point
of view.

 Do you think emoticons

should be used in…
…newspaper articles, official documents, social media posts, fiction,
poetry?
Task 3
Read the excerpts below. Identify what the characters feel. Which words are
used to convey their mental states?
The telephone rings.
I stare at the instrument, thinking – not for the first time – what a nasty,
intrusive, uncivil thing the telephone really is, demanding, irritating,
interrupting, invading the mind’s space. I wonder why Alexander Graham
Bell is such a hero. His invention destroyed the private realm. The device
has no conscience. It rings when we are sleeping, showering, praying,
arguing, reading, making love. Or when we just want desperately to be left
alone. I think about not answering. I have suffered enough. And not only
because my mercurial wife hung up so abruptly. This has been one of those
peculiar Thursdays on which the telephone refuses to stop its angry clamor
for attention: a frustrated law-review editor demanding that I dispatch an
overdue draft of an article, an unhappy student seeking an appointment,
American Express looking for last month’s payment, all have had their
innings. The dean of the law school, Lynda Wyatt – or Dean Lynda, as she
likes to be addressed by everybody, students, faculty, and alumni alike –
called just before lunch to assign me to yet another of the ad hoc
committees she is always creating. “I only ask because I love you,” she
crooned in her motherly way, which is what she says to everybody she
dislikes.
The phone keeps ringing. I wait for the voice mail to answer, but the voice
mail, like most of the university’s cut-rate technology, operates best when
not needed. I decide to ignore it, but then I remember that my conversation
with Kimmer ended badly, so perhaps she is calling to make up.
Or to argue some more.
From “The Emperor of Ocean Park” by Stephen L. Carter
Hermione sighed and laid down her quill.
‘Well, obviously, she’s feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I
expect she’s feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes
Harry, and she can’t work out who she likes best. Then she’ll be feeling
guilty, thinking it’s an insult to Cedric’s memory to be kissing Harry at all,
and she’ll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she
starts going out with Harry. And she probably can’t work out what her
feelings towards Harry are, anyway, because he was the one who was with
Cedric when Cedric died, so that’s all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and
she’s afraid she’s going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team
because she’s been flying so badly.’
A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said,
‘One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.’
‘Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we
all have,’ said Hermione nastily picking up her quill again.
From “The Order of the Phoenix” by J.K.Rowling

Task 4
What is the distinction between emotion and feeling? Express your own
understanding of these terms first, them look them up and compare to your
ideas.
Look at the wheel of emotion below. Which of the states in it are feelings
rather than emotions?
The Taste of Emotions
Aimee Bender (born in 1969) is an American author. She has published
several novels and short stories, most of which have magic, absurd or surreal
elements. Bender was influenced by fairy-tales as a child, especially Hans
Christian Andersen, but her own stories gravitate towards the adult
audience. She has been awarded several prizes for her fiction and has been
teaching creative writing at the University of Southern California.
“The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” (2010) is a novel about a 9-year-
old girl, Rose Edelstein, who discovers that she has a strange gift: when
tasting food she can discern the emotions of the person who cooked it. It all
starts with the birthday cake her mother bakes for her, and from that
moment on Rose’s perception of people and herself is beginning to change.
The novel traces Rose’s story as she becomes a young woman who manages
to come to grips with her unusual talent and puts it to good use.
Read the excerpt from the novel given below focusing on the language the
author uses to describe emotions.

After dinner, while Dad finished the rest of his work in the bedroom, Mom
stretched out on the living-room carpet in front of the red brick fireplace,
and even though it was warm out still, almost seventy degrees, she lit a fire
using an old pine log she’d found in the garage. Come sit, Rose, she called
to me, and we nestled up together and stared as the flickering flames licked
the log into ash. I had nightmares that night, since they say you have
nightmares more easily when the house is too warm. I dreamed we were
plunging down frozen rivers.
My birthday cake was her latest project because it was not from a mix but
instead built from scratch – the flour, the baking soda, lemon-flavored
because at eight that had been my request; I had developed a strong love for
sour. We’d looked through several cookbooks together to find just the right
one, and the smell in the kitchen was overpoweringly pleasant. To be clear:
the bite I ate was delicious. Warm citrus-baked batter lightness enfolded by
cool deep dark swirled sugar.
But the day was darkening outside, and as I finished that first bite, as that
first impression faded, I felt a subtle shift inside, an unexpected reaction. As
if a sensor, so far buried deep inside me, raised its scope to scan around,
alerting my mouth to something new. Because the goodness of the
ingredients – the fine chocolate, the freshest lemons – seemed like a cover
over something larger and darker, and the taste of what was underneath was
beginning to push up from the bite. I could absolutely taste the chocolate,
but in drifts and traces, in an unfurling, or an opening, it seemed that my
mouth was also filling with the taste of smallness, the sensation of shrinking,
of upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my mother,
tasting a crowded sense of her thinking, a spiral, like I could almost even
taste the grit in her jaw that had created the headache that meant she had to
take as many aspirins as were necessary, a white dotted line of them in a row
on the nightstand like an ellipsis to her comment: I’m just going to lie
down… None of it was a bad taste, so much, but there was a kind of lack of
wholeness to the flavors that made it taste hollow, like the lemon and
chocolate were just surrounding a hollowness. My mother’s able hands had
made the cake, and her mind had known how to balance the ingredients,
but she was not there, in it. It so scared me that I took a knife from a drawer
and cut out a big slice, ruining the circle, because I had to check again right
that second, and I put it on a pink-flowered plate and grabbed a napkin
from the napkin drawer. My heart was beating fast. Eddie Oakley1 shrank to
a pinpoint. I was hoping I’d imagined it – maybe it was a bad lemon? or old
sugar? – although I knew, even as I thought it, that what I’d tasted had
nothing to do with ingredients – and I flipped on the light and took the plate
in the other room to my favorite chair, the one with the orange-striped
pattern, and with each bite, I thought – mmm, so good, the best ever, yum –
but in each bite: absence, hunger, spiraling, hollows. This cake that my
mother had made just for me, her daughter, whom she loved so much I
could see her clench her fists from overflow sometimes when I came home
from school, and when she would hug me hello I could feel how inadequate
the hug was for how much she wanted to give.
I ate the whole piece, desperate to prove myself wrong.
When Mom got up, after six, she wandered into the kitchen and saw the
slice taken out of the cake and found me slumped at the foot of the orange-
striped chair. She knelt down and smoothed the hot hair off my forehead.
Rosie, she said. Sweets. You all right?
I blinked open eyes, with eyelids heavier now, like tiny lead weights had
been strung, fishing-line style, onto each lash.
I ate a slice of cake, I said.
She smiled at me. I could still see the headache in her, pulsing in her left
eyebrow, but the smile was real.
That’s okay, she said, rubbing the underside of her eye bone. How’d it turn
out?
Fine, I said, but my voice wavered.
She went and got herself a piece and sat down with me on the floor, crossing
her legs. Sheet lines pressed into her cheek from the nap.
Mmm, she said, taking a small bite. Do you think it’s too sweet?
I could feel the mountain swelling in my throat, an ache spreading into the
lining of my neck.
What is it, baby? she asked.
I don’t know.
Joe home from school yet?
Not yet.
What’s wrong? Are you crying? Did something happen at school?
Did you and Dad have a fight?
Not really, she said, wiping her mouth with my napkin. Just a discussion.
You don’t have to worry about that.
Are you okay? I said.
Me?
You? I said, sitting up more.
She shrugged. Sure, she said. I just needed a nap. Why?
I shook my head clear. I thought –
She raised her eyebrows, encouraging.
It tastes empty, I said.
The cake? She laughed a little, startled. Is it that bad? Did I miss an
ingredient?
No, I said. Not like that. Like you were away? You feel okay?
I kept shaking my head. The words, stupid words, which made no sense.
I’m here, she said, brightly. I feel fine. More?
She held out a forkful, all sunshine and cocoa, but I could not possibly eat
it. I swallowed and, with effort, the spit slid around the mountain in my
throat.
I guess I shouldn’t spoil my dinner? I said.
Only then – and only for a second – did she look at me oddly. Funny kid,
she said. She patted her fingers on the napkin and stood. Well, then.
Should we get started?
Dinner? I said.
Chicken, she said, checking her watch. It’s late!

Notes
1. Eddie Oakley is a boy from school whom Rose often thinks about.

Comprehension 1. Why did Rose’s mother bake the cake? Was it

easy for her to do?
2. What did Rose experience when she tasted the
cake?
3. Could she explain what she was feeling to her
mother? What was her mother’s reaction?
Discussion 1. What do you think Rose’s mother was actually
feeling? Why was there “a hollowness”? What is
implied by the phrase: “a white dotted line of them
in a row on the nightstand like an ellipsis to her
comment: I’m just going to lie down…”
2. What figures of speech are used in the text to
render Rose’s unusual experience?
3. Would you like to have Rose’s talent? How would
your life be different if you had it?
4. Do emotions have their own “tastes”? Describe
several emotions (anguish, sadness, serenity,
anxiety, ecstasy, etc.) using gustatory imagery.
Language Practice
Task 1. Pronunciation Tips
The letter combination -ough is pronounced in several different ways. Look
at the table below and practise saying these words out loud.
/əʊ/ /aʊ/ /uː/ /ɔ:/ /ə/ /ʌf/ / ɒf/ /ʌp/
though bough through thought borough enough cough hiccough
although drought bought thorough rough trough
dough plough brought tough

 How is the pronunciation of the word thorough different in British and

American English?
 Work in pairs. Practise the pronunciation of the words that are
frequently confused: through, thorough, thought, though. Make up
phrases, rhymes or tongue-twisters to remember them better.

Task 2: Synonyms for emotion words

Look at the lists of synonyms below. What can you add to them? Use a
dictionaries or a thesaurus to help you.
Emotions: feeling, affect, sentiment
Sympathy: compassion, empathy,
affinity, rapport
Anger: wrath, fury, resentment, rage
Happiness: joy, ecstasy, rapture
Sadness: melancholy, anguish, grief,
gloom
Changeable: volatile, fleeting, unstable
Strong: intense, overpowering,
uncontrollable, overwhelming
To express one’s emotions: to show,
to reveal
To control one’s emotions: to
suppress, to harness, to bottle up
To release one’ emotions: to set free,
to liberate, to unleash.
Work in groups. Use the categories above for mind mapping. Brainstorm
ideas for your mind maps together.
Task 3: Idioms
Study the idioms in the table below and provide your own examples.
Translate the examples in the table, as well as other students’, into your first
language.
To run hot and cold is to vacillate It’s more than just mixed feelings:
between two different states, she’s positively running hot and cold
reactions or opinions. about the new game. She hates it one
minute and then loves it the next.
To be beside oneself is to I’m beside myself with joy.
experience a very strong emotion He couldn’t speak: he was beside
and to be overpowered by it. himself with grief.
We start climbing the wall(s) when The test results have not arrived yet:
we are very agitated, anxious, we are all climbing the walls.
restless or even bored.
When you get cold feet before I hope you won’t get cold feet and
doing something, you no longer renege on our deal.
want to go ahead with it because Are you going to dive or are you
you are too nervous or afraid. getting cold feet?
When we become suddenly very His mood is very volatile: he can fly
angry, we fly off the handle. off the handle at the smallest
provocation.
To eat one’s heart out means to feel They are eating their hearts out over
any strong negative emotion (grief, the defeat of their candidate in the
jealousy, anxiety, etc.) It is also used election.
as an exclamation directed at the She’s going to the prom with me! Eat
losing side. your heart out!
To have egg on one’s face is to be I am so sorry I opened the present
embarrassed by something one has early: my curiosity got the better of
done. me. I have egg on my face now.
To push / press someone’s buttons I have an obnoxious colleague who
means to elicit a strong emotional really knows how to push my buttons.
reaction in someone, usually anger
or irritation or sexual arousal.
When things go wrong, we can put I know how you are feeling after the
a brave face / front on it – act as it fiasco of the play. You don’t have to
everything is fine, not letting others put a brave face on it.
know how upsetting it is.

Work in pairs. Have you ever flown off the handle? Do you sometimes get
cold feet? Discuss these and other situations with your partner.
Writing
Read the excerpts from the readers’ reviews of “The Particular
Sadness for Lemon Cake”. How did this book make them feel?

Overall, I enjoyed this very unusual novel. It was not depressing or heavy,
but left me with a lingering sadness as I thought about my own childhood.
Wow. Extremely disturbing and haunting. And it was so depressing for most
of the book but only because I didn’t understand it until much too late.
“The Particular Sadness for Lemon Cake” is a combination of unique,
disturbing and unorganized. I have no other words to describe this novel as
I found myself tuning in and out of the events as they were slapped together
in a messy sort of way that made me feel tossed around from scene to scene
in a random fashion.
Everything about this book just went down right. Like that perfect cup of tea
– it’s not too hot but almost too hot, and not too milky, no sugar. It goes
down and you want to gulp it but you want to sip it too and you don't want to
finish it because you know your next cup of tea won’t be anywhere near as
good. And you kind of want to convince everyone that there’s whiskey in
your coffee mug instead of tea, it’s a little embarrassing but it doesn’t change
the way you feel about it. Not one little bit.

Choose a story you have recently read and describe your emotional
response to it. Post it on goodreads.com and compare to other reviewers’
emotions evoked by the same book. Are they similar to yours?
Project
The Way We See Our Emotions
What are our dominant emotions and what role do they play in our
lives? What imagery, metaphors and symbols do we use to talk
about them? How can they be represented visually?
Choose one or several emotions and find their representations in fiction,
poetry or cinema. Focus on visual representations. Find out which
portrayals elicit most sympathetic response from the class.

In “Inside Out” (2015) the protagonist’s emotional life is visualised through

five personified emotions: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear and Anger.
 UNIT 12
The Worlds We Create
Lead In
 Do you have a hobby or an activity that you use as an escape from harsh
reality? How often do you do it?
 What kind of art do you like? Show your classmates several examples of
art that you admire and say why they make you feel this way.
 Look at Rob Gonsalves’s art below. What associations do the pictures
evoke?

The Art of World-Building

Human imagination is not bound by restrictions of reality: people have
always imagined worlds that are different from the one they perceive on a
daily basis. People’s creativity is often channelled into art, in its broader
sense, resulting in a vision of an imaginary world.
A particular type of art that is used for world-building is called a medium.
Several media can be used at the same time, which is referred to as
intermediality, for example, cinematic techniques in fiction or narration in
cinema. When visual arts are represented in fiction, the term is employed to
describe the phenomenon.
Fiction is a particularly bountiful medium for world-building. Imaginary
worlds in literature are also referred to as fictional worlds, literary worlds or
storyworlds, and they determine spatiotemporal dimensions (ranging from a
small area to an entire invented universe), characters and groups or
communities they belong to, political, social, religious, philosophical systems
that may be similar to or different from the existing ones and so on. Several
scholars use possible-worlds theory, taken from the fields of philosophy and
logic, to explore literary truth, the nature of fictionality and the relationship
between fictional worlds and reality.
World-building is vital for such genres as fantasy and science fiction. After
the arrival of J.R.R.Tolkien immensely influential “The Lord of the Rings”,
which fictional universe encompasses its own mythology, expansive
geography and thousands of years of history, fantasy worlds usually come
with maps, detailed backstories, whole nations and civilisations, and even
invented languages. The results are known as fictional universes or
constructed worlds. Screen adaptations of science fiction and fantasy
storyworlds tend to focus on the visual component of world-building,
involving elaborate concept art and eye-catching representation of material
culture. Coherent world-building is also vital for comic books, video games
and role-playing activities such LARP.

Task 1
Read the quote by Albert Einstein below. Do you agree or disagree?
Task 2
Look at the following tropes taken from the TV Tropes website. Can you
guess what they mean by their names?
 Wish Fulfillment
 Daydream Believer
 Welcome to the Real World
Work in small groups. Share your opinions of these tropes and provide
examples from fiction, films, comics, etc.

Task 3
Read the excerpts below. What elements of world-building can you sot in
them? Can you identify the cases of ekphrasis?
Frodo was left to himself for a while, for Sam had fallen asleep. He was
alone and felt rather forlorn, although all about him the folk of Rivendell
were gathered. But those near him were silent, intent upon the music of the
voices and the instruments, and they gave no heed to anything else. Frodo
began to listen.
At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-
tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon
as he began to attend to them. Almost it seemed that the words took shape,
and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined
opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above
seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the
enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an
endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too
multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the
throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him. Swiftly he sank
under its shining weight into a deep realm of sleep.
From “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R.Tolkien
He had a number of pictures on hand; most of them were too large and
ambitious for his skill. He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better
than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its
shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he
wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of
them different.
There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with
a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending
out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots.
Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then
all round the Tree, and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and
boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest
marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow. Niggle lost
interest in his other pictures; or else he took them and tacked them on to
the edges of his great picture. Soon the canvas became so large that he had
to get a ladder; and he ran up and down it, putting in a touch here, and
rubbing out a patch there. When people came to call, he seemed polite
enough, though he fiddled a little with the pencils on his desk. He listened
to what they said, but underneath he was thinking all the time about his big
canvas, in the tall shed that had been built for it out in his garden (on a plot
where once he had grown potatoes).
From “A Leaf by Niggle” by J.R.R.Tolkien
Kimimmid comes across the meadow to visit, and he and Shuku talk
together, and walk together in the meadows and down by the stream.
Presently, after a day or a week or two, he asks her if she would like to
dance. "Oh, I don't know," she says, but seeing him stand tall and straight,
his head thrown back a little, in the posture that begins the dance, she too
stands up; at first her head is lowered, though she stands straight, arms at her
sides; but then she wants to throw her head back, back, to reach her arms
out wide, wide... to dance, to dance with him...
And what are Shuku's parents and Kimimmid's parents doing, in the kitchen
garden or out in the old orchard, but the same thing? They face each other,
they raise their proud and narrow heads, and then the man leaps, arms
raised above his head, a great leap and a bow, a low bow... and the woman
bows too... And so it goes, the courtship dance. All over the northern
continent, now, the people are dancing.
Nobody interferes with the older couples, recourting, refashioning their
marriage. But Kimimmid had better look out. A young man comes across
the meadow one evening, a young man Shuku never met before; his
birthplace is some miles away. He has heard of Shuku's beauty. He sits and
talks with her. He tells her that he is building a new house, in a grove of
trees, a pretty spot, nearer her home than his. He would like her advice on
how to build the house. He would like very much to dance with her
sometime. Maybe this evening, just for a little, just a step or two, before he
goes away?
He is a wonderful dancer. Dancing with him on the grass in the late evening
of early spring, Shuku feels that she is flying on a great wind, and she closes
her eyes, her hands float out from her sides as if on that wind, and meet his
hands...
From “Changing Planes” by Ursula K. Le Guin
Task 4
One of the episodes above contains Frodo’s impression of Rivendell, an
ancient place where Elves live, in “The Lord of the Rings”.
Watch the Rivendell episodes from the screen adaptation of the book and
express your opinion of the concept art for Rivendell. What impression
does it produce on you?

Stories about Worlds

Charles de Lint (born in 1951) is a Canadian writer and musician of Dutch
origins. The author of many novels, short stories and poems, he is primarily
known for contemporary and urban fantasy, in which the “real” world and
the otherworld coexist in one fictional universe. In his world-building, he
draws heavily on both European and American folklore, infusing his stories
with mythological and supernatural elements. De Lint’s “Newford” cycle
encompasses numerous novels and stories set in a fictional Canadian city of
Newford (similar to the real-world Ottawa), in which characters encounter
magic in their everyday lives and sometimes travel to different otherworlds
(dreamlands, the spirit world, etc.).
“Muse and Reverie” (2009) is a collection of short stories that belong to the
Newford series. As with other Newford narratives, the characters in these
stories are often creative and involved in art and music. On the other hand,
it is a gritty urban setting with an array of shop assistants, cab drivers, petty
criminals and other street-wise city dwellers. Magic is always there, but
sometimes it appears when it is least expected.
Read the first excerpt from the short story “The World in a Box” and
predict what is going to happen in this story.

Somewhere in the world there is a box, and if you open that box, inside it
you’ll find the world.
What does that mean? I don’t know. I think it’s like one of those Zen
riddles that you’re not really supposed to figure out. It’s just supposed to
make you think – you know, the whole it’s the journey that’s important
thing, not the destination.
I can’t even remember where I heard it. It was probably one of those late-
night, slightly inebriated conversations you can get into, especially when
you’re young and weighing in on all the great mysteries of the universe.
Like, why are we here and where do we go when we die? Or, what if this
world is all a dream and one of us is the dreamer? Or, do things exist only
because we expect them to?
Man, if I knew now what I thought I did then, I’d be a very wise man.
Looking back, you have to smile. The meaning of life. Omnipotent
dreamers. The world hidden in a box.
Except one day I found that box.

Work in groups of 3 or 4. Brainstorm ideas what “the world in a box” might

be”. Then read the next excerpt and compare it to your ideas.

Once we’d all finished laughing1, I went back to browsing his shelves and
they started bargaining again. That’s when I spied the little wooden box,
sitting in between an old pair of opera glasses with mother of pearl inlay and
a little brass statue of Joan of Arc that was missing the tip of its little sword. I
turned the box over in my hands, attracted to it for no reason that I could
fathom. I’d like to say that I had a flash of premonition at that moment, a
forewarning that my perception of everything was about to change, but the
truth is all I felt was a mild curiosity.
The wood had been oiled, bringing out the grain, and the sides had been
put together with dovetailed joints – hand-carved ones rather than
machined, which meant it was probably from the 1800s and explained the
twenty-five-dollar price tag. There were no hinges. The lid simply lifted off,
which I proceeded to do.
And then it seemed the world went still all around me.
You know those photographs of the earth taken from one of the space
shuttles, the ones that show this beautiful green and blue sphere just floating
there in the black velvet reaches of outer space? That’s what was inside the
box – not a photograph, but a tiny replica of the earth floating there in
space.
I held it closer to my eye, trying to figure out the illusion. But it wasn’t. An
illusion, I mean. Impossible as it should be, somehow there really seemed
to be a tiny planet hovering there in the middle of the box.
“Pretty little thing, isn’t it?”
I almost dropped the box, but I managed to keep my grip on it as I turned
to Trevor.
“It’s from the 1800s,” he said. “Probably a snuffbox. Or maybe something
to keep stamps in. See this?”
He reached out a hand and reluctantly I passed the box over to him. I
almost had a heart attack when he stuck his finger inside, the better to hold
it as he showed me the joints.
“Hand-carved,” he said. “And look how snugly the lid still fits on it. I picked
it up at an estate sale last week.” His gaze lifted to mine. “I could let you
have it for twenty.”
It was an automatic spiel, but it surprised me because, after my first few days
of booth-sitting, nobody in here ever tried to sell me anything because I
didn’t buy anything. But mostly I couldn’t understand how he obviously
couldn’t – or at least didn’t – see the world slowly spinning inside.
He handed it back to me and I looked inside.
The little planet was still there.
“Sure,” I found myself saying as I reached into my pocket with my free hand
for the money. “I’ll take it.”
We might have exchanged a few more words, but I don’t remember. I just
took my purchase back to Lizzie’s booth and sat there staring inside it until I
realized that Trevor was giving me a puzzled look. Well, I guess it must have
seemed weird, me sitting there, mesmerized by the box the way I was.
I caught his gaze before he could turn away and gave him a shrug and a
smile. Putting the lid back on, I set it on the counter in front of me.
I desperately wanted to ask him what he saw when he looked inside the box,
but managed not to. Obviously, he didn’t see anything or he’d have kept it.
Or sold it for a lot more than twenty dollars.
Unless I had just imagined it.
I popped the lid and had another quick look.
Still there.
Or I was still imagining it.
I closed the lid again.
But if I wasn’t imagining it, then what was it?

