Questions and tasks
Questions:
1. Point out the difference between the author’s narrative proper and the entrusted narrative.
2. What are the forms of the entrusted narrative?
3. Comment on the main functions of the image of the author.
4. What are the means of speech characterization of a personage?
5. What are the forms of interior speech?
6. Speak on represented speech and its different types.
7. Stream of consciousness and its functions.
8. Speak on narrative compositional forms. Which are static and which are dynamic?
Task 1
This practice exercise is based on a story by Dorothy Parker. The story has two planes of narration, which is made obvious by the usage of italics. Read the lines in italics first and restore the whole picture of the described event as you see it.
1. What text presentation device are the lines an example of? Support your ideas by analysing the language of the utterances.
2. Read the whole of the story and say whether its outcome has met your expectation. Find and comment on different types of narration and compositional forms in the story.
THE WALTZ
By Dorothy Parker
Why, thank you so much. I'd adore to.
I don't want to dance with him. I don't want to dance with anybody. And even if I did, it wouldn't be him. He'd be well down among the last ten. I've seen the way he dances; it looks like something you do on Saint Walpurgis Night. Just think, not a quarter of an hour ago, here I was sitting, feeling so sorry for the poor girl he was dancing with. And now I'm going to be the poor girl. Well, well. Isn't it a small world?
And a peach of a world, too. A true little corker. Its events are so fascinatingly unpredictable, are not they? Here I was, minding my own business, not doing a stitch of harm to any living soul. And then he comes into my life, all smiles and city manners, to sue me for the favor of one memorable mazurka. Why, he scarcely knows my name, let alone what it stands for. It stands for Despair, Bewilderment, Futility, Degradation, and Premeditated Murder, but little does he wants. I don't want his name, either; I haven't any idea what it is. Jukes would be my guess from the look in his eyes. How do you do, Mr. Jukes? And how is that dear little brother of yours, with the two heads?
Ah, now why did he have to come around me, with his low requests? Why can't he let me lead my own life? I ask so little – just to be left alone in my quiet corner of the table, to do my evening brooding over all my sorrows. And he must come, with his bows and his scrapes and his may-I-have-this-ones. And I had to go and tell him that I'd adore to dance with him. I cannot understand why I wasn't struck right down dead. Yes, and being struck dead would look like a day in the country, compared to struggling out a dance with this boy. But what could I do? Everyone else at the table had got up to dance, except him and me. There was I, trapped. Trapped like a trap in a trap.
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What can you say, when a man asks you to dance with him? I most certainly will not dance with you, I'll see you in hell first. Why, thank you, I'd like to awfully, but I'm having labor pains. Oh, yes, do let's dance together – it's so nice to meet a man who isn't a scaredy-cat about catching my beri-beri. No. There was nothing for me to do, but say I'd adore to. Well, we might as well get it over with. All right, Cannonball, let's run out on the field. You won the toss; you can lead.
Why, I think it's more of a waltz, really. Isn't it? We might just listen to the music a second. Shall we? Oh, yes, it's a waltz. Mind? Why, I'm simply thrilled. I'd love to waltz with you.
I'd love to waltz with you. I'd love to waltz with you. I'd love to have my tonsils out, I'd love to be in a midnight fire at sea. Well, it's too late now. We're getting under way. Oh. Oh, dear. Oh, dear, dear, dear. Oh, this is even worse than I thought it would be. I suppose that's the one dependable law of life – everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be. Oh, if I had any real grasp of what this dance would be like, I'd have held out for sitting it out. Well, it will probably amount to the same thing in the end. We'll be sitting it out on the floor in a minute, if he keeps this up.
I'm so glad I brought it to his attention that this is a waltz they're playing. Heaven knows what might have happened, if he had thought it was something fast; we'd have blown the sides right out of the building. Why does he always want to be somewhere that he isn't? Why can't we stay in one place just long enough to get acclimated? It's this constant rush, rush, rush, that's the curse of American life. That's the reason that we're all of us so – Ow! For God's sake, don't kick, you idiot; this is only second down. Oh, my shin. My poor, poor shin that I've had ever since I was a little girl!
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Oh, no, no, no. Goodness, no. It didn't hurt the least little bit. And anyway it was my fault. Really it was. Truly. Well, you're just being sweet, to say that. It really was all my fault.