Notes
1. The protagonist is a musician who sometimes helps his friend Lizzie to
take care of her booth selling vintage clothes and antique objects. There
are some other booths around. In the episode the protagonist is hanging
out with Trevor, the owner of one of the neighbouring booths.
Work in groups of 3 or 4. Brainstorm ideas for what this artifact might do.
Then read the next excerpt and compare it to your ideas.

I knew Jenny1 was in town from seeing her face looking back at me from
flyers on various telephone poles and the like, advertising an upcoming gig,
so I tried calling her at the apartment she still keeps in the city.
We spent awhile catching up before I brought up the whole business with
the world in a box.
She laughed. “God, you don’t forget anything, do you?”
“Well, it was a weird story – the kind of thing that stays with you.”
“I guess.”
“I was wondering where you first heard about it.”
I could sense her smiling on the other end of the line. “You mean what wise
man, hidden far away from the eyes of the world, first revealed these great
truths to me?”
I laughed. “Something like that.”
“I made it up,” she said.
I was holding the box and looked down into it at the earth floating there,
suspended in the center of the space in a way that just didn’t seem possible,
but it was happening all the same.
“Did you now,” I said.
“Um-hmm. I was working up a song, actually. Something along the lines of
the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm – you know, above as it is below –
but it never quite jelled for me. See, I thought of it as being this talisman that
allowed whoever had it the ability to make anything happen. They’d be like
a God. But then I realized that anyone who did have a talisman that
powerful, well then, they probably were God, and it’s hard to lay any real
doubt or angst on God, you know? His followers can have a crisis of faith,
sure. But God? I figure even if He didn’t know the answers, He’d let on that
He did.”
“And being God,” I put in, “so it would come to pass.”
She laughed. “Something like that. Why are you so interested in this,
anyway?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I lied. “It’s just one of those things that came into my
head like an advertising jingle and I haven’t been able to get it out again.”
“I hate when that happens. Especially when you’re sitting down to write
something yourself and all you’ve got in your head is some cheesy oom-pah-
pah ditty from a used-car lot.”
“It wasn’t quite that bad,” I told her. “Besides, it gave me an excuse to give
you a call.”
“Now you need an excuse?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Sadly, I do,” she said. “Where does all the time go? I keep meaning to
look up friends whenever I get back to town, but it seems like no sooner do
I open the door of my apartment, than I’m already packing my bags and
hitting the road again without having made one call.”
“The price of success.”
“Of steady work anyway. Are you coming to the show on Saturday? I can
put your name on the guest list.”
We talked a little more, then finally said our goodbyes with promises to get
together soon.
It had started to snow again while I was on the phone, which was a good
thing. It’s always a trade off in the winter. When you get a clear, sunny day,
it’s usually bitter cold. Snow brings its own challenges, but at least you’re not
freezing your butt off when you venture outdoors and I had to walk to the
antiques mall soon. And I don’t mind shoveling because all we’ve got is the
porch and the walkway to the street.
I looked away from the window and studied the box some more, thinking of
what Jenny had said.
The person holding it could make anything happen.
Okay, so it was just an idea she came up with for a song that never went
anywhere, but it was in my hand now, as real as the kitchen around me,
even if I was the only one who could see it.
Maybe I was making it happen. Maybe I was crazy. But there was one way to
find out.
Anything, I thought.
I picked something small.
It had been dead in the antiques market for a couple weeks now. None of
the dealers were doing well, but poor Lizzie seemed particularly hard hit. I
don’t think she’d grossed more than forty dollars so far this week and it was
already Wednesday.
So let her have a good day, I told the world, floating there in the wooden
box I held in my hand.
Let her have an amazing day.
***
I got to the booth just before one o’clock when I was supposed to take over
from her and it was… it was just weird. She had three or four people trying
to give her money for stuff they’d already chosen to buy, with another
couple looking in the display cabinet with the really pricey jewellery.
When she looked up and caught my eye, I could see the relief in her gaze.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said. “It’s been crazy all morning.”
I stuffed my coat under one of the tables and started taking money,
wrapping up purchases, and generally making myself useful. It was like when
Lizzie did the weekend shows, before she got the booth here. Those one-off
shows had always been so successful that it had seemed like a no-brainer to
get a permanent place to sell her stuff.
It hadn’t been bad the first few months, but this recent run of bad luck had
been making her seriously reconsider the feasibility of keeping the booth.
Closing wasn’t even a consideration today.

Notes
1. Jenny is a musician that the protagonist used to play with. He
remembered that she had mentioned a world in a box on the past so he
phoned her to find out more.
Comprehension 1. How did the protagonist find the box? What was
unusual about it?
2. What did he learn from Jenny?
3. What did he decide to do and why?
4. What was the outcome?
Discussion 1. What was the protagonist’s reaction to his unusual
find? How was it depicted in the text?
2. Which traditional trope is used in this story? What
genre is it typical for?
3. Brainstorm ideas how this story might end.
4. Can the story be interpreted as an allegory?
5. What would you do if you found a box like that?
Work in pairs and tell the story of your own world
in the box to your partner.
Language Practice
Task 1. Heteronyms / Homographs
Heteronyms are words that are spelt identically but pronounced
differently and have different meanings. Thus, heteronyms are homographs,
but not homophones. A large group of heteronyms in English are nouns
and verbs that are stressed differently, as in a rebel /ˈrebəl/ and to rebel
/rɪˈbel/. Changes in vowel and consonant sounds in such pairs are also
observed.
Read the phrases below out loud. Mind the stress.
 To change the subject – to subject people to danger
 To refuse to renege on the deal – too much refuse around
 To project one’s resentment – to be engulfed by the project
 To construct a new shopping mall – a philosophical construct
 To create a news digest – to digest the information

Work in pairs. Make up sentences with the words below. Use them as both
verbs and nouns, as in the example. Let you partner read them.
It was a no-brainer to figure out how to break that record.
I am a bit anxious about my talk: they are going to record it!
present, produce, lead, incense, desert, convict, contract, conflict, conduct,
affect, intern, permit, object, console, delegate, suspect, attribute

Which of the words above have other changes in pronunciation, apart from
stress? Look at the following words. What difference in pronunciation do
they all share when used as a verb and as a noun?
excuse, house, close, abuse, use
Put them in sentences as in the activity above and practise their
pronunciation.

Task 2. Translation
Translate the following fragment from the story:
We might have exchanged a few more words, but I don’t remember. I just
took my purchase back to Lizzie’s booth and sat there staring inside it until I
realized that Trevor was giving me a puzzled look. Well, I guess it must have
seemed weird, me sitting there, mesmerized by the box the way I was.
Look up the etymology of the word “mesmerised”. What synonyms of this
word can you offer? Do you find optical illusions mesmerising?

Work in small groups. Describe a time when you were mesmerised by

something, using several of the synonyms that you have found. Get other
students to translate your stories into their first language.

Translate another fragment from the text and the quotation above:
It had started to snow again while I was on the phone, which was a good
thing. It’s always a trade off in the winter. When you get a clear, sunny day,
it’s usually bitter cold. Snow brings its own challenges, but at least you’re not
freezing your butt off when you venture outdoors and I had to walk to the
antiques mall soon. And I don’t mind shoveling because all we’ve got is the
porch and the walkway to the street.
Compare how you have translated “trade off” in the quote and in the text.
What is the classical definition of this term and how do people use it
situationally?
Discuss possible trade offs in the following situations:
 Doing your work fast
 Bottling up your emotions
 Becoming the head of a team
 Becoming a celebrity

Writing
Choose a series of books and / or a film franchise that are set in a
fictional universe. What are the important ingredients of world-
building (geography, flora and fauna, backstory, history, mythology,
technology, material culture, languages, folklore, etc.)? How is the
storyworld presented to the reader / viewer? How do we learn about this
world? How important are these elements to the plot and character
development?
Write a short review of the chosen material and express your own
appreciation of this fictional universe. Say whether you would like to live a
world like this one and explain why or why not.

Project
Artistic Languages
There are several fictional universes that have their own
constructed languages (Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Martin’s “A Song
of Ice and Fire”, the Star Trek franchise, etc.). Artificial languages that are
designed specifically for fictional purposes are also called “artistic
languages”. Do you consider creating a language an art? Choose one of such
languages and study their main phonetic and grammatical features. What
role do they play in the corresponding stories? Why would people want to
know more and even learn such languages (as many people do)?
Present your project in class and find out your classmates’ opinions about
the language you have chosen.
Calligraphy based on Tengwar, a script designed by J.R.R.Tolkien for his
invented languages.
 UNIT 3
Discussing Stories: Belief and Incredulity
Lead In
 When you read a book, are you desperate to know “what happened
next”?
 Do you sometimes read
the last pages before
reading the whole novel?
 Can you predict what the
story is going to be about
after reading its prologue
/ first chapter?
 Do you prefer
predictable storylines or
unexpected “plot twists?”
 What is your attitude to
“spoilers”?

Anticipating the Story

Read the excerpts from three prologues below. What would you expect to
find in the corresponding novels? Can you predict their plots?
Each of us has a private Austen.
Jocelyn’s Austen wrote wonderful novels about love and courtship, but
never married. The book club was Jocelyn’s idea, and she handpicked the
members. She had more ideas in one morning than the rest of us had in a
week, and more energy, too. It was essential to reintroduce Austen into your
life regularly, Jocelyn said, let her look around. We suspected a hidden
agenda, but who would put Jane Austen to an evil purpose?

(“The Jane Austen Book Club” by Karen Joy Fowler)

How does one describe Artemis Fowl? Various psychiatrists have tried and
failed. The main problem is Artemis’s own intelligence. He bamboozles
every test thrown at him. He has puzzled the greatest medical minds and
sent many of them gibbering to their own hospitals.
There is no doubt that Artemis is a child prodigy. But why does someone of
such brilliance dedicate himself to criminal activities? This is a question that
can be answered by only one person. And he delights in not talking.
Perhaps the best way to create an accurate picture of Artemis is to tell the by
now famous account of his first villainous venture. I have put together this
report from first-hand interviews with the victims, and as the tale unfolds you
will realize that this was not easy.
The story began several years ago at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Artemis Fowl had devised a plan to restore his family’s fortune. A plan that
could topple civilizations and plunge the planet into a cross-species war.
He was twelve years old at the time...

(“Artemis Fowl” by Eoin Colfer)

The Alexander, with its cargo of convicts, had bucked over the face of the
ocean for the better part of a year. Now it had fetched up at the end of the
earth. There was no lock on the door of the hut where William Thornhill,
transported for the term of his natural life in the Year of Our Lord eighteen
hundred and six, was passing his first night in His Majesty’s penal colony of
New South Wales. There was hardly a door, barely a wall: only a flap of
bark, a screen of sticks and mud. There was no need of lock, of door, of
wall: this was a prison whose bars were ten thousand miles of water.

(“The Secret River” by Kate Grenville)

Discussion
Work in pairs. Discuss your expectations for the novels which
opening passages you’ve just read. Would you like to read any of
them? Why / why not?
What can you guess about the genres of each novel? Compare your
impressions.

Understanding the Plot

The plot (or “the mythos” as Aristotle called it) in a narrative work or in
drama is a sequence of events and actions, arranged in a certain way to
achieve an artistic effect. The term “plot” is sometimes used interchangeably
with the “story”, although there is a distinction. The story refers to the
summary of the events in their chronological order, while the plot also
comprises their specific narrative arrangement.
As the plot unravels, it arouses certain expectations in the reader about the
future course of events and characters’ actions. A mental state of suspense,
caused by a lack of certainty about what is going to happen, maintains the
reader’s interest. If the subsequent events violate the reader’s expectations, it
is known as surprise or a twist. Plots of fictional works rely heavily on the
interplay of suspense and surprise.
The components of the plot event are incidents, while a smaller storyline
within the general plot is called a subplot. The sequence of events in a story
is traditionally described with the help of Freytag’s Pyramid (after the
German theatre critic Gustav Freytag, who devised it for dramatic works).
According to it, the typical plot consists of an exposition, rising action,
climax, falling action and dénouement. Another term for rising action is
complication, which can be initiated with “the inciting incident”. Falling
action may involve a reversal: a significant change in the characters’ fortunes.
Resolution is another term for the dénouement.

Sometimes the narrative starts in medias res, “in the middle of things”.
Flashbacks relate events that happened before the narrative starting point,
while technique of foreshadowing gives a hint of what will come later.
Depending on their role in the story, characters may be referred to as major
and minor. The main character is called the protagonist (also the hero /
heroine), while their main opponent is the antagonist. The latter can also be
the adversary, nemesis or villain (if he or she is considered evil). A character
who, by contrast, highlights the distinctive features of the protagonist is a foil.
The relation between the protagonist and the antagonist takes form of a
conflict.
Task 1
Read the summaries below and decide which one is “the plot” and which is
“the story”.
Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” follows the lives of the Dashwood
sisters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, as they are forced to move with their
widowed mother from the estate on which they grew up to a cottage on the
property of a distant relative. The two older sisters experience love and
heartbreak before finally they get happily married.
When Mr. Henry Dashwood dies, leaving all his money to his first wife’s
son John Dashwood, his second wife and her three daughters are left with
no permanent home and very little income. Mrs. Dashwood and her
daughters (Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret) are invited to stay with their
distant relations, the Middletons, at Barton Park. Elinor is sad to leave their
home at Norland because she has become closely attached to Edward
Ferrars, the brother-in-law of her half-brother John. However, once at
Barton Park, Elinor and Marianne discover many new acquaintances,
including the retired officer and bachelor Colonel Brandon, and the gallant
and impetuous John Willoughby, who rescues Marianne after she twists her
ankle running down the hills of Barton in the rain. Willoughby openly and
unabashedly courts Marianne, and together the two flaunt their attachment
to one another, until Willoughby suddenly announces that he must depart
for London on business, leaving Marianne lovesick and miserable.
(see SparkNotes on “Sense and Sensibility” for the whole summary)
Task 2
Think of famous novels you have read (“Pride and Prejudice”, “Anna
Karenina”, “The Lord of the Rings”, “The Catcher in the Rye”, etc.) Name
protagonists, antagonists, major and minor characters in these books. Did
any of the characters serve as a foil to the protagonist?

Task 3
Apply Freitag’s pyramid to the story “Good Boys Deserve Favours” by Neil
Gaiman or another story known to everyone in your class. Draw a diagram
in your notebook or on the board.

Task 4
Read the excerpts below. Identify the devices used in them.
Root glared at her. “I don’t know why it is, Captain Short, but whenever you start
agreeing with me, I get decidedly nervous.”
Root was right to be nervous. If he’d known how this straightforward Recon
assignment was going to turn out, he would probably have retired there and then.
Tonight, history was going to be made. And it wasn’t the discovery-of-radium,
first-man-on-the-moon happy kind of history. It was the Spanish-Inquisition,
here-comes-the-Hindenburg bad kind of history. Bad for humans and fairies.
Bad for everyone.

(from “Artemis Fowl” by Eoin Colfer)

When sunlight reaches the foot of the dressing table, you get up and look
through the suitcase again. It’s hot in New York but it may turn cold in winter. All
morning the bantarn cocks have crowed. It’s not something you will miss.
You must dress and wash, polish your shoes. Outside, dew lies on the fields,
white and blank as pages. Soon the sun will bum it off. It’s a fine day for the hay.
In her bedroom your mother is moving things around, opening and closing
doors. You wonder what it will be like for her when you leave. Part of you
doesn’t care.

(from “The Parting Gift” by Claire Keegan)

Your mother didn’t want a big family. Sometimes, when she lost her temper, she
told you she would put you in a bucket, and drown you. As a child you imagined
being taken by force to the edge of the Slaney River, being placed in a bucket,
and the bucket being flung out from the bank, floating for a while before it sank.
As you grew older you knew it was only a figure of speech, and then you believed
it was just an awful thing to say. People sometimes said awful things.

(“The Parting Gift” by Claire Keegan)

Discussing Stories and their Plots
Karen Joy Fowler (born in 1950) is an
American author, whose fiction often deals
with the lives of women and questions
traditional gender roles. She also writes science
fiction and fantasy. She is best known for her
novel “The Jane Austen Book Club” (2004)
that was made into a film of the same name.
“The Jane Austen Book Club” centres on the
lives of 6 major characters, who gather regularly
to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Jocelyn and
Sylvia are in their fifties. They have been
friends since school. Jocelyn has never married and she is very fond of dogs.
She organizes the book club to distract Sylvia from her sorrow (her
husband, Daniel, has recently left her). Allegra, Sylvia’s daughter, is a
passionate young woman. She is an artist and an adrenaline addict who
enjoys rock climbing and skydiving. Bernadette is a cheerful and talkative
yoga enthusiast in her sixties, who has been married many times and is quite
satisfied with her lifestyle. Prudie is a 28-year-old French teacher at a local
high school, who is happily married but sometimes feels attracted to her
students. Grigg, the only male member of the book club, is in his forties and
he is an avid science fiction fan. The excerpt below is taken from the
episode in which the characters are engrossed in a discussion of “Sense and
Sensibility” hosted by Allegra.
Read the excerpt and compare their attitudes to Jane Austen’s text.

“Austen’s minor characters are really wonderful,” said Grigg. “Good as

Dickens’s.” Sylvia was very glad to have Grigg speaking right up this way.
She wouldn’t have taken issue for the world, and anyway, what was there to
possibly take issue with? There were authors whose names she didn’t like to
use in the same sentence with Austen’s, but Dickens had written some very
good books in his day. Especially David Copperfield.
“And speaking of Dickens,” Grigg said – were they never to be done
speaking of Dickens! – “I was trying to think of contemporary writers who
devote that same care to the secondary characters, and it occurred to me
that it’s a common sitcom device.
You can just imagine how today Austen would be writing ‘The Elinor Show,’
with Elinor as the solid moral centre and the others stumbling into and out
of her New York apartment with their wacky lives.”
Sylvia could imagine no such thing. It was all very well to point out fairy-tale
themes in Austen; Sylvia had done this herself. Pride and Prejudice as
“Beauty and the Beast”. Persuasion as “Cinderella,” et cetera, et cetera. It
was even all right to suggest that Dickens also did well what Austen did
superbly. But “The Elinor Show”! She did not think so. What a waste those
eyelashes were on a man who watched sitcoms.
Even Bernadette was silent with disapproval. The rain drummed on the
roof, the fire sputtered. The women looked at their hands or at the fire, but
not at one another. It was Allegra who finally spoke.
“Good as the secondary characters are, I do think Austen gets better at them
in her later books. The women – Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Palmer, and that
other one – are kind of a mishmash. Hard to keep straight. And I loved Mr.
Palmer’s acid tongue, but then he reforms and disappears very
disappointingly.”
In fact, Allegra had instantly recognized herself in the sour Mr. Palmer. She,
too, often thought of sharp things to say, and she said them more often than
she wished. Mr. Palmer didn’t suffer fools and neither did Allegra, but it
wasn’t something she was proud of. It didn’t spring, as Austen suggested,
from the desire to appear superior, unless lack of patience was a superior
quality. “Plus” – Allegra allowed herself one more moment’s irritation over
the silencing of Mr. Palmer – “I do think Sense and Sensibility stretches
our credulity at the end. I mean, the sudden marriage of Robert Ferrars and
Lucy Steele! The later books are more smoothly plotted.”
“It requires some hand-waving,” Grigg agreed. (That stern moment of
silence utterly lost on him! What would it take?) “You see, of course, the
effect Austen’s going for, that moment of misdirection, but you wish she
hadn’t had to go to such lengths for it.”
The Austen-bashing was getting out of hand. Sylvia looked to Jocelyn, whose
face was stoic, her voice calm but firm. “I think Austen explains it very well.
My credulity remains unstretched.”
“I don’t have any trouble with it,” Sylvia said.
“Perfectly in character,” said Prudie.
Allegra frowned in her pretty way, chewing on a fingernail. You could see
that she worked with her hands. Her nails were short, and the skin around
them rough and dry. You could see that she took things to heart. Hangnails
had been teased loose and then stripped, leaving painful peeled bits by her
thumbs. Prudie would have liked to take her somewhere for a manicure.
When your fingers were long and tapered like that, you might as well make
the most of them.
“I suppose,” Allegra conceded, “if the writer’s not allowed to pull an
occasional rabbit out of a hat, there would be no fun in writing a book at
all.”
[…]
“Sense and Sensibility features one of Austen’s favourite characters – the
handsome debaucher,” Jocelyn said. “She’s very suspicious of good-looking
men, I think. Her heroes tend to be actively nondescript.” Twirling her glass
so the ruby-coloured wine rose in thin sheets and fell again. Daniel was a
nondescript man, though Jocelyn wouldn’t say it and Sylvia would never
concede it. Of course, in Austenworld, that was all to his credit.
“Except for Darcy,” Prudie said.
“We haven’t gotten to Darcy yet.” There was a warning in Jocelyn’s voice.
Prudie took it no further.
“Her heroes have better hearts than her villains. They’re deserving. Edward
is good people,” said Bernadette.
“Well, of course,” in Allegra’s smoothest, most melodious tones. Probably
only her mother and Jocelyn would know how impatient such an obvious
point made her. Allegra took a gulp of wine so big Jocelyn could hear it
going down.
“In real life,” said Grigg, “women want the heel, not the soul.” He spoke
with great bitterness, eyelashes pumping. Jocelyn knew a lot of men who
believed this. Women don’t want nice men, they cry out over beers, to any
woman nice enough to listen. They condemn themselves loudly, lamenting
their uncontrollable, damnable niceness. In fact, when you got to know
these men better, lots of them weren’t as nice as they believed themselves to
be. There was no percentage in pointing this out.
“But Austen’s not entirely unsympathetic to Willoughby in the end,”
Bernadette said. “I love that bit where he confesses to Elinor. You can feel
Austen softening just the way Elinor does, in spite of herself. She won’t
allow that he’s a good person, because he’s not, but she lets you feel for
him, just for a moment. She has to balance it on a knife edge – too much
and you’ll be wishing him with Marianne after all.”
“Structurally that confession bookends the long story Brandon tells her.”
Another writerly observation from Allegra. Corinne1 might be gone, Jocelyn
thought, but her ghost certainly remained, reading Allegra’s books, making
Allegra’s points. Perhaps Jocelyn had been too hard on Allegra earlier.
She’d neglected to factor in Corinne when calculating the loss of Daniel.
Poor darling.
“Poor Elinor! Willoughby on one side, Brandon on the other. She is quite
entre deux feux2.” Prudie had a bit of lipstick on her teeth, or else it was
wine. Jocelyn wanted to lean across and wipe it off with a napkin, the way
she did when Sahara3 needed tidying.
But she restrained herself; Prudie didn’t belong to her. The fire sculpted
Prudie’s face, left the hollows of her cheeks hollow, brightened her deep-set
eyes.
She wasn’t pretty like Allegra, but she was attractive in an interesting way.
She drew your eye. She would probably age well, like Anjelica Huston. If
only she would stop speaking French. Or go to France, where it would be
less noticeable.
“And Lucy, too,” Bernadette said. “Something about Elinor. Everyone
wants to tell her their secrets. She
encourages intimacy without
meaning to.”
“Why doesn’t Brandon fall in
love with her, I wonder?” Jocelyn
asked. Jocelyn would never
second-guess Austen, not in a
million years, but that was the
match she would have tried to
make. “They’re perfect for each
other.”
“No, he needs Marianne’s
animation,” said Allegra.
“Because he has none of his
own.”
Notes
1. Corinne is Allegra’s ex-girlfriend, a writer. She used Allegra’s private
stories in her writing without her permission.
2. Entre deux feux (French) – between two fires.
3. Sahara is Jocelyn’s dog.

Comprehension 1. Why did the women look at their hands or at the

fire, but not at one another? What made the
discussion awkward?
2. What did Grigg mean when he said “women want
the heel, not the soul”?
3. How did Sylvia feel about “Austen-bashing”?
4. What do we learn about the characters’ attitude to
one another?
Discussion 1. Do you think that Grigg approaches Austen with a
different mindset as compared to those of the
women in the book club?
2. What is your opinion about “stretching one’s
credulity”? Do you sometimes feel that certain
stories stretch your own credulity?
3. Allegra easily identifies with Austen’s characters.
Do you also “recognize” yourself in fictional
heroes / heroines? If so, give an example.

Language Practice
Task 1: Vocabulary
Read the vocabulary units in the table below and add your own
examples to the ones that are given.

We can talk of moral centre in our Scientists argue whether our brain has
brain or personality, as well as in a a moral centre.
certain area (business, education, Albus Dumbledore is the moral
fiction, etc.) It presupposed a centre of the Harry Potter novels.
certain code of ethics that defines
what is right and wrong.
A mishmash is collection or a There is a mishmash of bizarre
variety of miscellaneous things. characters in the series, but as the plot
unfolds we realize that most of them
are rounded and quite complicated.
A nondescript person or thing lack She seems quite nondescript at first,
in distinctive features or but now I see she has her own style.
characteristics. It was just another nondescript novel I
read and immediately forgot about.
To second-guess something is to It’s problematic to try and second-
criticize or correct it in hindsight, guess the jury’s judgment: that trial
after its outcome is already known. took place half a century ago.
When we concede (a make a I reluctantly conceded that I had
concession), we admit that others made a mistake.
may be right / we may be wrong. It In a debate, one should always make
also means to acknowledge defeat. concessions to the opposing opinion.
To be (un)sympathetic to The headmistress has always been
something or someone means (not) very sympathetic to our project.
to be favourably inclined or (not) to Kafka’s characters are often thought
understand and support. to be quite unsympathetic.
Sympathetic characters in fiction
make readers feel for them, while
unsympathetic fail to get their
sympathy.
When something stretches our The film has so many of plot holes
credulity, we find it hard to believe that it stretches the audience’s
it. It is often used when discussing credulity to the limit.
storylines and plot twists. Scenes that offer no motivation for
characters to act as they do usually
stretch my credulity.
Hand-waving in general terms is a When there is a major conflict in a
pejorative term referring to an book, one can’t just resolve it by
attempt to make something appear means of hand-waving, resulting in
reasonable and logical when it is some sloppy deus ex machina. If this
clearly not so. In literary terms, it happens, it will definitely stretch
refers to a plot device which readers’ credulity.
stretches readers’ credulity.

Task 2
Read the information about willing suspension of disbelief given below.
Answer the following questions, using the vocabulary above.
 Is the state of immersion in a fictional world familiar to you? What is
required to maintain this state?
 Can you think of “unwritten rules” that account for our “belief” in the
story?
Willing suspension of disbelief is a term introduced by S. T. Coleridge to
describe the reader’s ability to “suspend” judgment of the plausibility of the
story, if the writer manages to create “human interest and a semblance of
truth”. Nowadays, the term is freely applied to fiction, cinema, theatre, art,
etc. to point out that we are ready to “believe” the story that we read or
watch, as long as we are “transported”
by it, that is immersed in a fictional
world. J.R.R.Tolkien argued that to
achieve this writers must use
imagination to give “the inner
consistency of reality” to their fictional
worlds. Most recipients feel that certain
rules (often unwritten) should be
observed in order to uphold this
consistency. Another term that
describes the state of immersion into a
created world is “aesthetic illusion”.

Task 3
Match the idioms in the table below with their definitions. Think of
equivalents in your first language.
To take issue with (someone To do something seemingly impossible and
or something) surprising; to produce something in a way
that has no obvious explanation, as if done
by magic.
To keep (something) straight To disagree or to challenge.
(in one’s mind/head)
In character / out of To become chaotic and difficult to manage.
character
To get out of hand To exploit something to the maximum; to
get as much out of something as is possible.
To take things to heart To act in a way that is (in)consistent with
one’s typical or expected behaviour.
To make the most of Used to talk about something unnoticed,
something unappreciated or not having effect on
someone.
To pull a rabbit out of one’s To takes things seriously, to be influenced
/ the hat and affected by them.
To be lost on someone To understand something clearly; not to be
confused; to keep the details of something in
one’s mind.

Retell the following situations using the idioms above:

This project is getting so out of control. I can barely remember all the
details. To make matters worse, the team manager questions my methods. I
know I shouldn’t take his criticism seriously, but I still do. Unless someone
can do a magic trick, we’ll have to drop it and start from scratch.
I hate it when sitcom characters suddenly start acting differently from what
we are used to. Screenwriters just exploit every possible funny situation,
disregarding the continuity. It always stretches my credulity, but it seems like
this hand-waving is lost on most viewers. I guess I just take this too seriously
– I need to learn to suspend my disbelief and just enjoy the show.

Writing
Although narration in fiction usually deploys past tenses, plot
summaries are written mostly in the present. Write a short plot
summary of a famous book or film using the Present Simple. The
list of phrases below will help you to structure your summary, although you
are not required to use them all.
Read the summary to your classmates without mentioning the characters’
name sand let them guess the book. Be careful with spoilers – make sure
you use the stories that everyone already knows.
[The novel] tells the story of a… / follows the life of…
The story is set in…
The story is narrated by…
[The protagonist / the narrator] begins her story at…
The story opens with…
At the outset of the tale…
Soon… / Shortly after… / Twenty years later… / At this moment…
As the plot unfolds / unravels, we learn that…
As [the protagonist] travels to…, s/he discovers that… / encounters…
Eventually [the protagonist] decides to…
Finally… / In the end…
In the epilogue it is revealed that…
Project
Discover TV Tropes
TV Tropes is a website that collects various plot devices and
conventions (also known as tropes) from creative works, such film
and television (which was the site’s initial focus), as well as literature,
mythology, drama, music, comics, manga, video games, music,
advertisements and toys. The site provides both the explanation of tropes
and their examples across the media. Each trope has a descriptive name,
such as Brainless Beauty, Damsel in Distress, Dark and Troubled Past,
Foolish Sibling Responsible Sibling, Gold Digger, Knight in Shining Armor,
Not What It Looks Like, Wide-Eyed Idealist and so on. Research the site
and choose one of the tropes to study in more detail. Present the examples
of this trope in different creative works. Alternatively, you can focus on one
work and single out several tropes in it. In conclusion, describe how these
tropes affect our suspension of disbelief.
 UNIT 7
The Art of Observation: Never Miss a Detail
Lead In
 Think of an iconic fictional character (Sherlock Holmes, Mary Poppins,
Harry Potter, etc.). What details do you associate with this character?
 Do you have an eye for details in real life? How observant do you think
you are? Take the quiz below to find out.

1. How is the smaller horizontal strip of the cross of the Orthodox Christian
church located?
a) inclined left down
b) inclined right down
c) without inclination
2. What is the order of the colours on the flag of France?
a) red blue white
b) blue red white
c) red white blue
e) blue white red
3. What shape is yield (give way) traffic sign?
a) triangular
b) square
с) round
d) hexagon
4. Which side are the buttons on a lady’s blouse?
a) left
b) right
5. The moon in the picture on the previous page is…
a) waxing
b) waning
c) full
6. Have you noticed the typo in the word “observant” in the picture?
a) yes
b) no
Score 5-7 Score 3-4 Score 0-2
You are truly observant, on You have an eye for detail, You should develop your
a par with Sherlock but some important things observation skills. Make it a
Holmes. Make the most of might slip by. Discover point to notice three new
your skills in the art of where your blind spots are things in the world around
noticing things around you. to notice more. you every day.

Details in art can tell you a lot. Look at the picture of an old woman by
Anton Pieck. What story do the details tell?
Discussion
Work in small groups.
Discuss whether the clothes tell much about people who wear
them. If yes, what exactly do they tell?
Look at the clothes you are wearing today. Decipher the messages these
clothes send to other people. Which details are particularly important?

Exploring artistic details

Details in fiction are explicit characteristics of places, objects and people
portrayed in literary texts, ensuring the verisimilitude of fiction. Artistic
details often depict a minor, inconspicuous characteristic of a complex and
multifaceted phenomenon since it is impossible to describe phenomena in
their entirety. There is always a necessity to “balance the impulse towards
universality against the impulse towards individuality, which is an equally
important factor in the artistic choice of detail”3.
Authors resort to details not only to convey certain messages about the
fictional world, but also to activate the reader’s attention and associative
thinking. Artistic details contribute greatly to the imagery of the text, as well
as to the reader’s individual perception of it. Different readers may
“decode” details in a variety of ways, depending on their own background,
observation skills, creativity and other factors.
Depicting details reflect physical characteristics of landscapes, people, etc.,
evoking tangible presence of the depicted object. Authenticity (or
authenticating) details refer to certain facts and phenomena of the real world
3
“Style in Fiction”, p.125.
with which readers are supposed to be familiar in order to create the illusion
of authenticity and enhance the credibility of the text. Characterological
details reveal the personages’ traits and habits, giving insights into their
psychological profiles and relationships with others. Implicit details are
external characteristics that hint at certain processes that are hidden from
view. In some cases, a detail may perform several functions at once and
even acquire a symbolic meaning.

Task 1
Synecdoche represents the whole through its part. What, in your opinion, is
the difference between synecdoche and artistic detail?

Task 2
Read an excerpt from “The Jane Austen Book Club” by Karen Joy Fowler
describing how the characters were dressed for another Book Club meeting.
Do you think some of the details can be regarded as implicit? If so, which
ones? Say how do you visualise…
 Sylvia
 Allegra
 Jocelyn
 Bernadette
 Grigg
Sylvia was looking uncommonly elegant tonight. She had cut her hair as short as
Allegra’s and was dressed in a long skirt with a Chinese-red fitted top. Applied a
plumy lipstick and had her eyebrows shaped. We were pleased to see that she’d
reached that drop-dead stage of the divorce proceedings.
She was on her feet and dressed to kill.
Allegra was, as always, vivid. Jocelyn was classic. Grigg was casual – corduroys and
a green rugby shirt. Bernadette had already spilled hummus on her yoga pants.
The pants were spotted with olive and blue flowers, and now there was a
hummus-coloured spot as well on the ledge of her stomach. You could go a long
time without noticing the stain, however. You could go a long time without
looking at her pants. This was because she’d broken her glasses sometime after
our last meeting and patched them together with a startling great lump of paper
clips and masking tape.
It was possible they weren’t even broken. It was possible she’d merely lost the
little screw.

Task 3
Read four more excerpts from “The Jane Austen Book Club” and find
examples of depicting, authenticity and characterological details in them.
Are there any implicit details?
There was a rug by the couch that many of us recognized from the
Sundance catalogue as something we ourselves had wanted, the one with
poppies on the edges. The sun glanced off a row of copper pots in the
kitchen window.
Each pot held an African violet, some white, some purple, and you have to
admire a man who keeps his houseplants alive, especially when they’ve been
transferred into pots with no holes for drainage. It made us begrudge him
the rug less. Of course, the violets could all have been new, bought just to
impress us. But then again, who were we that we needed impressing?
Grigg had grown up in Orange County, the only boy in a family with four
children, and the youngest. His oldest sister, Amelia, was eight when he was
born, Bianca was seven, and Caty, who was called Catydid when she was
little and Cat when she was older, was five.
He was always way too easy to tease. Sometimes they told him not to be
such a boy and sometimes not to be such a baby. It didn’t seem to leave a
whole lot of things for him to be.
If Grigg had been a girl, his name would have been Delia. Instead he was
named after his father’s father, who’d died just about the time Grigg was
born and already no one seemed to remember him very well. “A man’s
man,” Grigg’s father said, “a quiet man,” which was a movie Grigg had seen
on television and so he always pictured his grandfather as John Wayne.
Grigg was the only one of the children with his own bedroom. This was a
continual source of resentment. The room was so tiny the bed barely fit and
his chest of drawers had to be put in the hall. Still, it was all his. The ceiling
slanted; there was a single window, and wallpaper with yellow rosebuds,
which Amelia had picked because the room had been hers until Grigg came
along. If he’d been a girl she would have gotten to keep the room.
When the wind blew, a branch tapped against the glass like fingers, but that
surely wouldn’t have scared Amelia. Grigg would lie in the dark, all by
himself, and the tree creaked and tapped. He would hear his sisters laughing
down the hall. He knew when it was Amelia laughing and when it was
Bianca and when it was Cat, even if he couldn’t hear the words. He guessed
they were talking about boys, a subject on which they had nothing pleasant
to say.
Grigg’s father couldn’t stand up to them at all. They hated the smell of his
pipe, so he smoked only in his tool shed. They hated sports, so he went out
to his car to listen to games on the radio. When they wanted money, they
flirted for it, straightening his tie and kissing his cheek until, helpless as a
kitten, he pulled his wallet from his back pocket. Once Grigg did the very
same thing, blinked his heavy lashes and pouted his lips. Cat laughed so
hard she choked on a peanut, which could have killed her. Amelia had
heard of that happening to someone, and how would Grigg have felt then?

Task 3
Watch the TED talk given by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at TED Global
2009 entitled “The Danger of a Single Story” and comment on the following
details she mentions:
 ginger beer
 a well-crafted basket
 a tape of Mariah Carey

 Do you think these details acquire

symbolic meaning in this talk? What do
they represent?
 What is the message of the talk?
How do the details mentioned above
reinforce it?
 Do you think your own country
has a “single story”?
Details in Stories
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born in
1977) is a Nigerian writer. She has
lived both in Nigeria and the USA
and published several novels, short
stories, poems and essays in English.
Adichie is also famous for her
feminist activity: her “We should all
be feminists” TEDx talk has been
viewed by millions of people and it
inspired Beyoncé’s song “Flawless”.
The novel “Americanah” (2013),
which explores experiences of a
young Nigerian woman in America,
was selected by the New York Times
as one of “The 10 Best Books of
2013”. Ifemelu, the story’s
protagonist, immigrates to the USA to
attend university and discovers what it really means to be black in
contemporary America.
Read the opening episode of “Americanah” and say what role artistic details
play in it.

Princeton, in the summer, smelled of nothing, and although Ifemelu liked

the tranquil greenness of the many trees, the clean streets and stately homes,
the delicately overpriced shops, and the quiet, abiding air of earned grace, it
was this, the lack of a smell, that most appealed to her, perhaps because the
other American cities she knew well had all smelled distinctly. Philadelphia
had the musty scent of history. New Haven smelled of neglect. Baltimore
smelled of brine, and Brooklyn of sun-warmed garbage. But Princeton had
no smell. She liked taking deep breaths here. She liked watching the locals
who drove with pointed courtesy and parked their latest model cars outside
the organic grocery store on Nassau Street or outside the sushi restaurants
or outside the ice cream shop that had fifty different flavors including red
pepper or outside the post office where effusive staff bounded out to greet
them at the entrance. She liked the campus, grave with knowledge, the
Gothic buildings with their vine-laced walls, and the way everything
transformed, in the half-light of night, into a ghostly scene. She liked, most
of all, that in this place of affluent ease, she could pretend to be someone
else, someone specially admitted into a hallowed American club, someone
adorned with certainty.
But she did not like that she had to go to Trenton to braid her hair. It was
unreasonable to expect a braiding salon in Princeton – the few black locals
she had seen were so light-skinned and lank-haired she could not imagine
them wearing braids – and yet as she waited at Princeton Junction station for
the train, on an afternoon ablaze with heat, she wondered why there was no
place where she could braid her hair. The chocolate bar in her handbag had
melted. A few other people were waiting on the platform, all of them white
and lean, in short, flimsy clothes. The man standing closest to her was eating
an ice cream cone; she had always found it a little irresponsible, the eating of
ice cream cones by grown-up American men, especially the eating of ice
cream cones by grown-up American men in public. He turned to her and
said, “About time,” when the train finally creaked in, with the familiarity
strangers adopt with each other after sharing in the disappointment of a
public service. She smiled at him. The graying hair on the back of his head
was swept forward, a comical arrangement to disguise his bald spot. He had
to be an academic, but not in the humanities or he would be more self-
conscious. A firm science like chemistry, maybe. Before, she would have
said, “I know,” that peculiar American expression that professed agreement
rather than knowledge, and then she would have started a conversation with
him, to see if he would say something she could use in her blog. People
were flattered to be asked about themselves and if she said nothing after
they spoke, it made them say more. They were conditioned to fill silences.
If they asked what she did, she would say vaguely, “I write a lifestyle blog,”
because saying “I write an anonymous blog called Raceteenth or Various
Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes)
by a Non-American Black” would make them uncomfortable. She had said
it, though, a few times. Once to a dreadlocked white man who sat next to
her on the train, his hair like old twine ropes that ended in a blond fuzz, his
tattered shirt worn with enough piety to convince her that he was a social
warrior and might make a good guest blogger. “Race is totally overhyped
these days, black people need to get over themselves, it’s all about class now,
the haves and the have-nots,” he told her evenly, and she used it as the
opening sentence of a post titled “Not All Dreadlocked White American
Guys Are Down.” Then there was the man from Ohio, who was squeezed
next to her on a flight. A middle manager, she was sure, from his boxy suit
and contrast collar. He wanted to know what she meant by “lifestyle blog,”
and she told him, expecting him to become reserved, or to end the
conversation by saying something defensively bland like “The only race that
matters is the human race.” But he said, “Ever write about adoption?
Nobody wants black babies in this country, and I don’t mean biracial, I
mean black. Even the black families don’t want them.”
He told her that he and his wife had adopted a black child and their
neighbors looked at them as though they had chosen to become martyrs for
a dubious cause. Her blog post about him, “Badly-Dressed White Middle
Managers from Ohio Are Not Always What You Think,” had received the
highest number of comments for that month. She still wondered if he had
read it. She hoped so. Often, she would sit in cafes, or airports, or train
stations, watching strangers, imagining their lives, and wondering which of
them were likely to have read her blog. Now her ex-blog. She had written
the final post only days ago, trailed by two hundred and seventy-four
comments so far. All those readers, growing month by month, linking and
cross-posting, knowing so much more than she did; they had always
frightened and exhilarated her. SapphicDerrida, one of the most frequent
posters, wrote: I’m a bit surprised by how personally I am taking this. Good
luck as you pursue the unnamed “life change” but please come back to the
blogosphere soon. You’ve used your irreverent, hectoring, funny and
thought-provoking voice to create a space for real conversations about an
important subject. Readers like SapphicDerrida, who reeled off statistics and
used words like “reify” in their comments, made Ifemelu nervous, eager to
be fresh and to impress, so that she began, over time, to feel like a vulture
hacking into the carcasses of people’s stories for something she could use.
Sometimes making fragile links to race. Sometimes not believing herself.
The more she wrote, the less sure she became. Each post scraped off yet
one more scale of self until she felt naked and false.
The ice-cream-eating man sat beside her on the train and, to discourage
conversation, she stared fixedly at a brown stain near her feet, a spilled
frozen Frappuccino, until they arrived at Trenton. The platform was
crowded with black people, many of them fat, in short, flimsy clothes. It still
startled her, what a difference a few minutes of train travel made. During her
first year in America, when she took New Jersey Transit to Penn Station and
then the subway to visit Aunty Uju in Flatlands, she was struck by how
mostly slim white people got off at the stops in Manhattan and, as the train
went further into Brooklyn, the people left were mostly black and fat. She
had not thought of them as “fat,” though. She had thought of them as “big,”
because one of the first things her friend Ginika told her was that “fat” in
America was a bad word, heaving with moral judgment like “stupid” or
“bastard,” and not a mere description like “short” or “tall.” So she had
banished “fat” from her vocabulary. But “fat” came back to her last winter,
after almost thirteen years, when a man in line behind her at the
supermarket muttered, “Fat people don’t need to be eating that shit,” as she
paid for her giant bag of Tostitos1. She glanced at him, surprised, mildly
offended, and thought it a perfect blog post, how this stranger had decided
she was fat. She would file the post under the tag “race, gender and body
size.” But back home, as she stood and faced the mirror’s truth, she realized
that she had ignored, for too long, the new tightness of her clothes, the
rubbing together of her inner thighs, the softer, rounder parts of her that
shook when she moved. She was fat.
She said the word “fat” slowly, funneling it back and forward, and thought
about all the other things she had learned not to say aloud in America. She
was fat. She was not curvy or big-boned; she was fat, it was the only word
that felt true. And she had ignored, too, the cement in her soul. Her blog
was doing well, with thousands of unique visitors each month, and she was
earning good speaking fees, and she had a fellowship at Princeton and a
relationship with Blaine – “You are the absolute love of my life,” he’d
written in her last birthday card – and yet there was cement in her soul. It
had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, a bleakness
and borderlessness. It brought with it amorphous longings, shapeless
desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the
months melded into a piercing homesickness. She scoured Nigerian
websites, Nigerian profiles on Facebook, Nigerian blogs, and each click
brought yet another story of a young person who had recently moved back
home, clothed in American or British degrees, to start an investment
company, a music production business, a fashion label, a magazine, a fast-
food franchise. She looked at photographs of these men and women and
felt the dull ache of loss, as though they had prised open her hand and taken
something of hers. They were living her life. Nigeria became where she was
supposed to be, the only place she could sink her roots in without the
constant urge to tug them out and shake off the soil. And, of course, there
was also Obinze. Her first love, her first lover, the only person with whom
she had never felt the need to explain herself. He was now a husband and
father, and they had not been in touch in years, yet she could not pretend
that he was not a part of her homesickness, or that she did not often think of
him, sifting through their past, looking for portents of what she could not
name.
The rude stranger in the supermarket – who knew what problems he was
wrestling with, haggard and thin-lipped as he was – had intended to offend
her but had instead prodded her awake.
She began to plan and to dream, to apply for jobs in Lagos. She did not tell
Blaine at first, because she wanted to finish her fellowship at Princeton, and
then after her fellowship ended, she did not tell him because she wanted to
give herself time to be sure. But as the weeks passed, she knew she would
never be sure. So she told him that she was moving back home, and she
added, “I have to,” knowing he would hear in her words the sound of an
ending.
“Why?” Blaine asked, almost automatically, stunned by her
announcement. There they were, in his living room in New Haven, awash in
soft jazz and daylight, and she looked at him, her good, bewildered man,
and felt the day take on a sad, epic quality. They had lived together for three
years, three years free of crease, like a smoothly ironed sheet, until their
only fight, months ago, when Blaine’s eyes froze with blame and he refused
to speak to her. But they had survived that fight, mostly because of Barack
Obama, bonding anew over their shared passion. On election night, before
Blaine kissed her, his face wet with tears, he held her tightly as though
Obama’s victory was also their personal victory. And now here she was
telling him it was over.
“Why?” he asked. He taught ideas of nuance and complexity in his classes
and yet he was asking her for a single reason, the cause. But she had not had
a bold epiphany and there was no cause; it was simply that layer after layer
of discontent had settled in her, and formed a mass that now propelled her.
She did not tell him this, because it would hurt him to know she had felt
that way for a while, that her relationship with him was like being content in
a house but always sitting by the window and looking out.
“Take the plant,” he said to her, on the last day she saw him, when she was
packing the clothes she kept in his apartment. He looked defeated, standing
slump-shouldered in the kitchen. It was his houseplant, hopeful green leaves
rising from three bamboo stems, and when she took it, a sudden crushing
loneliness lanced through her and stayed with her for weeks. Sometimes,
she still felt it. How was it possible to miss something you no longer wanted?
Blaine needed what she was unable to give and she needed what he was
unable to give, and she grieved this, the loss of what could have been.