I wonder what I'd better do – kill him this instant, with my naked hands, or wait and let him drop in his traces. Maybe it's best not to make a scene. I guess I'll just lie low, and watch the pace get him. He can't keep this up indefinitely – he's only flesh and blood. Die he must, and die he shall, for what he did to me. I don't want to be of the over-sensitive type, but you can't tell me that kick was unpremeditated. Freud says there are no accidents. I've led no cloistered life, I've known dancing partners who have spoiled my slippers and torn my dress; but when it comes to kicking, I am Outraged Womanhood. When you kick me in the shin, smile.
Maybe he didn't do it maliciously. Maybe it's just his way of showing his high spirits. I suppose I ought to be glad that one of us is having such a good time. I suppose I ought to think myself lucky if he brings me back alive. Maybe it's captious to demand of a practically strange man that he leave your shins as he found them. After all, the poor boy's doing the best he can. Probably he grew up in the hill country, and never had no larnin'. I bet they had to throw him on his back to get shoes on him.
Yes, it's lovely, isn't it? It's simply lovely. It's the loveliest waltz. Isn't it? Oh, I think it's lovely, too.
Why, I'm getting positively drawn to the Triple Threat here. He's my hero. He has the heart of a lion, and the sinews of a buffalo. Look at him – never a thought of the consequences, never afraid of his face, hurling himself into every scrimmage, eyes shining, cheeks ablaze. And shall it be said that I hung back? No, a thousand times no. What's it to me if I have to spend the next couple of years in a plaster cast? Come on, Butch, right through them! Who wants to live forever?
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Oh. Oh, dear. Oh, he's all right, thank goodness. For a while I thought they'd have to carry him off the field. Ah, I couldn't bear to have anything happen to him. I love him. I love him better than anybody in the world. Look at the spirit he gets into a dreary, commonplace waltz; how effete the other dancers seem, beside him. He is youth and vigor and courage, he is strength and gaiety and – Ow! Get off my instep, you hulking peasant! What do you think I am, anyway – a gangplank? Ow!
No, of course it didn't hurt. Why, it didn't a bit. Honestly. And it was all my fault. You see, that little step of yours – well, it's perfectly lovely, but it's just a tiny bit tricky to follow at first. Oh, did you work it up yourself? You really did? Well, aren't you amazing! Oh, now I think I've got it. Oh, I think it's lovely. I was watching you do it when you were dancing before. It's awfully effective when you look at it.
It's awfully effective when you look at it. I bet I'm awfully effective when you look at me. My hair is hanging along my cheeks, my skirt is swaddled about me, I can feel the cold damp of my brow. I must look like something out of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” This sort of thing takes a fearful toll of a woman my age. And he worked up his little step himself, he with his degenerate cunning. And it was just a tiny bit tricky at first, but now I think I've got it. Two stumbles, slip, and a twenty-yard dash; yes. I've got it. I've got several other things, too, including a split shin and a bitter heart. I hate this creature I'm chained to. I hated him the moment I saw his leering, bestial face. And here I've been locked in his noxious embrace for the thirty-five years this waltz has lasted. Is that orchestra never going to stop playing? Or must this obscene travesty of a dance go on until hell burns out?
Oh, they're going to play another encore. Oh, goody. Oh, that's lovely. Tired? I should say I'm not tired. I'd like to go on like this forever.
I should say I'm not tired. I'm dead, that's all I am. Dead, and in what a cause! And the music is never going to stop playing, and we're going on like this, Double-Time Charlie and I, throughout eternity. I suppose I won't care any more, after the first hundred thousand years. I suppose nothing will matter then, not heat nor pain nor broken heart nor cruel, aching weariness. Well. It can't come too soon for me.
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I wonder why I didn't tell him I was tired. I wonder why I didn't suggest going back to the table. I could have said let's just listen to the music. Yes, and if he would, that would be the first bit of attention he has given it all evening. George Jean Nathan said that the lovely rhythms of the waltz should be listened to in stillness and not be accompanied by strange gyrations of the human body. I think that's what he said. I think it was George Jean Nathan. Anyhow, whatever he said and whoever he was and whatever he's doing now, he's better off than I am. That's safe. Anybody who isn't waltzing with this Mrs. O'Leary's cow I've got here is having a good time.