Notes
1. Tostitos is a brand producing snacks, mostly crisps.

Comprehension 1. Why did Ifemelu write about in her blog? Why

did she decide to finish this project?
2. Is Ifemelu an observant person? What does she
pay a lot of attention to?
3. How does the comment of a rude stranger in the
supermarket affect her?
4. Who is Obinze? Do you think he is still important
to the protagonist?
5. Who is Blaine? What kind of person is he?
Discussion 1. What artistic details have you spotted in the
excerpt? What effect did they have on you?
2. How do you visualise Ifemelu? Describe the way
you see her in your mind’ eye. Did the cover of the
book given above influence your perception?
3. Do you identify with this character? Why / why
not?
4. If such blog really existed, would you like to read
it? Do you read blog that focus on burning political
and social issues?
5. Do you use the word “fat” when talking about
people or do you avoid it? Explain how you feel
using this word or when others use it.
Language Practice
Task 1: Quantifiers
Compare the following two sentences taken from the text above.
Explain the difference between a few and the few in these examples.

The few black locals she had seen A few other people were waiting on
were so light-skinned and lank-haired the platform, all of them white and
she could not imagine them wearing lean, in short, flimsy clothes.
braids.
Quantifiers a few / few / the few are used with countable nouns. A few
means some, several, while few means “not many” (often implying “not
enough”). The definitive article may be added before few in a specifying
context. The comparative form of few is fewer.
 There are a few students in the library (several).
 There are few students in the library (not many, not enough).
 The few students who still visit the library are mainly attracted by the
free WiFi. (specified context).
 Nowadays fewer students visit the library than 10 years ago
(comparison).

Comment on the image by Tom Gauld depicting the future of libraries.

Use a few / few / the few / fewer in your speech.

Respond to the sentences below using a few / few / the few / fewer + the
suggested word.
1. I don’t want to offend anyone by calling them “fat”, but what can I say?
(acceptable)
2. Who should we choose to represent out faculty in the competition? We
don’t seem to have a perfect candidate. (impeccable)
3. So what do you think of the sequel so far? (longwinded)
4. Why are you reading this blog about vegetarian diet? You’re not a
vegetarian, are you? (convincing)
5. Which books have really captivated you recently? (enthralling)
6. I need to find some material about poems and songs with interesting
settings. Can I pick your brain on that? (vibrant)

Task 2: Vocabulary for Book Discussions

Look at the table with words and expressions below. Make sure you are
familiar with all of them. Use the dictionary if necessary.
When the story Not just the When we are When we are
is plot-driven… plot… captivated… disappointed…
I couldn’t put the A book / film has The book / film is The story was too
book down. slow pacing / is captivating / long drawn out.
It’s a real page- slow-paced and enthralling / The protagonist
turner. the story is rather impressive/ behaviour at the end
The film kept us character-driven. superb / brilliant. was out of character.
on the edge of The characters It draws you in The series is
our seats from come to life with from the first definitely over-
start to finish. the witty dialogue. page. hyped.
The show is The imagery is My immersion The surprise ending
utterly gripping / bizarre, but into the didn’t work. It was a
riveting. compelling. storyworld was bit of an anticlimax.
We waited for the The sense of complete. This episode put
final episode with magic came across The show was out me off watching any
bated breath. very powerfully. of this world. more from this
The storyline was The book is I’ve never been so series.
too complicated: beautifully written engrossed in a The book didn’t live
it took a long time and completely book before. up to its promise.
to work out what authentic in detail. It’s an entirely The author had an
was going on. fascinating and ambitious aim, but
heartwarming tale. he just didn’t pull it
off.

Work in pairs. Make up dialogues discussing a book / a film / a TV series

you’ve recently watched.
Writing
Task 1
Do you often recommend books or films to friends? Which of
the words and idioms above would you use in a recommendation?
Watch a book review of “Casual Vacancy” by J.K.Rowling4 and
answer the questions:
 Why didn’t the reviewer enjoy the book as much as she had hoped?
 How did she feel after reading the book?
 Who does she recommend to?
Write a paragraph recommending a story to a friend who is fond of plot-
driven fiction.

Task 2
A common mistake in writing is using run-on sentences and comma splices.
A run-on sentence consists of two or more clauses that are not joined
properly by a connecting word or not separated by a proper punctuation
mark. When two independent clauses are separated by a comma without a
proper conjunction the sentence turns into a comma splice. Both cases
should be avoided in formal writing. This error can also be fixed by
changing the two clauses into two separate sentences or by substituting the
comma to a semicolon. Consider the examples below:
Incorrect: I enjoyed the story enormously, its plot is utterly gripping.
Correct: I enjoyed the story enormously. Its plot is utterly gripping.
I enjoyed the story enormously; its plot is utterly gripping.
I enjoyed the story enormously because its plot is utterly gripping.

Consider the following sentence from the excerpt above. Is it a run-on

sentence / a comma splice?
The man standing closest to her was eating an ice cream cone; she had
always found it a little irresponsible, the eating of ice cream cones by grown-
up American men, especially the eating of ice cream cones by grown-up
American men in public.

4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFH48jVRMOk
Check the plot summaries and other written tasks you have done previously
for run-on sentences and comma splices. If you find any, correct their
punctuation.

Project
Devil is in the Detail
Do you remember stories where a seemingly innocuous detail
played a pivotal role? What was that detail? How was it
introduced in the beginning and when did it become apparent that
it was more that it seemed? Explain the role of this detail in the plot,
character development and your own perception of the story.

In the film “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994) a crucial detail is a poster

on the wall of the protagonist’s cell.
 UNIT 10
What is it All About? Getting the Message Across
Lead In
 What are your most and least favourite topics in fiction? Make a list using
one-word topics only, such as “Love”, “Childhood” etc. and compare it
to those of your classmates. Compile a “Top Ten” list of your class.
 Did you enjoy fables about animals when you were a child? Was it easy
for you to extract “the moral of the story”?
 When you read fiction nowadays, do you always see what’s “between the
lines”?

Exploring Themes
A theme in a narrative work is its main topic. Although “theme” is
sometimes viewed as the central idea or concept (e.g. “Crime doesn’t pay”),
nowadays it is more commonly used as the main subject of the work (what is
it about?), expressed in a single word (“Crime”, “Justice”, “Corruption”) or
in a phrase (“Justice vs. Corruption”, “Crime and Punishment”). Many
themes in fiction are universal (“Love”, “Death”, “Coming-of-Age”, etc.)
since they reflect experiences familiar to people all around the world. A
complex narrative may have multiple themes.
Themes are often manifested with the help of literary motifs: elements of
plot or imagery that are frequently seen in fiction (also referred to as clichés
or tropes). For instance, if the theme of the narrative is “justice”, it may
contain such motifs as “framing an innocent person”, “miscarriage of
justice” or “escape from prison”. If a motif is repeated and foregrounded
within one work or series, it is a recurring motif (also known as a leitmotif).
If themes address the question “what is the text about?”, then messages are
“what the text says about the subject”. Traditionally referred to as “the moral
of the story”, messages are explicit or implicit statements or concepts that
narratives offer to the reader. Messages can be expressed through the
characters’ speech and / or actions, as well as through the events of the plot.
In most cases, these statements relate to the human condition, the nature of
society, morality and other general issues of human existence. If the
narrative offers two consistent levels of meaning, a primary (literal), meaning
and a secondary (abstract or historical), then we are dealing with an allegory,
and some extra effort is required on the part of the reader to decipher its
message.

Task 1
Look at several universal themes presented in the wordcloud below. Which
ones have you got on your Top Ten list? Which books and films centered
on these theme can you remember?

What themes based on binary oppositions can you think of? Continue the
line below:
Good vs. evil, life vs. death…
Task 2
Study the words and phrases in the table below. Which of them relate to the
theme, the message and the impact they may have on the reader? Translate
the examples.
When something is thought- Due to the highly charged atmosphere of
provoking, it intellectually the setting, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is
stimulates and challenges us. not a comfortable read, but it is certainly
thought-provoking.
Insight enables clearer and Atwood’s fiction gives many insights into
deeper understanding of a Canadian history and mentality.
phenomenon. The adjective She has been named among the most
insightful is also frequently used insightful authors of our times.
in criticism.
Originally a biblical term, The film kept me on the edge of my seat
epiphany is used in criticism to and when the hero experienced his final
describe a moment of sudden epiphany, I had my own catharsis as well.
insight and revelation.
A premise is a foundation, a A solid premise ensures the story’s
basis, a core statement or verisimilitude and draws in the reader.
assumption. It can be used in The premise of “The Robber Bride” is
connection with the plot, the that there are three female characters
theme and the message of a united by one common enemy: a woman
story. who has stolen their loved ones.
To make others understand our The story deals with universal themes
message, we try to put it across and conveys the idea of the fragility of
or to convey it to someone. human life.
Atwood convincingly puts across her
feminist views.
When the message is hard or Have you read the famous “Animal
impossible to understand, we Farm”? It’s supposed to be an allegory,
say that we don’t know what to but I couldn’t make head or tail of it.
make of it or that we can’t make This collection of stories is perplexing: I
head of tail of the story. don’t know what to make of it.

Work in pairs. Make up dialogues discussing the stories you have recently
read or watched using the vocabulary above. Which of these lexical units
can also be used in everyday life? Think of situations where they can come
in handy.
Task 3
Work in pairs.
Think of a story about animals (a fable, a poem, a cartoon, etc.) which has
an allegorical meaning and which you are both familiar with. Extract the
moral of the allegory and put in down in your notebook without telling your
partner. After that compare it with the one your partner came up with. If
there are significant differences, discuss their possible source.

A 2016 Disney carton “Zootopia” which allegorically portrays

discrimination
Task 4: Fables
Now work on your own. Think of a statement regarding human
nature (e.g., “people tend to be afraid of those who are
different”, “people laugh at other’s troubles, but become very
anxious when it concerns themselves”, etc.). Think of an animal
character (or several characters) that can be used to convey this message
through allegorical imagery. Compile a short story that puts this message
across.
When your own fable is done, present it to the class and see whether they
can decipher your message.
Reading Between the Lines
Margaret Atwood (born in 1939)
is a Canadian novelist, poet, critic,
educator and environmental
activist. She has been a prolific
and diverse author, and her work
has gained a wide recognition and
won several awards, including The
Man Booker Prize. The themes
she has explored include gender
and national identity, religion and
myth, climate change and
environmental threats, as well as
politics and the power of
language. Atwood has published
numerous novels, short stories,
children’s books, poetry
collections and non-fiction books. Her most famous works include such
novels as “Cat’s Eye”, “The Robber Bride”, “Alias Grace”, “The Blind
Assassin” and others. Atwood’s dystopian “The Handmaid’s Tale” is widely
popular in the light of the current political climate in the USA and Canada.
Inspired by the necessity to sign a lot of books, Atwood also invented and
contributed to the developing of the LongPen and associated technologies
that enable remote robotic writing.
“The Tent” (2006) is a collection of mini-fictions which serves as a striking
example of Atwood’s diversity. A lot of pieces in this collection take on an
experimental slant and come across more like “fictional essays”. The
volume abounds in allusions, allegories and reworkings of mythological and
literary motifs. The book features such themes as women discrimination
and misogyny, environmental and political concerns, social responsibility
and the burdens of fame. Deeply personal at times, it gives insights into what
being a writer feels like. The collection also incorporates line drawings by
Atwood.

Read the three pieces from the collection given below and identify their
themes.
 Voice
I was given a voice. That’s what people said about me. I cultivated my voice,
because it would be a shame to waste such a gift. I pictured this voice as a
hothouse plant, something luxuriant, with glossy foliage and the word
tuberous in the name, and a musky scent at night. I made sure the voice was
provided with the right temperature, the right degree of humidity, the right
ambience. I soothed its fears; I told it not to tremble. I nurtured it, I trained
it, I watched it climb up inside my neck like a vine.
The voice bloomed. People said I had grown into my voice. Soon I was
sought after, or rather my voice was. We went everywhere together. What
people saw was me, what I saw was my voice, ballooning out in front of me
like the translucent greenish membrane of a frog in full trill.
My voice was courted. Bouquets were thrown to it. Money was bestowed on
it. Men fell on their knees before it. Applause flew around it like flocks of
red birds.
Invitations to perform cascaded over us. All the best places wanted us, and
all at once, for, as people said – though not to me – my voice would thrive
only for a certain term. Then, as voices do, it would begin to shrivel. Finally
it would drop off, and I would be left alone, denuded – a dead shrub, a
footnote.
It’s begun to happen, the shriveling. Only I have noticed it so far. There’s
the barest pucker in my voice, the barest wrinkle. Fear has entered me, a
needleful of ether, constricting what in someone else would be my heart.
Now it’s evening; the neon lights come on, excitement quickens in the
streets. We sit in this hotel room, my voice and I; or rather in this hotel
suite, because it’s still nothing but the best for us. We’re gathering our
strength together. How much of my life do I have left? Left over, that is: my
voice has used up most of it. I’ve given it all my love, but it’s only a voice, it
can never love me in return.
Although it’s begun to decay, my voice is still as greedy as ever. Greedier: it
wants more, more and more, more of everything it’s had so far. It won’t let
go of me easily.
Soon it will be time for us to go out. We’ll attend a luminous occasion, the
two of us, chained together as always. I’ll put on its favourite dress, its
favourite necklace. I’ll wind a fur around it, to protect it from the drafts.
Then we’ll descend to the foyer, glittering like ice, my voice attached like an
invisible vampire to my throat.

Discussion 1. What imagery does the author use to depict the

“voice”?
2. The “voice” is an allegory. What does this image
stand for?
3. How can we interpret the story? What is its
message?
4. One of the story’s themes is fame. How it is
presented in the text?
5. Would you like to be famous? Why / why not?
What are your own associations with fame and
celebrity lifestyle?

Chicken Little Goes Too Far

Chicken Little read too many newspapers. He listened to the radio too
much, and he watched too much television. One day something snapped.
What was the final straw? Hard to say, but whatever it was it shouldn’t have
made him hysterical. Most folks take such things in stride because whining is
so unattractive, but not Chicken Little. He always had a short fuse. He went
running down the street, cheeping at the top of his lungs. The sky is falling!
he cheeped.
Oh for heavens’ sakes, said Henny Penny, who was loading groceries into
her four-wheel-drive supervan. Chicken Little, this is a public place. You’re
making a nuisance of yourself.
But the sky is falling! said Chicken Little. I’m sounding the alarm.
You sounded the exact same alarm last year, said Henny Penny, and the sky
is still in place. Last time I looked, she added, with heavy irony.
“The sky is falling” is a metaphor, said Chicken Little huffily. It’s true that
the sky really is falling, but the falling of the sky represents all sorts of other
things that are falling as well. Falling down, and falling apart. You should
wake up!
Go home, have a beer, do some meditation, said Henny Penny. Whatever.
You’ll feel better tomorrow.
But the next day came and Chicken Little did not feel better. He dropped
in on his old friend Turkey Lurkey, who taught at an institution of higher
learning.
The sky is falling, said Chicken Little.
That’s one analysis, said Turkey Lurkey. But there’s data to show it isn’t the
sky that’s falling. It’s the earth that’s rising. The rising of the earth is simply
displacing the sky. It’s due to natural geocyclical causes and is not the result
of human activity, and therefore there is nothing we can do about it.
I don’t see that it makes a blind bit of difference whether the earth is rising
or the sky is falling, said Chicken Little, as the end result in either case will
be that we are minus a sky.
That is a simple-minded view, said Turkey Lurkey, with offensive
condescension.
Chicken Little slammed Turkey Lurkey’s office door, causing Turkey
Lurkey’s corkboard decorated with clever newspaper cartoons to fall onto
the floor. Then he took himself off to Goosey Loosey, his old roommate,
who was now the editor of a major newspaper.
The sky is falling, said Chicken Little. It’s your duty to write an editorial
about it!
If you’d said, “The stock market is falling,” that would be news, said Goosey
Loosey. Granted the sky is falling, in parts. We’re not unaware of it, but the
experts are working on it. They’ll have a fix very soon. Meanwhile, no need
to trigger a panic.
Chicken Little went away, disconsolate. He took refuge in a bar. He had a
few drinks.
Drowning your sorrows? said the bartender, whose name was Skunky
Punky.
The sky is falling, said Chicken Little.
They all say that, said Skunky Punky. The bitch not treating you right? So
get a different chick, if you want my opinion. Play some golf. Work off
some energy. Do you good.
Golf greens have toxic chemicals on them that will give you cancer of the
gonads, said Chicken Little.
What sort of bullshit tree-hugging crapola you giving me? said Skunky
Punky, who was tired of his job and wanted to pick a fight.
Excuse me, said Ducky Lucky, who’d been eavesdropping. I couldn’t help
overhearing. I’m the president of a lobby group dedicated to solving the very
same sky-oriented deficiencies that appear to be disturbing you. It’s not
something you can take on alone. Together we can make a difference! Got
your chequebook handy?
Chicken Little rejected this kind offer of assistance. He formed a group of
his own, called tsif – an acronym for The Sky Is Falling, as he had to explain
carefully to journalists, at first. He launched a Web site. Soon he had a
dedicated pack of disciples. They were mostly woodchucks and muskrats,
but who cared? They picketed political gatherings. They blocked highways.
They disrupted summit conferences. They carried big signs: Take Back the
Sky! No Sky, No Pie, No Sweet Bye and Bye! The Sky’s Our Limit!
This is getting serious, said Hoggy Groggy, who was head of a large
development company that sold retirement-home properties in the sky. He
himself lived in a bunker designed to protect him from the large chunks of
sky that were now falling at random intervals and in unpredictable locations.
He called in Foxy Loxy. Foxy Loxy moved in the shadow world. He did
nasty things for a price, and was a devotee of zero accountability. Guy’s gotta
put food on the table, was his motto. Not that he bothered much with tables.
As far as he was concerned they were a frill.
This Chicken What’s-his-name twerp is making a dent, Hoggy Groggy told
Foxy Loxy. He’s giving me a headache. He’s against progress. You should
put him out of his misery.
I eat guys like that for breakfast, said Foxy Loxy. It’s the best method.
There’s no mess except maybe a couple of feathers, and they never find the
body. What’ll you pay me?
The sky’s the limit, said Hoggy Groggy.
And so it was.
Discussion 1. What is the theme of the story? Are there more
than one?
2. What type of citizen does each animal character
represent? Do any of them remind you of real
people or even of yourself?
3. Interpret the story and say which message it
conveys.
4. Is environmental awareness important? How
probable is an ecological crisis, in your opinion?
 But It Could Still
Things look bad: I admit it. They look worse than they’ve looked for years,
for centuries. They look the worst ever. Perils loom on all sides. But it could
still turn out all right. The child fell from the eighth-floor balcony, but there
was a sheepdog underneath that leapt up and caught it in mid-air. A
bystander took a picture, it was in the paper. The boy went under for the
third time, but the mother – although she was reading a novel – heard a
gurgling sound and ran down to the dock, and reached into the water, and
pulled the boy up by his hair, and there was no brain damage. When the
explosion occurred the young man was underneath the sink, fixing the
plumbing, and so he was not injured. The girl survived the avalanche by
making swimming motions with her arms. The father of two-year-old triplets
who had cancer in every one of his organs watched a lot of comedy films
and did Buddhist meditation and went into full remission, where he remains
to this day. The airbags actually worked. The cheque did not bounce. The
prescription drug company was not lying. The shark nudged the sailor’s
naked, bleeding leg, then turned away. The rapist got distracted in mid-rape,
and his knife and his penis both retracted into him like the soft and delicate
horns of a snail, and he went out for a coffee instead. The copy of Darwin’s
Origin of Species the soldier carried next to his heart stopped the oncoming
machine-gun bullet. When he said, My darling, you are the only woman I
will adore forever, he really meant it. As for her, despite the scowling and
the cold shoulder and the unanswered phone, it turned out she’d loved him
all along.
At this dim season of the year we hunger for such tales. Winter’s tales, they
are. We want to huddle round them, as if around a small but cheerful fire.
The sun sets at four, the temperature plummets, the wind howls, the snow
cascades down. Though you nearly froze your fingers off, you did get the
tulips planted, just in time. In four months they’ll come up, you have faith in
that, and they’ll look like the picture in the catalogue. In the brown earth
there were already hundreds of small green shoots. You didn’t know what
they were – some sort of little bulb – but they were intending to grow,
despite everything. What would you call them if they were in a story?
Would they be happy endings, or happy beginnings? But they aren’t in a
story, and neither are you. You tucked them back under the mulch and the
dead leaves, however. It was the right thing to do on the darkest day of the
year.
Discussion 1. What is the cumulative effect of the stories
mentioned in the first part of the story? What kind
of tales are “winter tales”?
2. What message is conveyed through the image of
tulip-planting? Who is “you” that plants them?
3. Explain the title of the story. What does it
contribute to the general message?
4. Compare your impressions of the three stories
you’ve read. Say which one impressed you most
and why? Which was the most thought-provoking?

Language Work
Task 1: Confusing Pairs
There are a lot of words in English that non-native speakers tend to confuse.
Common pairs like this are:
adapt / adopt
affect / effect
beer / bear / bare
imaginary / imaginative
flair / flare
human / humane
literal / literary
lose / loose
model / modal
moral / morale
serial / cereal
tell / say

Read these pairs and say where the confusion may come from.
Example:
“Tell” may be confused with “say” because they often mean exactly the
same thing, but are used in different collocations. “Tell” is used when a
direct object follows it (tell me, don’t tell the children) and in the
expressions like “tell the truth”, “tell a joke”, “tell a story”, etc.
 Offer your own activity aimed at preventing errors in the usage of
the words above. Divide the class into several groups and try out
the activities you have come up with.
Example:
Offer images to your classmates
prompting them to describe them,
using the words above.
The painting by Norman Rockwell
“The Spirit of Education” tells a
story of a boy forced to participate
in a pompous public event and
impersonate “education”. The artist
seems to say, in an allegorical way,
that teachers and officials often
glorify the system of education and
pretend to feel the enthusiasm
which is not really there
(symbolised by the woman’s false
smile in the painting). You can
easily guess what she is saying at the
moment. The boy’s sulky
expression tells us exactly how he feels about the insincerity of the whole
situation.

Task 2: Vocabulary
Check your memory. Rephrase the sentences below using the vocabulary
you have learnt since the beginning of the course.
1. I find it hard to believe the story the author is telling.
2. The setting is very lively, but the characters are dull and they do not
move me.
3. The show was unbelievable! It was like a sudden discovery of truth.
4. Music helps me forget about my troubles. I just get inside each song I
hear.
5. You notice everything! I think you’ve work hard to acquire this skill.
6. The plot is not dynamic at all, and I find some of the imagery really
strange.
7. Atwood has a true talent: when you start reading her book, you just can’t
stop.
8. I don’t know how to end my story: I don’t want to force a happy ending
on it without proper explanation. I think I just need to start from the
beginning.
9. I know the narrator’s voice sounds superior at times, but it’s what you’d
expect.
10. Your progress is slowed down by the way you think about your
project: you always want to get it exactly right. Remember: no one had to
be perfect.

Writing
Go back to the plan of your book recommendation and the part
you have already written. Revise what you have done and add a
paragraph with a recommendation itself. Use the following words
and expressions in it:
I recommend it to anyone who is interested in…
It is a must-read for those who…
It has changed my understanding of… made me think of… made me realise
that…
This story will be thoroughly enjoyed by…
I would recommend it to those who appreciate insights into…
It’s a good choice for anyone who…
It’s a perfect / extraordinary / excellent read for…
It makes for a unique reading experience because…
The book is a rare treat for…

Being creative in recommendations

It is important to remember that book recommendations do not rely on a
strict format. You can choose what to include in it and how to express your
thoughts. What matters is that…
 You are familiar with the narrative work you are recommending.
 You have formed an opinion about its theme(s) and message.
 You appreciate its style and imagery and can provide relevant
examples.
 You can express your thoughts in a coherent, logical and
grammatically correct way, choosing appropriate vocabulary.
You can also be creative! Study the example below and say which technique
is used to liven up the recommendation.
In 2018, millions of people were looking forward to watching a new TV
series, “Good Omens”, based on the much loved novel by Neil Gaiman and
Terry Pratchett. Read an excerpt from the article by American journalist
Meghan Ball, in which she encourages people to reread the novel before the
premiere of the show in 2019.
Just what makes Good Omens so special, you may
ask? It’s hard to say. What makes macaroni and
cheese so special? It’s just some cheddar and some
noodles but somehow when you stick them
together and hurl some bread crumbs on top, it
becomes the best food in the entire world. Good
Omens is like that. It’s sharp British humor and
some awful/wonderful puns mixed together with
delightful characters and smart plotting (the toasted
bread crumbs on top in this case is, of course, the
music of Queen). Put everything together and you
get a story that’s beautiful, whimsical, and sharp as a
tack. It’s ostensibly about the looming apocalypse,
but it’s really about friendship, family, tradition, and
humanity. The deepest truths are told with comedy,
and Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are
soothsayers par excellence. They wield a clever
turn of phrase like an expert fencer wields a foil
(and their words can cut sharper and deeper than
any sword, when it serves the story).
It’s a rollicking tale about a demon and an angel
who like the world too much to watch it be
destroyed. They’re aided by the collected 17th-
century prophecies of Agnes Nutter, a witch of
some small renown who foresaw exactly what’s
going to happen before her untimely demise. They
must stay one step ahead of Heaven and Hell in
order to stop the Antichrist from triggering the end
of the world. Thankfully, the Antichrist isn’t a being
on the side of good or evil (yet). He’s a young boy
with a solid group of friends who has no idea what
he’s capable of, but has a very active imagination.
The players are assembled. This is where we begin.
Time to get your copy of Good Omens and join
me as we delve into this wonderful novel.
Project
Winter Tales
What kind of stories do like to read or watch in the darkest and
coldest time of the year? What kind of music do you listen to?
Stories that are associated with winter festivities (Advent, Hanukkah, Winter
Solstice, Yule, Christmas, New Year, etc.) are frequently heartwarming and
centred on moral transformation (as in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas
Carol”). Some of them are allegorical, and some often have a sentimental or
nostalgic slant. Choose a “winter tale” that has had a strong effect on you
and explore its imagery, tone, atmosphere and message. Present this story in
class and compare your response to it with that of your classmates.

Tim Minchin, an Australian musician and stand-up comedian, shares his

experience of Australian Christmas in his “White Wine in the Sun”, which
he calls “a sentimental song about Christmas”. It was written shortly after the
birth of his daughter, so parental love is an important motif in it. Every year,
all proceeds from the sale of this song during the months of November,
December and January, go to the National Autistic Society (NAS).
 UNIT 11
Insiders and Outsiders: Meeting Strangers in Fiction
Lead In
 How much can you infer about someone by the way they speak? Can you
guess where they are from / what their profession is / what kind of
personality they’ve got?
 Does the way you speak change a lot in different social situations? What
exactly changes about it? Do you think you have different identities /
personalities depending on the social role?

Exploring Dialogue
The main method of communication between characters in a fictional work
is dialogue. It is the direct speech uttered by characters and singled out with
the help of punctuation within the text. Authors use different strategies to
embed dialogue in their texts and combine it with their chosen point of view
perspective.
Characters’ background, education, social status, profession and personal
qualities are reflected in dialogue. Dialogues in fiction often tend to imitate
real-life oral speech and spontaneous communication, although it is seldom
an accurate imitation. Fictional speech is often stylized, “purified” and more
concise (devoid of numerous repetitions, errors and fillers). In some cases,
authors illustrate characters’ background by reproducing phonetic,
grammatical and lexical peculiarities of a dialect or a sociolect. A character’s
individual manner of speaking is referred to as idiolect.
Task 1
Read the two excerpts below and compare the ways dialogues are
incorporated in them. The first excerpt is narrated by a boy who attends a
magical University in a fantasy novel. The second excerpt is taken from a
short story about a small boy’s first day in an Irish school. The boy is a
refugee from Botswana.
1.
Another boy hurried in clutching a hardback. He was young, by which I
mean he looked to be no more than two years older than me. Hemme
stopped him before he could make it into a seat. “Hello there,” he said in
an over-courteous tone. “And you are?”
“Basil, sir,” the boy stood awkwardly in the aisle. […]
“Basil, you wouldn’t happen to be from Yll, would you?” Hemme asked,
smiling sharply.
“No sir.”
“Ahhh,” Hemme said, feigning disappointment. “I had heard that Yllish
tribes use the sun to tell time, and as such, have no true concept of
punctuality. However, as you are not Yllish, I can see no excuse for being
late. Can you?”
Basil’s mouth worked silently for a moment, as if to make some excuse,
then apparently decided better of it. “No sir.”
“Good. For tomorrow, you can prepare a report on Yll’s lunar calendar
compared to the more accurate, civilized Aturan calendar that you should
be familiar with by now. Be seated.”
Basil slunk wordlessly into a nearby seat like a whipped dog.
(from “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss)

2.
He sits.
He sits in the classroom. It is his first day.
He is late.
He is five years late.
And that is very late, he thinks.
He is nine. The other boys and girls have been like this, together, since they
were four. But he is new.
– We have a new boy with us today, says the teacher-lady.
– So what? says the boy who is behind him.
Other boys and some girls laugh. He does not know exactly why. He does
not like this.
– Now, now, says the teacher-lady.
She told him her name when he was brought here by the man but he does
not now remember it. He did not hear it properly.
– Hands in the air, she says.
All around him, children lift their hands. He does this too. There is then,
quite quickly, silence.
– Good, says the teacher-lady. – Now.
She smiles at him. He does not smile. Boys and girls will laugh. He thinks
that this will happen if he smiles.
The teacher-lady says his name.
– Stand up, she says.
Again, she says his name. Again, she smiles. He stands. He looks only at the
teacher-lady.
– Everybody, this is Joseph. Say Hello.
– Hello!
– HELLO!
– HELL-OHH!
– Hands in the air!
The children lift their hands. He also lifts his hands. There is silence. It is a
clever trick, he thinks.
– Sit down, Joseph.
He sits down. His hands are still in the air.
– Now. Hands down
Right behind him, dropped hands smack the desk. It is the so-what boy.
– Now, says the teacher-lady.
She says this word many times. It is certainly her favorite word.
– Now, I’m sure you’ll all make Joseph very welcome. Take out your Maths
Matters.
– Where’s he from, Miss?
It is a girl who speaks. She sits in front of Joseph, two desks far.
– We’ll talk about that later, says the teacher-lady. But maths first.

(from “New Boy” by Roddy Doyle)

“New Boy” by Roddy Doyle was made into a short film in 2007. The role of
Joseph is played by Olutunji Ebun-Cole. The film received an Academy
Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film.

Task 2
Divide into three groups: each will work with one of the excerpts below.
Read your excerpt from “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss. Say
what is revealed about characters through dialogue.
1. After listening to a love ballad performed by the protagonist
“You’ll have to promise me,” a red-eyed Simmon said seriously, “That you
will never play that song again without warning me first. Ever.”
“Was it that bad?” I smiled giddily at him.
“No!” Simmon almost cried out. “It’s... I’ve never – ” He struggled,
wordless for a moment, then bowed his head and began to cry hopelessly
into his hands.
Wilem put a protective arm around Simmon, who leaned unashamedly
against his shoulder. “Our Simmon has a tender heart,” he said gently. “I
imagine he meant to say that he liked it very much.”
I noticed that Wilem’s eyes were red around the edges too.
2. Meeting a local swineherd
“Oi taut Oi heard sommat daen tae water aways,” he said, his accent so thick
and oily you could almost taste it. My mother referred to it as a deep valley
accent since you only found them in towns that didn’t have much contact
with the outside world. Even in small rural towns like Trebon, folk didn’t
have much of an accent these days. Living in Tarbean and Imre for so long,
I hadn’t heard a dialect this thick in years. The fellow must have grown up
in a truly remote location, probably tucked far back into the mountains.
He came up to where we stood, his weathered face grim as he squinted at
us. “Wat are the tae o’ yeh daen oot here?” he said suspiciously. “Oi taut Oi
heard sengen.”
“At twere meh coosin,” I said, making a nod toward Denna. “Shae dae have
a loovlie voice far scirlin, dain’t shae?” I held out my hand. “Oi’m greet glad
tae meet ye, sar. Y’clep me Kowthe.”
He looked taken aback when he heard me speak, and a good portion of the
grim suspicion faded from his expression. “Pleased Oi’m certain, Marster
Kowthe,” he said, shaking my hand. “Et’s a rare troit tae meet a fella who
speks propper. Grummers round these ports sound loik tae’ve got a mouth
fulla wool.”
3. Meeting an arrogant student from a rich family
Ambrose turned back to me, his smile bright, brittle, and by no means
friendly. “Listen, I’m going to give you a little advice for free. Back home
you were something special. Here you’re just another kid with a big mouth.
So address me as Re’lar, go back to your bunk, and thank whatever pagan
God you pray to that we’re not in Vintas. My father and I would chain you
to a post like a rabid dog.”
He shrugged. “Or don't. Stay here. Make a scene. Start to cry. Better yet,
take a swing at me.” He smiled. “I’ll give you a thrashing and get you thrown
out on your ear.” He picked up his pen and turned back to whatever he was
writing.
I left.

Language Practice
Task 1: Reported Speech
When we change direct speech into indirect (reported speech), it
might be necessary to change the tenses as well. To report statements, we
use the verbs to say and to tell, as well as to inform, to remark, to promise
and so on. Study the examples in the table below. Which tenses have
changed and which haven’t? Where do we have alternative variants and
why?
Direct statement Reported statement
“I will never play that song again”, He promised he would never play
he said. that song again.
“I have never encountered such She told me she had never
rude people”, she said to me. encountered such rude people.
“I wasn’t paying much attention”, The student conceded that he wasn’t
the student conceded. paying much attention.
“We were planning to go out but She explained that they had been
then it started to rain”, she said.planning to go out but then it started
to rain.
“I am cooking a chicken curry My brother said he is cooking a
tonight”, my brother said. chicken curry tonight / was cooking a
chicken last tonight
“I’m going to run for presidency”. He informs us he is going to run for
presidency.

Transform the sentences below using the prompts, as in the example.

Explain which cases allow for alternative variants.
I was making the most of my last day in Spain. (She told me…) - She told
me she was making the most of her last day in Spain.
1. Things are getting out of hand at the office. (She told me…)
2. I won’t try to second-guess your decisions in the future. (He promised…)
3. These are just nondescript pop songs. (He complains that…)
4. Your son is quite self-reliant for his age (The teacher remarked that…)
5. I am simply procrastinating. (She conceded…)
6. We are having a party tonight. (They said…)

Discussion
Work in pairs.
Do you always keep your promises? Discuss with a partner
something that you have
promised someone to do.
Do you keep promises
made to yourself?
Social movement “Because I
said I would” started by Alex
Sheen is trying to make the
world a better place with the
help of Promise cards.
Find out how this system
works and express your
attitude to it.
Dialogues in Stories
Patrick Rothfuss (born in 1973)
is an American writer who is
famous for his epic fantasy
books. He is also an active
gamer and podcaster. His series
“The Kingkiller Chronicle” won
several awards, including the
2007 Quill Award for his debut
novel, “The Name of the
Wind”, which he composed
during his nine-year advance
toward his B.S. in English.
Rothfuss drew inspiration from
diverse college courses he
explored, as well as from other
sources.
“The Name of the Wind” is set in an imaginary world of Temerant,
abundant in lands and cities. The protagonist is Kvothe, a hero skilled in
various spheres, including magic (called “sympathy” in the story) and music.
The plot comprises two timelines: one is third-person narration in which
Kvothe meets Chronicler, a gatherer of stories, in an inn, while the other is a
first-person account of Kvothe’s life (Chronicler is the narratee in this arch).
As it is often the case in epic fantasy, the language is stylised, especially the
characters’ speech. The episode below features Kvothe’s encounter with
Fela, a fellow student who he has rescued from the fire.
Read the episode paying attention to the way dialogue is used to reveal the
characters’ qualities, wishes and motivation.

“Your timing’s good today,” Deoch1 said as I approached the Eolian.

“We’ve got someone waiting for you.”
I felt a foolish grin spread to my face and clapped him on the shoulder as I
headed inside.
Instead of Denna2 I spotted Fela sitting at a table by herself. Stanchion3
stood nearby, chatting with her. When he saw me approaching, he waved
me over and wandered back to his usual perch at the bar, clapping me
affectionately on the shoulder as he walked by.
When she saw me, Fela came to her feet and rushed toward me. For a
second I thought she was going to run into my arms as if we were reunited
lovers in some overacted Aturan tragedy4. But she pulled up short of that,
her dark hair swinging. She was lovely as always, but with a heavy, purpling
bruise darkening one of her high cheekbones.
“Oh no,” I said, my hand going to my face in sympathetic pain. “Is that
from when I dropped you? I’m so sorry.”
She gave me an incredulous look, then burst out laughing. “You’re
apologizing for pulling me out of a fiery hell?”
“Just the part where I passed out and dropped you. It was sheer stupidity. I
forgot to hold my breath and sucked down some bad air. Were you hurt
anywhere else?” “Nowhere I can show you in public,” she said with a slight
grimace, shifting her hips in a way I found most distracting.
“Nothing too bad, I hope.”
She put on a fierce expression. “Yes, well. I expect you to do a better job
next time. A girl gets her life saved, she expects gentler treatment all-round.”
“Fair enough," I said, relaxing. "We’ll treat this as a practice run.”
There was a heartbeat of silence between us, and Fela’s smile faded a bit.
She reached out halfway to me with one hand, then hesitated and let it fall
back to her side. “Seriously, Kvothe. I... that was the worst moment of my
whole life. There was fire everywhere...”
She looked down, blinking. “I knew I was going to die. I really knew it. But
I just stood there like... like some scared rabbit.” She looked up, blinking
away tears and her smile burst out again, dazzling as ever. “Then you were
there, running through the fire. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
It was like... have you ever seen Daeonica?”
I nodded and smiled.
“It was like watching Tarsus bursting out of hell. You came through the fire
and I knew everything was going to be alright.” She took a half step toward
me and rested her hand on my arm. I could feel the warmth of it through
my shirt. “I was going to die there – ” she broke off, embarrassed. “I’m just
repeating myself now.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true. I saw you. You were looking for a way
out.”
“No. I was just standing there. Like one of those silly girls in those stories
my mother used to read me. I always hated them. I used to ask, ‘Why
doesn’t she push the witch out the window? Why doesn’t she poison the
ogre’s food?’” Fela was looking down at her feet now, her hair falling to hide
her face. Her voice grew softer and softer until it was barely louder than a
sigh. “‘Why does she just sit there waiting to be saved? Why doesn’t she
save herself?’”
I lay my hand on top of hers in what I hoped was a comforting way. When I
did, I noticed something. Her hand wasn’t the delicate, fragile thing I had
expected. It was strong and calloused, a sculptor’s hand that knew hard
hours of work with hammer and chisel.
“This isn’t a maiden’s hand,” I said.
She looked up at me, her eyes luminous with the beginning of tears. She
gave a startled laugh that was half sob. “I... what?” I flushed with
embarrassment as I realized what I’d said, but pushed ahead.
“This isn’t the hand of some swooning princess who sits tatting lace and
waiting for some prince to save her. This is the hand of a woman who would
climb a rope of her own hair to freedom, or kill a captor ogre in his sleep.” I
looked into her eyes. “And this is the hand of a woman who would have
made it through the fire on her own if I hadn’t been there. Singed perhaps,
but safe.”
I brought her hand to my lips and kissed it. It seemed like the thing to do.
“All the same, I am glad I was there to help.” I smiled. “So... like Tarsus?”
Her smile dazzled me again. “Like Tarsus, Prince Gallant, and Oren
Velciter all rolled into one,” she said laughing. She gripped my hand.
“Come see. I have something for you.”
Fela pulled me back to the table where she’d been sitting and handed me a
bundle of cloth. “I asked Wil and Sim what I could get you as a gift, and it
seemed somehow appropriate...” She paused, suddenly shy.
It was a cloak. It was a deep forest green, rich cloth, fine cut. It hadn’t been
bought off the back of some fripperer’s cart, either. This was the sort of
clothing I could never hope to afford for myself.
“I had the tailor sew a bunch of little pockets into it,” she said nervously.
“Wil and Sim both mentioned how that was important.”
“It’s lovely,” I said.
Her smile beamed out again. “I had to guess at the measurements,” she
admitted. “Let’s see if it fits.” She took the cloak out of my hands and
stepped close to me, spreading it over my shoulders, her arms circling me in
something very near to an embrace.
I stood there, to use Fela’s words, like a scared rabbit. She was close enough
that I could feel the warmth of her, and when she leaned to adjust the way
the cloak lay across my shoulders, one of her breasts brushed my arm. I
stood still as a statue. Over Fela’s shoulder I saw Deoch grin from where he
leaned in the doorway across the room.
Fela stepped back, eyed me critically, then stepped close again and made a
small adjustment to the way the cloak fastened across my chest. “It suits
you,” she said. “The color brings out your eyes. Not that they need it.
They’re the greenest thing I’ve seen today. Like a piece of spring.”
As Fela stepped back to admire her handiwork, I saw a familiar shape
leaving the Eolian through the front door. Denna. I only caught a brief
glimpse of her profile, but I recognized her as surely as I know the backs of
my own hands. What she had seen, and what conclusions she had drawn
from it, I could only guess.

Notes
1. Deoch is a doorkeeper at a tavern called the Eolian, where talented
musicians to exhibit their skill.
2. Denna is a mysterious girl Kvothe is on love with.
3. Stancheon is the owner of the Eolian.
4. Kvothe was raised in a troupe of wandering actors (his parents being
actors and musicians), so he is a talented actor himself and he is well-
versed in dramatic art of Temerant. Daeonica mentioned later in the
episode is one of major plays in this world.

Comprehension 1. How does Fela feel about having been rescued by

Kvothe?
2. Why do Kvothe and Fela mention several fictional
characters?
3. What does the gift Fela gives to Kvothe
characterize her?
4. What does Kvothe feel when he spots Denna?
 Discussion 1. What do we learn about Kvothe from the way he
speaks?
2. What does Fela’s speech reveal about her?
3. How does the author convey strong emotions and
spontaneity of conversation in this dialogue?
4. Do you sympathise with Kvothe or with Fela? Do
you think you’d say similar things if you were him /
her?
5. Look at the illustrations Echo Chernik made for a
card deck featuring characters from “The Name of
the Wind”. Do you like such style? Why / why
not?

Left to right: young Kvothe, Fela, Ambrose

Language Practice
Task 2: Vocabulary
The sentences below are taken from the website Goodreads where
readers write reviews about all kinds of literature. This is a selection from
reviews about “The Name of the Wind”. Translate the sentences into your
first language, paying special attention to the words in bold.
1. The narration is extremely engaging but there are probably only around
20 pages of action scenes in total.
2. The part that captivated me more than anything else in the book was its
depiction of music.
3. Kvothe is one of the most compelling characters I’ve ever come across in
literature. This is how an unreliable narrator is supposed to be crafted. I
have no idea how much of his story I’m supposed to believe, but I
choose to believe the vast majority because he’s just so convincing.
4. The Arcanum is a vibrant setting, well conceptualized and easy to see in
your mind’s eye as you read. The portrayal of music is impeccable.
5. Action and plot aren’t used as a blatant hook to force you to keep
reading.
6. While some reviewers have complained of slow pacing, I had no
problem at all. If I had to point to a weakness, it would be that some of
Rothfuss’ antagonists feel a bit two-dimensional. Kvothe’s foes at the
University are nasty, petty, and often a little dim.
7. This book (audiobook) was so enthralling that I could barely put it down
and managed to listen to 27 hours of audio in just ten days! The narrator
for the audiobook Nick Podehl was excellent. He had a great array of
voices and accents. He even managed to squeeze in an acceptable
Scottish accent for one character!
8. I think in all, while I liked the ambition to the story and it is a favorite
type of longwinded not-too-demanding story, I do not have much respect
for the mechanics of the storytelling here.

Task 3: Discussion
Work in pairs. Choose a book you have recently read and describe
your impressions using some of the words in the word cloud above.
Writing: Book Recommendations
Watch “My Top 10 Favorite Fiction Books” (a YouTube video by
a popular American vlogger Thomas Frank). While watching, put
down some words and expressions that may be useful for your own
book recommendations.
In the end Thomas asks the audience for book recommendations. Write a
script and then record a short video recommending one book that you think
Thomas might like.

Project
People with Many Voices
There are fictional characters who have several identities, each with
his or her own idiolect. In cinema, actors may play several different roles
within one film, completely transforming into new personalities. In
audiobooks, narrators often impersonate a range of characters by changing
their voices and putting on various accents. Choose one of such works and
analyse how dialogues are presented in it. Make sure to provide examples
during your presentation.

“Split” is a 2016 American psychological thriller starring James McAvoy,

who plays a man with 23 different personalities.
 UNIT 13
When Your Child Learns to Speak: Parents, Children and Language
Lead in
 Do you remember when you learnt to speak and what (if any) problems
did you encounter in the process? If not, interview your parents or other
relatives about it and tell your story in class.
 What problems do contemporary parents face? Are they different from
the problems their own parents used to have or are they essentially the
same?
 Consider the quotes below. What messages do they convey? Do they
contradict each other? What is your opinion about the influence of what
parents say and how they say it on children?