Still if we were back at the table, I'd probably have to talk to him. Look at him – what could you say to a thing like that! Did you go to the circus this year, what's your favorite kind of ice cream, how do you spell cat? I guess I'm as well off here. As well off as if I were in a cement mixer in full action.
I'm past all feeling now. The only way I can tell when he steps on me is that I can hear the splintering of bones. And all the events of my life are passing before my eyes. There was the time I was in a hurricane in the West Indies, there was the day I got my head cut open in the taxi smash, there was the night the drunken lady threw a bronze ash-tray at her own true love and got me instead, there was that summer that the sailboat kept capsizing. Ah, what an easy, peaceful time was mine, until I fell in with Swifty, here. I didn't know what trouble was, before I got drawn into this dance macabre. I think my mind is beginning to wander. It almost seems to me as if the orchestra were stopping. It couldn't be, of course; it could never, never be. And yet in my ears there is a silence like the sound of angel voices…
Oh, they've stopped, the mean things. They're not going to play any more. Oh, darn. Oh, do you think they would? Do you really think so, if you gave them twenty dollars? Oh, that would be lovely. And look, do tell them to play this same thing. I'd simply adore to go on waltzing.
Task 2
Analyse the story in the terms to follow.
1. Pay attention to other graphical stylistic means, not discussed earlier. What’s their function?
What does this sentence contain an instance of:
“Probably he grew up in the hill country, and never had no larnin”?
2. Can this story be called a classical piece of prose? If not, why?
3. What is soliloquy? What features differentiate it from dialogue and monologue? What form of literature is it a sign of?
4. Find lexical units belonging to different strata of vocabulary and explain the reason of this diversity.
5. Find examples of interjections and account for their frequency.
6. Comment on the tense system of the story.
7. Comment on the syntax of the story. Characterise sentences in terms of their length, completeness, and the distribution of members.
What kinds of questions are used and why?
Find examples of repetition. Name the type and explain the author’s liking for this very type in this or that situation. How do they contribute to the coherence and cohesion of the story?
8. Dorothy Parker is renowned for her scathing humour. What kinds of irony are present in the story?
Find examples of the heroine’s devastating irony. How do they characterise the personage?
Pick out the names the girl dubs her partner. What does she call herself? Name the stylistic device.
What is their dance compared with? Name stylistic devices based on comparison.
Find epithets, metaphors and similes describing the dancers?
How does play on words assist in producing an ironical effect?
9. Find examples of hyperbole used to depict the girl’s growing irritation and her attitude to what is happening.
10. Find cases of allusion and say how they contribute to the vividness of narration.
11. Analyse the changes in the heroine’s mood form passage to passage. Pay special attention to the swings of tonality in adjacent paragraphs belonging to different types, such as here:
“Ow! For God's sake, don't kick,you idiot; this is only second down. Oh, my shin. My poor, poor shin that I've had ever since I was a little girl!
Oh, no, no, no. Goodness, no. It didn't hurt the least little bit. And anyway it was my fault. Really it was. Truly. Well, you're just being sweet, to say that. It really was all my fault.”
12. Find examples of gradation. Define the type. What other stylistic devices is it combined with? How does the usage of climax help to portray the girl or/and the boy?
13. Identify the structural elements of the composition of the story.
14. What makes the heroine lie? Should she have told the boy that she was tired and in the first place had had no wish to dance with him at all?
15. Is there a third plane of narration present in the story? Do you consider sentences like these nothing but a chain of exaggerations?
“I hate this creature I'm chained to. I hated him the moment I saw his leering, bestial face. And here I've been locked in his noxious embrace for the thirty-five years this waltz has lasted. Is that orchestra never going to stop playing? Or must this obscene travesty of a dance go on until hell burns out?”
Find other similar examples and give your version of the interpretation of the story.
Was the waltz the first dance the characters were partners in?
16. Is the heroine fair in her attitude to the partner?
17. Sum up your ideas about the girl and the boy in character sketches.
18. Is the author optimistic about male-female relations? Do you agree with her?
19. Identify the theme and the message of the story.
RECOMMENDED LITERATURE:
1. Кухаренко В.А. Интерпретация текста, 1988. С.133-188.
2. Кухаренко В.А. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. pp. 100-108.
3. Кухаренко В.А. Seminars in Style. pp. 100-102.
UNIT 12
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