Challenges of Contemporary Parenting

According to Zoe Williams, the author “The Madness of Modern
Parenting”, parents in the developed countries make “almighty fuss about
everything”. She writes that it looks like madness from outside: “When
junior has graduated to eating food and sleeping normally, as all animals are
wont, his or her every waking hour has to be filled with education and
improvement. His or her progress must be chanted constantly; the boasting
is shameless. All considerations of modesty and simple manners are
instantly jettisoned, in favour of telling near strangers that you think your
five-year-old might have an aptitude for Mandarin. Every hour must be
distended to contain more opportunities for growth. It looks weirdly
unnatural, lightless, this kind of parenting; I imagine it producing etiolated
children, their knowledge incredibly long and thin.” Indeed, one of the most
noticeable changes about contemporary parenting is that it has become
more intense and all-encompassing: it is often regarded as one of the most
important jobs a person can do. The information, guidance, research and
tips that are offered on the subject are bountiful. It is one of the biggest
challenges of a modern parent, therefore, to cope with information overload
and make sensible choices.
Balancing work and family is another serious challenge since the number of
stay-at-home parents has considerably decreased in comparison with
previous generations. The problem of communication and bridging the
generation gap, although timeless, is more pronounced today due to the fact
that the progress is very rapid and the differences between generations are
numerous. Psychological aspects of parenting should also be mentioned: the
feelings of guilt and disappointment are common problems that parents
have to learn to cope with.
Fiction has always been sensitive to this theme: the drama of family life has
been in the limelight since the times of Ancient Greece. Contemporary
authors address a wide range of issues apart from the generation gap and
psychological pitfalls: dysfunctional families, child abuse, childhood
traumas, different patterns of parenting, sibling rivalry, etc. The Victorian
vision of childhood as pure and innocent has been questioned and
reconsidered, and new insights into parent-children relationships have been
sought and offered.

Task 1
Read an excerpt from “Deaf Sentence” by David Lodge. The story is
narrated by a retired professor of linguistics who is going deaf. His
grandchild Daniel is learning to speak. Compare the protagonist’s attitude
with that of Daniel’s mother, Marcia.
I thought about watching the News at Ten but the news is so depressing
these days - bombings, murders, atrocities, famines, epidemics, global
warming – that one shrinks from it late at night; let it wait, you feel, till the
next day’s newspaper and the cooler medium of print. So I came back into
the study and checked my email – ‘No New Messages’; and then I decided
to write an account of my conversation, or rather non-conversation, with the
woman at the ARC private view, which in retrospect seemed rather amusing,
though stressful at the time. First I did it in the usual journal style, then I
rewrote it in the third person, present tense, the kind of exercise I used to
give students in my stylistics seminar. First person into third person, past
tense into present tense, or vice versa. What difference does it make to the
effect? Is one method more appropriate to the original experience than
another, or does any method interpret rather than represent experience?
Discuss.
In speech the options are more limited – though my step-grandson Daniel,
Marcia’s child, hasn’t learned this yet. He’s two years old, two and a half,
and has quite a good vocabulary for his age, but he always refers to himself
declaratively in the third person, present tense. When you say it’s time for
bed, he says, ‘Daniel isn’t tired.’ When you say, ‘Give Grandad a kiss,’ he
says, ‘Daniel doesn’t kiss granddads.’ Pronouns are tricky for kids, of
course, because they’re shifters, as we say in the trade, their meaning
depends entirely on who is using them: ‘you’ means you when I say it, but
me when you say it. So mastery of pronouns always comes fairly late in the
child’s acquisition of language, but Daniel’s exclusive use of the third person
at his age is rather unusual. Marcia is anxious about it and asked me if I
thought it was possibly a symptom of something, autism for instance. I asked
her if she referred to herself in the third person when speaking to Daniel,
like ‘Mummy is tired’, or ‘Mummy has got to make the dinner’, and she
admitted that she did occasionally. ‘You mean, it’s my fault?’ she said, a
little resentfully. ‘I mean he’s imitating you,’ I said. ‘It’s quite common. But
he’ll soon grow out of it.’ I told her that Daniel’s sentences were remarkably
well-formed for his age, and that I was sure he would soon learn to use
pronouns. I actually find it charming, the way he says, ‘Daniel is thirsty,’
‘Daniel doesn’t tidy up,’ ‘Daniel is shy today,’ with a perceptible pause for
thought before he speaks. It has an almost regal gravity and formality, as if
he were a little prince or dauphin. Dauphin Daniel I call him. But young
parents, educated middle-class ones anyway, are very jumpy these days, they
get so much information from the media about all the things that could be
wrong with their child – autism, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, allergies,
obesity and so on – they’re in a constant state of panic, watching their
offspring like hawks for warning signs. And it’s catching: I’m far more
anxious about the baby Anne is expecting than I was about any of Maisie’s
pregnancies. Thirty-seven is late to give birth for the first time.
Which of the challenges of modern parenting are discussed in this excerpt?
Do you have small children among your relatives? Describe their language
acquisition and their parents’ reaction to it.
Task 2
Read an excerpt from “The Casual Vacancy” by J.K.Rowling. One of the
many families portrayed in the novel is a family of Indian origin: the parents
are doctors and their three children are at school. Sukhvinder is very
unhappy: unlike her siblings, she is not good at studies and unpopular at
school (she is constantly bullied by some of her peers). Read the excerpt
and comment on Sukhvinder’s relationship with her mother.
Hairy, heavy and stupid. Plain and clumsy. Lazy, according to her mother,
whose criticism and exasperation rained down upon her daily. A bit slow,
according to her father, who said it with an affection that did not mitigate his
lack of interest. He could afford to be nice about her bad grades. He had
Jaswant and Rajpal, both top of every class they took.
‘Poor old Jolly,’ Vikram would say carelessly, after glancing through her
report.
But her father’s indifference was preferable to her mother’s anger.
Parminder did not seem able to comprehend or accept that she had
produced a child who was not gifted. If any of the subject teachers made the
slightest hint that Sukhvinder might try harder, Parminder seized upon it in
triumph.
‘“Sukhvinder is easily discouraged and needs to have more faith in her
abilities.” There! You see? Your teacher is saying you don’t try hard
enough, Sukhvinder.’Of the only class in which Sukhvinder had reached the
second set, computing – Fats Wall was not there, so she sometimes dared
put up her hand to answer questions – Parminder said dismissively, ‘The
amount of time you children spend on the internet, I’m surprised you’re not
in set one.’
Compare Sukhvinder’s father’s and mother’s attitude to their daughter.
Why did she feel her mother’s attitude was worse?
What would you do, if one of your children didn’t do as well in school as
the others? Role play the situation in class.

Exploring Generation Gap

It is hard to establish when one generation ends and another begins. Yet it is
widely accepted nowadays to speak of 5 generations, living in the world
today, although the age boundaries between them may differ from source to
source. The year classification below is given according to “Cultural
Perspectives on Millennials” (2018):
 Silent Generation (Traditionalists) 1922 – 1943

Baby Boomers 1944 – 1964

Generation X (Gen X) 1965 – 1980

Millennials (Gen Y) 1981 – 1994

Generation Z (Gen Z / Centennials) 1995 – present

People born before 1922 are sometimes called “the Greatest generation”. It
is Millennials, however, who are considered to be the most influential
generation today: they are often viewed as “trailblazers” and trendsetters for
other generations. Marketers extensively use the Millennial mindset and
behaviour for advertising and predicting the behaviour of other generations.
The following features are typically associated with Millennials:
 They embrace technology and diversity.
 They are more educated and affluent than other generations.
 They are obsessed with their careers.
 They give up on traditional marriage.
 They prefer to dress well and care about their appearance.
 They are often self-absorbed and narcissistic.

Discussion.
Work in groups. Discuss which generation you belong to:
 If you belong to Millennials, do you recognise yourself in these
characteristics? Browse the Internet to add more information on the
Millennial mindset.
 If you belong to a different generation, find out what characteristics are
associated with it. Compare and contrast them with those of Millennials.
 What generation do your parents belong to? Describe the generation gap
between them and yourself.
How to Tell the Story of One’s Life
Ted Chiang
(born in 1967) is
an American
science fiction
writer of
Chinese origin.
Chiang has
written several
short stories and
novellas and he
has won
numerous science fiction awards for them, including Nebula, Hugo and
Locus awards. His novella “Story of Your Life”, published in the 2002
collection “Stories of Your Life and Others”, was adapted into the film
“Arrival” (2016), which gained critical and commercial success. In his stories
Chiang makes extensive use of science, including mathematics, physics and
linguistics.
“Story of your life” centres on Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist who was
recruited by the U.S. army to establish contact with the aliens (heptapods)
that had arrived on Earth. Louise studies both the sounds heptapods make
and their written speech and makes several important discoveries about
them, the most important of which is that these two modes of speech are
not interconnected. She masters their Heptapod B, written speech, which
consists of complex chains of semagrams that do not follow any linear order.
As she uses the language, she starts thinking in the same way: in
directionless trains of thought, where causes are consequences are
interchangeable. This affects her perception of time: she can now
“remember the future”, in particular her daughter’s whole life. The story is
narrated in the first person, while the daughter is the second-person “you”.
The story of her daughter’s life is narrated with the help of future tenses,
while the plotline of Louise’ contact with heptapods and learning their
language is given in the past tenses. Before he attempted to write this story,
Chiang spent five years studying linguistics.
Read the episodes from the story and say which effect the use of the future
narration produces in them.
Episode 1
It’ll be when you first learn to walk that I get daily demonstrations of the
asymmetry in our relationship. You’ll be incessantly running off somewhere,
and each time you walk into a door frame or scrape your knee, the pain
feels like it’s my own. It’ll be like growing an errant limb, an extension of
myself whose sensory nerves report pain just fine, but whose motor nerves
don't convey my commands at all. It’s so unfair: I’m going to give birth to an
animated voodoo doll of myself. I didn’t see this in the contract when I
signed up. Was this part of the deal?
And then there will be the times when I see you laughing. Like the time
you’ll be playing with the neighbor’s puppy, poking your hands through the
chain-link fence separating our back yards, and you’ll be laughing so hard
you’ll start hiccuping. The puppy will run inside the neighbor’s house, and
your laughter will gradually subside, letting you catch your breath. Then the
puppy will come back to the fence to lick your fingers again, and you’ll
shriek and start laughing again. It will be the most wonderful sound I could
ever imagine, a sound that makes me feel like a fountain, or a wellspring.
Now if only I can remember that sound the next time your blithe disregard
for self-preservation gives me a heart attack.

Discussion 1. What is meant by the “asymmetry” in the

relationship between the mother and the daughter?
Do you think it is always present in parenting?
2. What imagery is used to convey of idea of a
parent’s love for their offspring?
3. How does the tone of the passage change in the
last sentence?

Language Practice
Task 1: Expressing Future
Since there are several ways of expressing future in the English language,
they are sometimes confused.
Look at the table below and explain the difference between these future
situations. Match the examples below with the situations in the table.
 The Present
will / won't (not) going to
Continuous
• Future • Future • Future
predictions predictions arrangements
• Willingness / • Plans
promises

Watch out! You are going to fall!

I am meeting Sue after the class.
She is going to graduate in May.
I think she’ll be shocked by this story.
Don’t worry, I won’t disturb you.
He says he is going to learn Korean.

Work in pairs. Think about what kind of parent you are going to be
in the future (if you already have children, think how your parenting
strategy will change in 5 years-time) and tell your partner about it.

Episode 2
In 1770, Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour ran aground on the coast of
Queensland, Australia. While some of his men made repairs, Cook led an
exploration party and met the aboriginal people. One of the sailors pointed
to the animals that hopped around with their young riding in pouches, and
asked an aborigine what they were called. The aborigine replied, “Kanguru.”
From then on Cook and his sailors referred to the animals by this word. It
wasn’t until later that they learned it meant “What did you say?”
I tell that story in my introductory course every year. It’s almost certainly
untrue, and I explain that afterwards, but it’s a classic anecdote. Of course,
the anecdotes my undergraduates will really want to hear are ones featuring
the heptapods; for the rest of my teaching career, that’ll be the reason many
of them sign up for my courses. So I’ll show them the old videotapes of my
sessions at the looking glass, and the sessions that the other linguists
conducted; the tapes are instructive, and they’ll be useful if we’re ever visited
by aliens again, but they don’t generate many good anecdotes.
When it comes to language-learning anecdotes, my favorite source is child
language acquisition. I remember one afternoon when you are five years
old, after you have come home from kindergarten. You’ll be coloring with
your crayons while I grade papers.
“Mom,” you’ll say, using the carefully casual tone reserved for requesting a
favor, “can I ask you something?”
“Sure, sweetie. Go ahead.”
“Can I be, um, honored?”
I’ll look up from the paper I’m grading. "What do you mean?"
“At school Sharon said she got to be honored.”
“Really? Did she tell you what for?”
“It was when her big sister got married. She said only one person could be,
um, honored, and she was it.”
“Ah, I see. You mean Sharon was maid of honor?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Can I be made of honor?”

Discussion 1. Why does Louise prefer anecdotes from child

language acquisition than from her contacts with
the aliens?
2. Why did her daughter want to be “honoured”?
3. Do you know any other examples of children
confusing / misunderstanding certain words or
phrases (in English or your first language)?
Language Practice
Task 2: The Future Continuous
The Future Continuous tense is used to express an action that will be in
progress at a definite time in the future.
Juan has a very close-knit family. When he arrives in Buenos Aires
tomorrow, his whole family will be waiting for him at the airport.
Work in pairs. Tell your partner what you will be doing at certain times the
next day.

Episode 3
I remember one day during the summer when you’re sixteen. For once, the
person waiting for her date to arrive is me. Of course, you’ll be waiting
around too, curious to see what he looks like. You’ll have a friend of yours,
a blond girl with the unlikely name of Roxie, hanging out with you, giggling.
“You may feel the urge to make comments about him,” I’ll say, checking
myself in the hallway mirror. “Just restrain yourselves until we leave.”
“Don’t worry, Mom,” you’ll say. “We’ll do it so that he won’t know. Roxie,
you ask me what I think the weather will be like tonight. Then I’ll say what I
think of Mom’s date.”
“Right,” Roxie will say.
“No, you most definitely will not,” I’ll say.
“Relax, Mom. He’ll never know; we do this all the time.”
“What a comfort that is.”
A little later on, Nelson will arrive to pick me up. I’ll do the introductions,
and we’ll all engage in a little small talk on the front porch. Nelson is
ruggedly handsome, to your evident approval. Just as we’re about to leave,
Roxie will say to you casually, “So what do you think the weather will be like
tonight?”
“I think it’s going to be really hot,” you’ll answer.
Roxie will nod in agreement. Nelson will say, “Really? I thought they said it
was going to be cool.”
“I have a sixth sense about these things,” you’ll say. Your face will give
nothing away. “I get the feeling it’s going to be a scorcher. Good thing you’re
dressed for it, Mom.”
I’ll glare at you, and say good night.
As I lead Nelson toward his car, he’ll ask me, amused, “I’m missing
something here, aren’t I?”
“A private joke,” I’ll mutter. “Don’t ask me to explain it.”
Discussion 1. Describe how Louise feels during this
conversation. How would you feel if you were in a
similar situation?
2. What role does the dialogue play in this episode?
3. How is non-verbal communication rendered in this
passage?

Sharing In-Jokes
An in-joke (an inside joke or a private joke)
is a joke that is understandable only for the
member of a small group. The equivalent of
an in-joke in video games, TV series and
cinema is called “an Easter egg”. As the
name suggests, sometimes they are well
hidden.
 Are there any in-jokes in your class?
How did they start?
 How do “outsiders” typically react to
inside jokes?

Episode 4
I remember a picture of you taken at your college graduation. In the photo
you’re striking a pose for the camera, mortarboard stylishly tilted on your
head, one hand touching your sunglasses, the other hand on your hip,
holding open your gown to reveal the tank top and shorts you’re wearing
underneath.
I remember your graduation. There will be the distraction of having Nelson
and your father and what’s-her-name there all at the same time, but that will
be minor. That entire weekend, while you’re introducing me to your
classmates and hugging everyone incessantly, I’ll be all but mute with
amazement. I can’t believe that you, a grown woman taller than me and
beautiful enough to make my heart ache, will be the same girl I used to lift
off the ground so you could reach the drinking fountain, the same girl who
used to trundle out of my bedroom draped in a dress and hat and four
scarves from my closet.
And after graduation, you’ll be heading for a job as a financial analyst. I
won’t understand what you do there, I won’t even understand your
fascination with money, the preeminence you gave to salary when
negotiating job offers. I would prefer it if you’d pursue something without
regard for its monetary rewards, but I’ll have no complaints. My own
mother could never understand why I couldn’t just be a high school English
teacher. You’ll do what makes you happy, and that’ll be all I ask for.

Discussion 1. Hoes does Louise feel about her daughter’s

graduation? Which images help convey this
feeling?
2. Do you sympathise with Louises’ attitude to her
daughter’s life choices you’re your opinion, should
parents try to steer their children’s future or should
they leave their offspring to their own devices?

Episode 5
I practiced Heptapod B at every opportunity, both with the other linguists
and by myself. The novelty of reading a semasiographic language made it
compelling in a way that Heptapod A wasn’t, and my improvement in
writing it excited me. Over time, the sentences I wrote grew shapelier, more
cohesive. I had reached the point where it worked better when I didn’t think
about it too much. Instead of carefully trying to design a sentence before
writing, I could simply begin putting down strokes immediately; my initial
strokes almost always turned out to be compatible with an elegant rendition
of what I was trying to say. I was developing a faculty like that of the
heptapods.
More interesting was the fact that Heptapod B was changing the way I
thought. For me, thinking typically meant speaking in an internal voice; as
we say in the trade, my thoughts were phonologically coded. My internal
voice normally spoke in English, but that wasn’t a requirement. The
summer after my senior year in high school, I attended a total immersion
program for learning Russian; by the end of the summer, I was thinking and
even dreaming in Russian. But it was always spoken Russian. Different
language, same mode: a voice speaking silently aloud.
The idea of thinking in a linguistic yet nonphonological mode always
intrigued me. I had a friend born of deaf parents; he grew up using
American Sign Language, and he told me that he often thought in ASL
instead of English. I used to wonder what it was like to have one’s thoughts
be manually coded, to reason using an inner pair of hands instead of an
inner voice.
With Heptapod B, I was experiencing something just as foreign: my
thoughts were becoming graphically coded. There were trance-like moments
during the day when my thoughts weren’t expressed with my internal voice;
instead, I saw semagrams with my mind’s eye, sprouting like frost on a
windowpane.
As I grew more fluent, semagraphic designs would appear fully formed,
articulating even complex ideas all at once. My thought processes weren’t
moving any faster as a result, though. Instead of racing forward, my mind
hung balanced on the symmetry underlying the semagrams. The semagrams
seemed to be something more than language; they were almost like
mandalas. I found myself in a meditative state, contemplating the way in
which premises and conclusions were interchangeable. There was no
direction inherent in the way propositions were connected, no “train of
thought” moving along a particular route; all the components in an act of
reasoning were equally powerful, all having identical precedence.

Discussion 1. Unlike the previous episodes, this one is narrated in

the past. Did it change your perception of the text?
2. How is Louise’ linguistic discovering described in the
excerpt? Did you find it easy to follow and
understand?
3. How are the protagonist’s perception and mental
processes affected by the aliens’ language? What does
the image of mandala contribute to the description of
this change?
4. Do you think / dream in your mother tongue or in
other languages as well? To what extent, in your
opinion, do languages influence the way we think?

Watch the trailer of “Arrival” (or the whole film) and say how
Heptapod B is visualised in it. Do you find it adequate?
Language Practice
Task 3: Vocabulary
Look at the list of expressions relating to speaking and language. What can
you add to this list?
To pick up (a word / phrase), to speak up, to speak the same language, to
speak someone’s language, like talking to a brick wall, to be at a loss for
words, beyond words, in plain English, it’s all Greek to me, loaded
language, watch your language, words fail me.

Work in pairs. Compile short dialogues using the expressions from the box
above. Play the interpreter game: while one pair presents their dialogue,
other students translate it into their first language.
Suggested topics are:
 (mis)communication between parents and children
 learning a new skill
 describing something that has impressed you

Task 4: Discussion
Read the quote below. What did Hilary Clinton mean when she said that?

Think of other examples where important social issues

(discrimination, prejudice, domestic violence, etc.) are expressed
with the help of metaphors relating to language / silence.
Task 5: Reported Questions
When we change direct questions into reported question, it is important to
remember to change the word order back to the affirmative (subject + verb).
To report questions, we use the verbs to ask and to wonder. To report yes /
no question, we also insert if or whether. When there is more of an aspect
of choice, whether is preferable. It is possible to add or not after whether in
reported questions. Study the examples in the table below.

Direct question Reported question

“Where has my youth gone?” She wondered where her youth had
gone.
“Why are you winking at me?” My friend asked me why I was
winking at her.
“When will I be on my feet again?” I asked the doctor when I will be on
my feet again / when I would be on
my feet again.
“Did you find that character She wondered whether I found the
compelling?” character compelling.
“If your husband tells a blatant lie, He asked me whether or not I would
will you call him out on it?” call out my husband if he told a
blatant lie.
“Have you noticed the stain on the My mother asked me if I had noticed
carpet?” the stain on the carpet.

Transform the sentences below using the prompts, as in the example.

What can I do to improve my observation skills? (The student asked
me…) – The student asked me what she could do improve my observation
skills
1. If a book has slow pacing, does it mean it’s bad? (He asked the
professor…)
2. Was he alluding to that strange episode? (I wonder…)
3. Why don’t you stand up to your sisters? (They often ask me… )
4. Will you help me come up with the title for our book club? (She asked
me…)
5. Where did you pick up that phrase? (She asked me…)
6. Will she step in, after all that happened? (I was wondering…)
Writing
The following three entries are taken from mentalfloss.com, where
a list of “30 of the Best Parents in Literature” was published in
2016. Look at the Top 5 and say whether you agree with these
choices.
1. Atticus Finch // To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The widowed father of Jem and Scout, Atticus Finch is one of the great
heroes of American literature. Steering his young children along the path of
moral rectitude is hard in the Jim Crow South, and when Atticus, a lawyer,
unsuccessfully defends an innocent black man from charges that he raped a
white woman, it becomes even more difficult. But his own belief in
rightness, morality, and good, even in the face of an unfair world, is
communicated to his kids—and to the world. His impact on the legal
profession, especially in the South, was also profound: The Atticus Finch
Society, part of the Alabama Law Foundation, was founded to serve the
legal needs of the poor and named after a fictional lawyer who “epitomizes
the type of professional, and person, lawyers strive to be.”
2. and 3. Alex and Kate Murry // A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Tesseracts are real, and Meg and Charles Murry’s scientist father has
disappeared into one—and it’s up to these two brilliant but socially awkward
children to save him. When it was published in 1962, A Wrinkle in Time
was a sci-fi gift to all those nerdy kids out there for whom Star Trek hadn’t
yet been invented. And the Murry parents—beautiful and smart
microbiologist Kate and tesseract physicist Alex—made being scientists seem
so cool. Who wouldn’t want parents like that?
4. and 5. The Weasleys // Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
Harry Potter wanted them to adopt him—and we wouldn’t mind either.
Though Harry was already remarkably well-adjusted for a child who’d been
forced to sleep in a spider-filled cupboard under the stairs, his friendship
with the Weasleys showed him what a loving family really looked like. Mom
Molly was kind, fiercely protective of her children—her battle with Bellatrix
Lestrange in the final book was immensely satisfying—and knitted a mean
jumper. Dad Arthur was slightly bumbling, loved Muggle stuff, and was still
a kid at heart. Best of all, they loved each other as much as they loved their
children.

Without looking at the rest of the list, choose fictional parents and write
your own entry stating why you admire them. Share your writing in class and
check whether there are any overlaps with the list at the site.
Project
Talking about My Generation
Many works of fiction and non-
fiction attempt to capture the
zeitgeist of their epochs and
corresponding generations. Apart from
historical and social contexts, the image of
a particular generation is shaped by the
clothes its representatives wear and the
music they listen to, the way they dance
and the way they speak.
Choose several works (including books,
films, TV series, musicals, songs,
documentaries, comic strips, etc.) that
reflect the values, the visual image, as well
as the language of a particular generation.
Present your findings in class.

In the documentary “My Generation” (2018) Michael Caine, a famous

British actor talks about the most turbulent decade of the 20th century: the
1960s. The film includes both archive footage and interviews with such key
figures as David Bailey, Joan Collins, Sandie Shaw, Twiggy and Paul
McCartney.
 UNIT 14
Contemporary Young Adults: Coming of Age in a Multicultural World

Lead In
 What kinds of stories did you enjoy when you were a teenager? If you
are still a teenager, say whether your book preferences have changed
from your early teens up till now.
 Choose one story that particularly impressed you or significantly
influenced you in your teens and talk about it to the class. Would you
like to reread it? Would you recommend it to your peers?

Coming-of-Age Narratives
A coming-of-age story focuses on a young protagonist, typically a teenager, in
transition from childhood to adulthood. The German term
“Bildungsroman” (“novel of formation”) is often used to describe a novel
that traces the protagonist’s psychological development in the passage from
childhood into maturity. This transition typically includes a number of
experiences, sometimes traumatic, and culminates in establishing of one’s
identity and discovering one’s role in the world.
Coming-of-age narratives are abundant in young adult fiction, a category of
fiction whose target audience embraces readers between 12 and 18 years
old, although the boundaries between children, young adult and adult fiction
have always been vague. Thematically, young adult fiction deals with
teenagers’ everyday life (family life, school, personal relationships,
friendship, etc.) and social problems (poverty, drug addiction, crime, teen
pregnancies, etc.). Styles and genres of young adult fiction are diverse and
include historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, dystopian novels, comics
and other varieties. The format of a personal diary is frequently used.
Numerous young adult novels address the issue of multiculturalism.
According to “Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults” by
Mingshui Cai, such novels are aimed at developing social conscience in
children and teenagers teaching them to empathise with other ethnic groups.
These novels can be culturally conscious (depicting unique features of a
certain group) or “melting pot” narratives where characters of different races
are presented as culturally homogeneous. Cross-cultural fiction reflects
intercultural relationships between different groups.

Task 1
Brainstorm the criteria for setting the boundaries between stories for
children / young adults / adult. Draw a diagram in your notebooks.
age

age

age

Children Young Adults

adults
Task 2
Which of the following popular stories are for young adults? Do you think
that adults / children read them, too?
 The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
 “The Hunger Games” trilogy by Suzanne Collins
 “A Song of Ice and Fire” series by George Martin
 “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” graphical novels by Jeff Kinney
 The Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer

Task 3
Watch a TEDx talk “A Place of Hope: From Refugee Camp to
International Fashion Model” by Halima Aden and explain what role
multiculturalism has played in her life. What does she mention about her
place of birth, Swahili, hijab-wearing, “cliques”?

Language Practice
Task 1: Pronunciation Tips
One of the most challenging consonants for the learners of English is /w/,
especially if there is no such sound in their first languages. It is frequently
pronounced as /v/. Practise pronouncing these consonants using the table
below.
/w/ /v/ /w/ + /v/
word, white, world, war, verse, novel, vibes, wave, over-
wordsmith, wear, volunteer, villain, whelming,
longwinded, whimsical, visceral, captivated, self- everywhere, weave,
wonder, worthy, evident, diverse, riveting, overwork, whatever,
heartwarming, willing, over-hyped, vibrant, wolverine, hand-
twist, obsequious, wimpy, advice, pensive, waving.
window, question, worry. verisimilitude, observant.

Use the following expressions to practice these sounds:

Whatever you say, watch your language!
Words fail me when I try to talk about women.
You’ll get into hot water with your wife over this.
You have to work out who put a spoke in your wheel.
This blank verse is heartwarming and out of this world.
Having to work at the weekend was a bitter pill to swallow.
Work in pairs. Use the words in the table above to compile your own
sentences containing both /w/ and /v/. Take turns to say them.

Reading a Cross-Cultural Story

Julia Alvarez (born in 1950) is a
Dominican-American novelist,
essayist and poet. She spent the
first ten years of her life in the
Dominican Republic, but then
her family was forced to flee the
country because of her father’s
involvement in a political
rebellion against the Trujillo
dictatorship. Since then she has
lived in the USA and has
become one of the most
successful Latina writers in this
country. Alvarez’s stories are
heavily influenced by her
experiences as a Dominican in
the United States and address the issues of cultural assimilation and identity,
for example, in such novels as “How the García Girls Lost their Accents”
(1991) and “Before We Were Free” (2002). In 2009 she received the
Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature.
“Before We Were Free” is a young adult novel set in the Dominican
Republic and the USA during the last months of the Trujillo dictatorship
(1960 – 1961). Rafael Trujillo, also known as El Jefe (The Chief), ruled the
country from February 1930 until his assassination in 1961. The prominent
features of his regime were the personality cult (e.g., city, streets, mountains,
etc. were renamed in his honour) and the use of brutal force to suppress
opposition. The novel portrays the extended family of the 12-year-old Anita
de la Torre, some members of which are involved in the plot to overthrow
El Jefe. Anita attends an American school in the capital of the country and is
generally unaware of what is going on the political scene. As the plot
unfolds, she gradually realises what dictatorship is and starts questioning
what she has previously taken for granted.
Read the episode below and say how the protagonist progresses in the
course of the novel. In the first episode Anita’s cousin Carla has to leave
school in the middle of the lesson because her family has to flee the country
as soon as possible.

Episode 1
“May I have some volunteers?” Mrs. Brown is saying. We are preparing
skits1 for Thanksgiving, two weeks away. Although the Pilgrims never came
to the Dominican Republic, we are attending the American school, so we
have to celebrate American holidays.
It’s a hot, muggy afternoon. I feel lazy and bored. Outside the window, the
palm trees are absolutely still. Not even a breeze. Some of the American
students have been complaining that it doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving when
it’s as hot as the Fourth of July.
Mrs. Brown is looking around the room. My cousin, Carla, sits in the seat in
front of me, waving her arm.
Mrs. Brown calls on Carla, and then on me. Carla and I are to play the parts
of two Indians welcoming the Pilgrims. Mrs. Brown always gives the not-so-
good parts to those of us in class who are Dominicans.
She hands us each a headband with a feather sticking up like one rabbit ear.
I feel ridiculous. “Okay, Indians, come forward and greet the Pilgrims.”
Mrs. Brown motions toward where Joey Farland and Charlie Price stand
with their toy rifles and the Davy Crockett hats they’ve talked Mrs. Brown
into letting them wear. Even I know the pioneers come after the Pilgrims.
“Anita” – she points at me – “I want you to say, ‘Welcome to the United
States.’ ”
Before I can mutter my line, Oscar Mancini raises his hand. “Why the
Indians call it the United Estates when there was no United Estates back
then, Mrs. Brown?”
The class groans. Oscar is always asking questions. “United Estates! United
Estates!” somebody in the back row mimics. Lots of classmates snicker,
even some Dominicans. I hate it when the American kids make fun of the
way we speak English.
“That’s a good question, Oscar,” Mrs. Brown responds, casting a
disapproving look around. She must have heard the whisper as well. “It’s
called poetic license. Something allowed in a story that isn’t so in real life.
Like a metaphor or a simile.”
Just then, the classroom door opens. I catch a glimpse of our principal, and
behind him, Carla’s mother, Tía Laura, looking very nervous. But then, Tía
Laura always looks nervous. Papi likes to joke that if there were ever an
Olympic event for worrying, the Dominican Republic would win with his
sister on the team. But lately, Papi looks pretty worried himself. When I ask
questions, he replies with “Children should be seen, not heard” instead of
his usual “Curiosity is a sign of intelligence.”
Mrs. Brown comes forward from the back of the room and stands talking to
the principal for a minute before she follows him out into the hall, where
Tía Laura is standing. The door closes.
Usually when our teacher leaves the room, Charlie Price, the class clown,
acts up. He does stuff like changing the hands on the clock so that Mrs.
Brown will be all confused and let us out for recess early. Yesterday, he
wrote NO HOMEWORK TONIGHT in big block letters above the date
on the board, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1960. Even Mrs. Brown
thought that was pretty funny.
But now the whole class waits quietly. The last time the principal came to
our classroom, it was to tell Tomasito Morales that his mother was here for
him. Something had happened to his father, but even Papi, who knew Señor
Morales, would not say what. Tomasito hasn’t come back to school since
then.
Beside me, Carla is tucking her hair behind her ears, something she does
when she’s nervous. My brother, Mundín, has a nervous tic, too. He bites
his nails whenever he does something wrong and has to sit on the
punishment chair until Papi comes home.
The door opens again, and Mrs. Brown steps back in, smiling that phony
smile grown-ups smile when they are keeping bad news from you. In a
bright voice, Mrs. Brown asks Carla to please collect her things. “Would
you help her, Anita?” she adds.
We walk back to our seats and begin packing up Carla’s schoolbag. Mrs.
Brown announces to the class that they’ll continue with their skits later.
Everyone is to take out his or her vocabulary book and start on the next
chapter. The class pretends to settle down to its work, but of course,
everyone is stealing glances at Carla and me.
Mrs. Brown comes over to see how we’re doing. Carla packs her
homework, but leaves the usual stay-at-school stuff in her desk. “Are those
yours?” Mrs. Brown points at the new notebooks, the neat lineup of pens
and pencils, the eraser in the shape of the Dominican Republic.
Carla nods.
“Pack it all up, dear,” Mrs. Brown says quietly.
We pack Carla’s schoolbag with everything that belongs to her. The whole
time I’m wondering why Mrs. Brown hasn’t asked me to pack my stuff, too.
After all, Carla and I are in the same family.
Oscar’s hand is waving and dipping like a palm tree in a cyclone. But Mrs.
Brown doesn’t call on him. This time, I think we’re all hoping he’ll get a
chance to ask his question, which is probably the same question that’s in
everyone’s head: Where is Carla going?
Mrs. Brown takes Carla’s hand. “Come along.” She nods to me.
Mrs. Brown leads Carla up the side of the classroom. I follow, afraid I’ll
burst into tears if I catch anyone’s eye. I look up at the portrait of our
Benefactor, El Jefe, which hangs above the classroom, his eyes watching
over us. To his left hangs George Washington in his white wig, looking off
into the distance. Perhaps he is homesick for his own country?
Just staring at El Jefe keeps my tears from flowing. I want to be brave and
strong, so that someday if I ever meet the leader of our country, he’ll
congratulate me. “So, you are the girl who never cries?” he’ll say, smiling
down at me.
Notes
1. Skits are short theatrical sketches.
 Comprehension 1. What holiday is approaching? How are the school
kids going to celebrate it?
2. Why does the teacher introduce the notion of
“poetic license”?
3. What is happening to Carla?
4. What is Anita’s attitude to El Jefe?
Discussion 1. How would you describe the attitude of the teacher
and American kids to the Dominican ones? How
is this reflected in the language?
2. There is “the punishment chair” in Anita’s school.
What do you think of this method of disciplining?
3. The chapter from which the excerpt is taken is
called “The eraser in the shape of the Dominican
Republic”. Can you explain the symbolism of this
title?
4. Do you think that “poetic / artistic license” (e.g.,
changing historic facts or realities to suit the story)
is appropriate in theatrical performances such as
the one described in this episode?

How is the notion of artistic license connected with the willing suspension of
disbelief? (See Unit 3)
Discuss the following types of artistic
license in groups:
 using anachronisms in stories;
 changing historical facts in fiction;
 changing elements of the original
story in translation;
 changing elements of the book in
its film adaptation.
Look at the humoristic portrayal of
“artistic license” on the right. What is the
message of this picture?
What is meant by:
 artistic temperament;
 dubious aesthetic judgments;
 wild conjecture?
Episode 2
In this episode, El Jefe has already been assassinated, and Anita’s father and
uncle have been arrested as the main conspirators. Anita and her mother
had to flee from their home to avoid being arrested as well. They are
currently hiding in their relatives’ house.

June 8, 1961, Thursday, right after supper, in bathroom

During supper tonight, Tía Mari turned on Radio Caribe kind of loud.
Meanwhile, Tío Pepe tuned his shortwave radio to Radio Swan real low
since that station is still illegal, and he and Mami and Tía Mari leaned
forward listening closely to the “real” news. It was like night and day, what
each station was reporting.
CARIBE: The OAS1 is here to help the SIM2 maintain stability.
SWAN: The OAS is here investigating human rights abuses.
CARIBE: Prisoners praise treatment to OAS investigation committee.
SWAN: Prisoners complain of atrocities to OAS investigation committee.
CARIBE: Consul Washburn has been recalled.
SWAN: Consul Washburn has been airlifted by helicopter to protect his
life.

Both stations agreed on one thing: The plot did not work. Pupo, the head of
the army, just wasn’t there to announce the liberation over the radio, and
instead, Trujillo Junior has taken over, and it’s a bloodbath out there. The
SIM are doing house-to-house searches. Over 5,000 people have been
arrested, including family members of the conspirators. I wanted to block
my ears and not listen to this stuff!
Whenever I feel this way, I start writing in my diary so there’s another voice
that I can listen to. A third radio, tuned to my own heart.
So I snuck off to the bathroom with my diary, and soon enough, Mami was
calling me, saying it was rude for me to be off by myself, come join them
and be sociable, but then Tía Mari told her to let me be, that it’s a good
thing that I’m writing, that ever since I started keeping this diary, I’m talking
a lot more3.
It took her saying so for me to realize it’s true.
The words are coming back, as if by writing them down, I’m fishing them
out of forgetfulness, one by one.

June 9, 1961, Friday-evening

Mami has heard from Tío Pepe that Mr. Washburn is back in Washington
and pushing to get Papi and Tío Toni on the OAS list of prisoners
interviewed, as their lives are then much safer. Once the OAS has a name
on record, it’s harder for the SIM to get rid of that individual.
Mami and Tía Mari have begun praying a rosary to the Virgin Mary every
night to take care of all the prisoners, but most especially to take care of
Papi and Tío Toni.
I always kneel with them. But even though I’m talking again, I can’t seem to
fish the words for an Our Father or Hail Mary out of my brain.

June 10, 1961, Saturday, late night

The electricity goes on and off all the time. Tía Mari bought Mami and me
little flashlights. Tonight, a total blackout again. So I’m writing by the light of
this tiny beam.
I never know exactly what time it is anymore – except when the siren sounds
at noon and then again at 6 for curfew. The Mancinis don’t have an electric
clock in their bedroom because it would never tell the right time anyhow.
The kind you wind drives Tía Mari crazy because it tick-tocks too loud. She
says she feels like someone is timing her life.
The truth is, when you live in such close quarters, you find out the most
private things about people – like Tío Pepe always having to wear white
socks to bed or Tía Mari tweezing little hairs from her upper lip.
I wonder what they’ve noticed about me? How I stroke a spot on my left
cheek4 whenever I’m feeling scared or lonely?

June 11, 1961, after supper, second Sunday in hiding

Sundays are especially hard, as that was always the day of our big family
gathering. But we were reduced to just the Garcías and us, then just us, then
just us minus Lucinda, and now it’s even less than a nuclear family, just
Mami and me, like survivors after a bomb drops, a fallout family.
Every day, I ask Mami about Papi and Tío Toni. But on Sundays, I
probably ask her more than once. (No, not “countless times,” like she
accuses me of!)
Today, I promised myself I wouldn’t ask her even once. But by evening, I
couldn’t stand it anymore. Mami, I said, just tell me if they’re okay.
She hesitated. They’re alive, she said, and started crying.
Tía Mari pulled her into the bathroom, and meanwhile I was left alone in
the bedroom with Tío Pepe. We were quiet for a while and then he said,
Anita, one must think positively. That is how the greatest minds in history
have survived tragedy.
I felt like reminding him I’m not one of the greatest minds, but Tío Pepe is
so smart, maybe his advice is worth a try?
I close my eyes and think positively... After a while, a picture pops into my
head of Papi and Tío Toni and me walking on the beach. I’m real little, and
they’re holding me between them and swinging me out over the waves like
they’re going to throw me into the sea, and I’m giggling and they’re laughing,
and Papi is saying, fly, mi hijita, fly, like I am a little kite that is catching the
wind!
Then, like on a birthday, I make a wish: that Papi and Tío Toni will soon be
free and that we will all be together again as a family.

Notes
1. OAS, the Organisation of American States is a continental
organisation that promotes regional solidarity and cooperation among
its member states.
2. SIM, the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (English: Military Intelligence
Service) was the secret police that was used to keep control within the
Dominican Republic during the dictatorship of Trujillo.
3. Due to the stressful atmosphere of her home before the assassination
of Trujillo, Anita stopped talking almost completely.
4. Anita strokes the spot where she was kissed by Oscar, the boy she is
beginning to fall in love with. Oscar is the Mancini’s son and, although
the children are not supposed to know that Anita and her mother are
staying there, Oscar discoverers in anyway and finds a way to
communicate with Anita secretly.
Comprehension 1. Describe the state of affairs in the Dominican
Republic during the time period relevant for the
episode.
2. Which Spanish words are used in the text? Can
you guess their meaning from the context?
3. How is Anita feeling and what is she doing to cope
with the situation?
Discussion 1. Why do you think it is hard for Anita to pray?
2. Do you think that “thinking positively” is a helpful
technique in this situation?
3. Focus on the images of the radio, clock and kite.
What role do they play in the text? Compare
Anita’s memory of her father with the painting
below. Do you think they convey a similar feeling?
4. What does the format of a dairy add to the
narrative?
5. Can you tell from these two episodes that the book
is aimed at young adults? Do you find this a
suitable topic for them and an adequate rendering
of it?
6. Did your country have similar periods in its
history? Have you read any books covering this
period written specially for children / young adults?

The Yellow Kite by Trudi Doyle

Language Practice
Task 2: Must and Have to
Both “must” and “have to” mean “it is necessary to do something”. In
certain contexts, it is possible to use either of them, as in “I must go now / I
have to go now”. But the difference might be important in many situations:
“must” is more personal and reflects the speaker’s conviction about the
necessity of something, while “have to” usually refers to certain
circumstances that make it necessary.
The negative forms “mustn’t” and “don’t have to”, however, are completely
different. “Mustn’t” means that it is necessary not to do it (as in imperative
“don’t do it!”). “Don’t have to” means that there is no need to do it.
Remember that only “have to” can be used in the past and that in questions
it needs an auxiliary verb.
Study the examples in the table below and translate them in your first
language.
MUST HAVE TO
You must think positively (I think it You’ll have to speak up (if you don’t
is necessary that you do it) speak up, nobody will hear you: it’s
too noisy)
You mustn’t put a spoke in her You don’t have to help every friend
wheel (Don’t do it!) in a tight spot (You needn’t do it: it’s
not your responsibility. But you can
if you want to)
(must is not used with the past I had to grab my backpack, hoist it
tenses) onto my back and run as fast as I
could (it was necessary to do it)
Must I always watch my language? Do I have to explain it to you in
plain English?

Finish the sentences below paying attention to the usage of must / have to.
1. You’re barking up the wrong tree again! You really must…
2. Where are you table matters? You mustn’t… (chomp, cram, grab)
3. If you go on like this, I’ll get into hot water with your colleagues. You’ll
have to…
4. When I see modern art, words fail me. I am glad I don’t have to…
5. Your clothes are all crumpled. You have to…
6. It was like talking to a brick wall, really. So I had to…
7. The boat may lurch suddenly. We must…
8. They say the results fell short of my potential. Do I have to…?

Task 3: Vocabulary and Grammar

Work in pairs. Compile short dialogues for each of the sentences below.
You don’t have to look up every word.
I have to admit, it was a bitter pill to swallow.
You must help me: it’ all Greek to me!
You got the wrong end of the stick. Now we must face the consequences.
You must definitely read this book!
I don’t have to be realistic in my art! Haven’t you heard of artistic license?

Writing
When recommending a book for young adults, one should take
their age and interests into consideration. What kind of story
might captivate a contemporary teenager? Choose an English-
language book that you might recommend to teenagers in your country who
study English as a foreign language.
Write a short post for a social network about this book, using the plan
structure you have already employed.
Project
Dear Diary!
The format of a personal diary has allowed numerous authors to
create intimate and heartfelt narratives. One of the most famous
diaries in history is a non-fictional book “The Diary of a Young Girl” written
by Anne Frank when she was in hiding for two years with her family during
the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Among fictional diaries aimed at
young adults the popular examples are the Adrian Mole series by Sue
Townsend and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” by Jeff Kinney. Adult fiction has
also exploited the format, e.g. the Bridget Jones novels by Helen Fielding.
Choose a novel / several novels written as a diary and explore how this
format shapes the narrative. You may compare how different authors
employ this device, focusing on:
 Character presentation
 Imagery and diction
 Tone and atmosphere
Share your findings in class providing handouts with relevant examples.

Jeff Kinney, the author and illustrator of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”, has been
actively creating new titles in the series. In 2018, “The Meltdown”, the
thirteenth book, was published.
 UNIT 15
Over the Hill: Contemporary Society and Old Age
Lead In
 What are your personal definitions of “young”, “middle-aged” and “old”?
What images do you associate with old age?
 Some people claim that it is politically incorrect to speak of “old people”:
they insist on substituting the phrase with “senior citizens”. What is your
attitude to this? What do you say in your first language?
 Think an old fictional character that you admire. Describe his / her
personality to the class.

Inge Löök is a Finnish illustrator, graphic designer and

gardener. She is famous for her “grannies” series, in
which she portrays two upbeat old women, full of
vitality, enthusiasm and apparently enjoying their lives.
Look at some of Löök’s “grannies” and say how they
make you feel.
Exploring old age in fiction
While there is “young adult” literature, there is no specific literary category
targeted at senior readers. Nevertheless, old age is extensively represented in
fiction in a wide range of themes: ageing, retirement, mortality and
anticipation of death, memory and nostalgia, generation gap, etc. Being a
universal theme in literature, fictional portrayals of old age are often
associated with philosophical ruminations and quests for the meaning of life,
as epitomised in Ernest Hemingway’s famous “Old Man and the Sea”. Due
to the achievements in technology and medicine, the world’s population of
people over 65 is growing and so is the awareness of the ageing process, as
well as the interest in its portrayals.
Using an elderly protagonist / narrator enables authors to create diverse
narrative perspectives and plotlines. A very common pattern is an aged
narrator telling about his / her youth and maturity, mulling over past
experiences in retrospect. It is often a coming-of-age story or the whole life
story presented with the wisdom and penetration associated with old age.
Reminiscences and nostalgia frequently set the tone of such narratives.
Sometimes old characters play the stock role of a mentor to a young
protagonist, such as Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter or Granny
Weatherwax to Eskarina Smith (in Terry Pratchett’s “Equal Rites”).
Another remarkable pattern is a feisty elderly protagonist who does not
succumb to old age and breaks away from the confinement (of their body or
situation), sometimes even finding love, as in “Love, Again” by Doris
Lessing.
In spite of many likable elderly characters and reassuring stories, a lot of
prejudice against old age is present in the contemporary world. The practice
of discrimination of older people is called ageism. This issue is actively
discussed in the media and fiction.

Task 1
Think of stories you have read that fit the pattern described above as “an
aged narrator telling about his / her youth and maturity, mulling over past
experiences in retrospect”.
Say whether you enjoyed reading then? Why / why not?
Task 2
Read the excerpts below and say how what imagery is used to talk of
memory / past / reminiscence.
London is a haunted city for me now and I am the ghost that haunts it. As I
go about my business, every street or square or avenue seems to whisper of
an earlier, different era in my history. The shortest trip round Chelsea or
Kensington takes me by some door where once I was welcome but where
today I am a stranger. I see myself issue forth, young again and dressed for
some long forgotten frolic, tricked out in what looks like the national dress
of a war-torn Balkan country. Those flapping flares, those frilly shirts with
their footballers’ collars – what were we thinking of? And as I watch, beside
that wraith of a younger, slimmer me walk the shades of the departed,
parents, aunts and grandmothers, great-uncles and cousins, friends and
girlfriends, gone now from this world entirely, or at least from what is left of
my own life. They say one sign of growing old is that the past becomes more
real than the present and already I can feel the fingers of those lost decades
closing their grip round my imagination, making more recent memory seem
somehow greyer and less bright.
(from “Past Imperfect” by Julian Fellowes)
Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous
blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She
exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky
water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the
family ghosts a kick up the backside.
(from “A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian” by Marine Lewycka
We live in time – it holds us and moulds us – but I’ve never felt I
understood it very well. And I’m not referring to theories about how it
bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I
mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes
regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a
second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us
time’s malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down;
occasionally, it seems to go missing – until the eventual point when it really
does go missing, never to return. I’m not very interested in my schooldays,
and don’t feel any nostalgia for them. But school is where it all began, so I
need to return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to
some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty. If I
can’t be sure of the actual events any more, I can at least be true to the
impressions those facts left. That’s the best I can manage.
(from “The Sense of Ending” by Julian Barnes)
Task 3
Look at the cartoon
on the right.
Which famous
picture is used in it?
What, in your
opinion, is the
message of the
cartoon?

Task 4
Look up current statistics on the world population. What percentage of
population is over 65? Which countries have highest percentage of ageing
population? What are the data for your own country?
Think which prejudices against seniors are typical of your country. Do you
personally share any of them?

Being Old and Breaking Free

Janet Campbell Hale (born in 1946) is a Native American writer and
educator. She has taught at colleges and universities and has been a resident
writer at University of Oregon and University of Washington. She lives in
Coeur d’Alene, Indian reservation in northwestern Idaho. In her writing
Hale explores issues of poverty and abuse, as well as the condition of
women in society and Native American identity. Her short story “Clair” was
included in the anthology “Reckonings. Contemporary Short Fiction by
Native American Women” published by Oxford University Press in 2008.
“Clair” is a story of an elderly Indian woman who, after the death of her
husband, was persuaded by her son Ozzie to leave her home and stay with
him and his wife. After it didn’t work out, she was forced to go to Loma
Vista, a nursing home where the staff treated inmates in an indifferent and
cruel manner. Clair was reminded of a Catholic mission school where she
had to go when she was a little girl: she was treated with equal cruelty there,
being forced to speak English and not her mother tongue and getting
physical punishment for misbehavior. In her childhood she managed to run
away from the school, and now she is determined to escape from Loma
Vista.

Read the excerpts from the story and say how the author combines the
theme of old age and the plight of Native Americans.

Episode One
“I was a fool to have listened to you, Ozzie,” she said to her son on the drive
to Loma Vista. “I would prefer returning to my own home.”
“Don’t start in, Ma. You know you can’t live alone. You need someone to
look after you full time now. Remember poor Mrs. Olson.”
Ozzie, the eldest of her three boys, was no spring chicken himself. His
hairline receded just a bit and he had a double chin and a pot belly. A high
school and college football player, he had gone to fat in middle age. He was
a grandfather himself now.
“It’s okay, Ozzie. I’ll be better off in the home.” She was never that fond of
Maybelle, and no doubt Maybelle knew. She wondered why Ozzie hadn’t
married a girl from back home or one of the girls who was his college
classmate instead of a brassy blond white girl who worked at a hamburger
stand near the UCLA campus. But then who was she to question Ozzie’s
odd choice?
Now, firmly ensconced at Loma Vista, Claire knew better than to rock the
boat in any way. She kept no journal as there was even less privacy than at
Ozzie’s. She tried to keep quiet and cause no stir, to be as unobtrusive as
she could be. She didn’t want anyone to know how she felt. She could end
up like one or the other of the McIvers.
Henry and Martha McIver were the only married couple she ever
encountered at Loma Vista. Mr. McIver didn’t try to hide his anger. “We
were doing just fine, Martha and me, on our own. Our son just got tired of
waiting for us to pass away and decided to put us here and grab control of
our house and land, while he’s still young enough to enjoy it. We were fine.
Our grandson came every other Saturday to help with the yard work and
any heavy lifting we needed to have done. True, my driver’s license was
revoked last year because my vision and reflexes aren’t that good anymore,
but we don’t need to drive. Our neighbors give us lifts into town. The
supermarket delivers for seniors. Sonny Boy has another thing coming if he
thinks he can get away with this!” McIver’s lawyer paid him a couple of visits
at the home (he was going to sue the son and he was going to sue Loma
Vista Nursing Home, he said, for false imprisonment).
But the thing was, McIver was eighty-nine, and no matter how lucid of mind
or spry of body, no court would rule in his favor . . . no court would agree
with him that he would be fine living on his own. And then there was
Martha. Though “only” eighty, Martha, beginning shortly after the birth of
their only child, frequently suffered from depression and now began to show
signs of senility.
One day their grandson told Henry he worried about them. His father was
worried, too, that the old people couldn’t manage on their own anymore.
To set his mind at ease, Henry confided in the young man.
“No need to worry none about us. None at all. See, your grandmother and I
know we’re getting on and it might come to our not being able to manage.
We made a pact. If the going gets too rough and it appears we can’t handle
it anymore, well, keep it to yourself now, don’t mention it to your dad, but
we decided we’re going to check out together. Not some hideous way, now,
so don’t be afraid of any ‘grisly finds,’ but easy-like. Get in our car in the
garage and start the motor. Take some pills. Just go to sleep. Something real
easy-like. So don’t worry about us.” The grandson did tell their son. All in
all, it didn’t seem likely to Claire that any judge would find in Henry and
Martha’s favor.
“And when we get out of here, one of the first things I’m going to do is sue
this damned place for false imprisonment!” Henry said.
[After a while Henry McIver was taken away to a different place and his
wife, Martha, jumped out of the window. Clair went outside to say goodbye
to Martha.]
Later, after the ambulance took the corpse away, Claire snuck out into the
courtyard.
She knelt on the grass beside the spot where Martha had landed. Such a
small person, yet she had left an impression on the ground. The grass lay
flattened. Claire pressed the palm of her hand into the impression. “Now
you’re free, Martha dear,” she whispered.
“Hey, you crazy old bat, what do you think you’re doing?” Mrs. Lacey
grabbed her roughly by the arm and pulled her to her feet. It reminded her
of the nuns when she was a little girl back on the reservation and forced to
go to Catholic mission school. The nuns treated children like that, grabbing,
manhandling, scolding.
She never dreamed she would spend her old age in the same way she had
spent most of her childhood, under lock and key, keeping her guard up at
all times, being rudely spoken to and physically abused. Mrs. Lacey pulled
and pushed, all the while scolding. “You know better than that, Miz
LaFromme. You know good and well you’re not allowed outside without
supervision. I’m going to have to file a report on you now. And, of course,
your son will be told. We’ll tell your son you’re not to be trusted, you
sneaky little thing, you damned old weasel you. Just about had me fooled,
but you’re like all the rest. Can’t trust a one of ya’ damned coots1.”
That was when she first heard her own voice whispering: “ You’ve got to get
out of this place. If it’s the last thing you ever do.” Yes. But how? Probably
every inmate of
Loma Vista had heard at one time or another that same voice in their head,
their own voice saying the same thing. Did anyone ever succeed in running
away? She wondered. “You’ve got to get out of this place! ” it said again, no
longer a mere whisper, but with conviction.
“Yes,” she agreed silently. “Yes.”
Notes
1. A coot means “a foolish old person”.

Discussion 1. What do you think of the McIvers’ situation?

Were their children justified in putting them into a
nursing home? Would you have done the same,
had you been in their position?
2. How does Clair’s mood change and why? What
role do her childhood memories play in this
change?
3. Which words and expressions are used in this
episode to describe old age? What do they add to
the slant of the episode? How is the prejudice
against old age presented?

Language Practice
Task 1: Idioms
Look at the idioms in the table below and translate the examples,
using idiomatic equivalents in your first language.

A spring chicken is a young and Ozzie, the eldest of her three boys,
naïve person. The expression is was no spring chicken himself
often used in the negative: no spring
chicken.
To be over the hill means to be no Teenagers think that when you’re
longer young, past your prime. thirty, you’re over the hill.
To have an old head on young The protagonist is a child prodigy: a
shoulders means being young and real old head on young shoulders,
yet wise and insightful. whose savvy about everything in life
sometimes just stretches your
credulity.
Originating in one of Shakespeare’s The old men sat and reminisced
plays, the expression salad days about their salad days.
refers to one’s carefree time of
innocence and inexperience.
When one is young at heart, one has In her fifties she was young at heart:
a youthful mindset, regardless of the always curious and upbeat.
biological age.
Episode 2
“Look, Granny Claire,” Buddy, Ozzie’s grandson, said, holding up a new
crayon drawing, “do you like it?” Buddy, who was eight, usually came with
Ozzie. Her tupiya.1 The one bright spot in all of this was that she had gotten
to know her tupiya. Buddy, who was very fair-skinned, had dark brown curly
hair and large grey-hazel eyes. No one would ever take him for an Indian. It
didn’t matter. He was her dear tupiya.
“Bring it here, let’s have a look.” She blinked back her tears.
The drawing appeared to be of two people sitting in a giant cup which was
on a giant saucer. One figure wore a baseball cap, the other had two long
braids. Both wore wide grins. She and Buddy were often the subjects of his
drawings. “Is that us?” he nodded. “Why are we sitting in a cup? Is
someone going to drink us?”
“No. We’re at Disneyland and here we’re riding the Mad Hatter’s Tea
Party. Next we’re going to Pirates of the Caribbean.”
“We sure look happy.”
“We are.”
“Ma, I have to go make a phone call, okay. I’ll be back in a few minutes.
You stay with your Gran, Buddy.”
“His tupiya,” Claire corrected her son, who ignored her.
“Okay,” Buddy said. As soon as Ozzie left the room, Buddy said in a very
quiet voice, just barely above a whisper, “Gran, I have something to tell you.
Don’t tell nobody, okay? I’ve got a plan.”
“Okay.”
“When I grow up, I’m going to come here and break you out.”
“How will you do that?”
“I’ll bring a disguise of some kind. We’ll walk right out the front door. Then
we’ll run away. They’ll never find us.”
“Where will we go, Buddy?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking maybe L.A.”
“Why L.A.?”
“Because it’s far away. Because it’s real big. And because it’s close to
Disneyland. After I get a job we’ll go to Disneyland on my days off. We’ll
have a good time.”
“Sounds good to me, Buddy. Sounds great. And thanks. I feel better now
knowing I’m not going to be stuck in this place forever.” Buddy smiled. One
of his front teeth was missing. Maybe he wasn’t eight. Maybe he was seven.
That was the second time she heard her own voice saying, “You’ve got to get
out of this place. And you’re going to have to do it all yourself. Nobody is
going to rescue you. You can’t wait for Buddy to grow up. You have to do it,
Claire. You’re all you’ve got.”
Yes. She already knew. She was all she had.
“I love that picture of us in a teacup, Bud. You know what, I’m not going to
tape this one to the wall. I’m going to keep it in my pocket so I can take it
out and look at it whenever I want.” One wall was covered with Buddy’s
drawings. Mrs. Sullivan said they were an eyesore and when Claire refused
to take them down, Mrs. Sullivan said she was going to complain, was going
to change rooms if she had to. Claire was making waves. She was afraid of
being taken away in the night as Henry McIver was to “someplace else.”
Claire had to get out.
That very evening, just before dinner was brought in, Claire stole into the
room of a man named Arthur, “Hi, Arthur. How’re you doing?”
Arthur narrowed his watery eyes and looked her up and down.
“What do you want?” he asked. He was a skinny little man about her size.
“I want to borrow some clothes from you, okay?” Claire said, opening the
old man’s locker. So spare and neat.
Arthur was not in his right mind, like many, perhaps most, of the inmates of
Loma Vista. He saw goblins and giant nuns and rodeo clowns traipsing
around his room at odd hours. Sometimes he thought he was still a soldier
in France. Sometimes he thought he was a young husband and father and
talked about his kids and his job at the factory. Some days Arthur thought
he was in a POW camp and would refuse to speak at all except to give his
name, rank, and serial number.
Nobody would believe Arthur if he told them Claire had come into his
room, opened his locker door, selected a sports coat, a pair of trousers, a
cotton dress shirt, and a vee-neck pullover sweater (all of which she knew
were there since she’d seen him decked out in these clothes when his
children came to visit, which was only once a year at Christmas). And
besides, he didn’t appear to recognize her today.
Maybe he thought she was an enemy soldier.
Arthur’s clothes fi t her nicely, except for the shoes, which were much too
big. Damn! Well, she had a pair of walking shoes, no heels, very plain.
Maybe they would pass for men’s shoes. She took the folded crayon
drawing Bud had given her, the one depicting the two of them happily riding
in giant cups at Disneyland, and put it in the inside pocket of the sports coat.
Claire decided she would make her break after they collected the dinner
trays. They were busy then and wouldn’t be around again until late evening.
And her cantankerous roommate, Mrs. Sullivan, always took a bath after
dinner.
The dinner trays were brought. Mrs. Sullivan ate her dinner. Then she took
a clean towel from her locker, a bar of soap, her robe. Claire couldn’t let
her leave just yet. She needed Mrs. Sullivan to be gone right after the trays
were collected. She had to dress, then make good her escape. Timing was
important.
“Mrs. Sullivan, tell me, are you sleeping well now?” Mrs. Sullivan frowned at
her.
“Why, yes, I am. Thank you. And I don’t think I’m to blame, not at all, for
your friend’s death. She was the one who chose to jump off the roof. I was
within my rights complaining about that horrid noise she made at night.”
“Of course, Mrs. Sullivan. Of course. Nobody thinks you’re to blame. You
need your rest. We all do.” Mrs. Sullivan left the room as the attendant
swept in and swept the trays away. Claire closed the door behind them. She
couldn’t lock it, though.
Loma Vista doors had no locks on them. She dressed quickly in Arthur’s
clothes and her leather walking shoes and looked at her reflection. “Not
bad, if I do say so myself,’’ she said. She looked like a man, except for the
long braids. They might be a giveaway down here. You didn’t see men, like
up on the reservation, in long braids.
Maybe she could get a hat somewhere and pin them up under it. For now,
though, she was ready. This was it.
The upper half of the window opened outward. She was very slim and, for
an old person, very agile. She made it out onto the ledge. Though they were
on the first floor, still, it was about a twenty-foot drop. She got down on her
knees and got hold of the ledge with both hands and let her body slide down
the outer wall. This way it was only about a ten-foot drop and, with any luck,
she would fall into the flower beds where the earth was damp and soft. She
did. She kept close to the ground and to the building. She cut across a park
and kept walking.
She could feel and hear her heart pounding. Her body, sensing her
excitement, sent adrenaline to her aid to help her out. Fight or flight. She
would rather take flight than put up a fight. Oh, the giddiness! The
exhilaration!
Notes
1. Tupiya in Coeur d’Alene Salish means both “great-grandparent” and
“great-grandchild.”

Discussion 1. What role does the dialogue play in this episode?

2. How is Clair’s escape narrated? Is suspense
created in this episode?
3. What does the phrase “fight or flight” mean? How
is the visceral aspect of Clair’s state rendered?
4. Comment on the importance of Clair’s Indian
origin for the situation.

Task 2: Vocabulary
When ageing is depicted, its physical and mental sides are often
dwelt upon. Vitality or its absence is commented upon: both states
can be described in a number of ways.
Work in pairs. Look at the word cloud below. Consult the dictionary if
necessary. Describe real or fictional old people using these words. Let your
partner guess who you are describing.
Episode 3
For several hours she walked, aided by her fine new walking stick, leisurely
taking in the scenery, which was mostly desert. Once she spotted a
rattlesnake curled up near a pile of boulders. He blended in quite nicely
there. Rattlesnakes were okay, she thought. This one held himself still as
could be. He thought she didn’t see him. He would not strike at her unless
she came near enough to step on him. She had no intention of going near
him.
Garter snakes, the little black things with yellow or red stripes down their
backs, the nonpoisonous “good” snakes that ate pests were the kind she
didn’t like. They were always darting around imposing their presence on
humans as though they didn’t know they were repulsive, as though they
thought themselves cute. Rattlers weren’t like that at all. They knew how to
keep their distance.
When she came to the top of a high hill and saw a winding creek way down
yonder, she headed for it and found a good camping place. She took off her
clothes and washed her underpants and shirt and pullover sweater and
draped them over bushes to dry. She took the elastic fasteners off the ends
of her braids and undid them. Her hair fell loose about her shoulders and
down to her waist in back.
She waded out just a few feet into the icy cold river, until the water was
knee-deep, then she sat down in a spot that had few stones and bathed
herself and rinsed her hair.
Oh, the water was so cold it made her teeth chatter. As soon as she felt clean
enough, she waded back out of the water and lay on her back on a smooth,
flat rock that was very warm. She spread her white hair all around her to dry
in the sun. She felt the sun and warm chinook1 wind on her naked body and
laughed a little to herself.
This was so fine, this moment, so fine. All was perfect, absolutely perfect.
She was alive again and was glad. Life could be good. No, it is good. Despite
everything, despite heartache and loss and meanness and unfairness and the
fact that we all must die, life is good and in these perfect moments we know
the goodness.
Such times occurred most often, it seemed, when she was a child. Once,
seventy-one years ago, she was perfectly content a whole summer.
Notes:
1. Chinook wind is dry, warm, down-slope wind in the interior West of
North America.
Discussion 1. What is the atmosphere of this
episode? What feeling does it evoke
in you?
2. How do you think this story is going
to end?
3. What would be your own “perfect
moment”? Do you think you can only
experience it while you are young or is
it possible to enjoy life to the full in
the old age?
4. Look at the poster on the left. In this
piece, the artist Ernesto Yerena
depicted Helen Red Feather of the
Lakota tribe who showed bravery and
resilience at the Standing Rock
reservation in 2016. She took part in
protests against the Dakota Access
Pipeline that prevented the tribe from
accessing clean water and threatened
the sacred burial grounds. What
imagery is used in this poster? How
would describe its message?

Language Practice
Task 3: Pronunciation Tips
The pronunciation of the voiceless glottal fricative /h/ in English differs from
that in many other languages. Make sure the sound is produced by the
glottis and the air escapes freely through the mouth.
hale, heartwarming, habit, headache, handsome, hideous, handle, whole,
hilarious, hand-waving, hinder, enhance, inhabit
In the weak forms of function words (have, he, his, her, him, etc.) so-called
h-dropping often occurs: the sound ‘h’ is omitted.
Practise h-dropping in the following sentences:
She had no intention of going near him.
She spread her white hair all around her to dry in the sun.
Compile your own phrases using both function words with /h/ and words
from the list above, as in the example:
She thought he had hideous habits.
Offer your phrases to other students for practicing /h/ and h-dropping.

It is important to remember that the letter h is not pronounced in a number

of English words. Read the words below making sure you do not articulate
/h/. Which of these words drops its /h/ only in American English? Which
word has two alternative pronunciations?
hour, vehicle, annihilate, Graham, honour, hauteur, rhetoric, herb,
rheumatism, heir, honorific, exhibition, vehement, hors d’oeuvre, forehead,
honest, exhaust, rhythm, haute couture
Which of these words are hard for you to articulate? Work with your
classmates to create tongue-twisters or poems to help you remember the
correct pronunciation.

Task 4: Talking about Age

Study the phrases in the table below containing expressions with the word
“age” and translate the example into your language.
Age is used as a verb meaning “to She has aged gracefully.
get older” or “to make older”. The The stressful job aged my grandfather
gerund / participle form can be prematurely.
both ageing and aging. My hobbies help me keep my mind off
ageing.
To come of age is to reach He stayed with the foster family until
maturity. he came of age.
To look one’s age means to have My aunt is pushing 50, but she doesn’t
an appearance that is generally look her age.
expected by this age. He is on the wrong side of 60 and he
looks it.
When someone has reached a In spite of witnessing two wars, my
very old age, it is said they lived to great-grandmother lived to the ripe old
the ripe old age of 80/90/100, etc. age of 98.
When something of interest He won his first music competition at
happened someone did something the tender age of 11.
particular at a young age, the The twins were forced to leave home at
phrase at the tender age of 5 / 7/ the tender of 14.
10, etc. is used.
Ageism / agism is discrimination There is a lot of digital ageism
on the basis of age, especially nowadays: senior people are
against older people. represented as unable to use
technology and especially the Internet
properly.
“Age before beauty” is a You go first. As they say, age before
humorous way to tell someone beauty.
who is older to go before someone
younger. It is often used ironically
and playfully.
“Act you age!” generally means Don’t be such a baby, act your age!
“act in a mature way”.

Give more examples of ageism in contemporary society. Working in pairs,

compile short dialogues, in which prejudices connected with old age are
exposed. Use the expressions from the table above and the vocabulary given
earlier in this unit.

Writing
Imagine that you have heard your older relative or acquaintance
complain that all books / films seem to be about young people,
while old age is presented as ridiculous / pitiful. Think which book
/ film / TV series you could recommend to this person. Write an email to
them, explaining your choice. Focus on the character of the protagonist /
character that you want specifically to draw your addressee’s attention to.
Here are some ideas that you might use:

The story is touching / witty / hilarious / uplifting / reassuring / inspiring /

liberating because…
The novel is a comment on the fear of mortality / people’s indifference
to the elderly / fallibility of memory in advanced age.
The author gives a detailed description of the life of old people / ageing
process / a nursing home that…
You should definitely read the story because the character of … is very
upbeat / feisty / lively / resilient / undaunted by age
I am sure you’ll enjoy the character of… because despite his / her age…
 The story attacks stereotypical portrayals of old people as feeble /
ridiculous / useless
It is a classic of its kind with the timeless message of… but with a novel
and positive approach to ageing
All in all, it is well worth reading since it conveys the sense of… / idea of…

Project
The Young and the Old
Many stories portray special relationships between the young and
the old. They draw heavily on the contrast between two age groups,
juxtaposing their innocence and experience. The relationship can be fueled
by mutual respect and love or, on the contrary, by antagonism and
generation gap. Find such pairs in fiction and research the dynamics of the
relationship. Share your conclusions in class.

The American TV series “Young Sheldon” puts an emphasis on the

relationship between a child prodigy Sheldon Cooper and his grandmother,
“Meemaw”, who refuses to act her age and become a stereotypical “granny”.