As English Short Stories Summary

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS AS LITERATURE IN post SYLLABUS 9695 NOTES FOR TEACHERS ON STORIES SET FOR STUDY FROM STORIES OF OURSELVES THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS ANTHOLOGY OF SHORT STORIES IN ENGLISH FOR EXAMINATION IN JUNE AND NOVEMBER 2010, 2011 AND 2012 CONTENTS Introduction How to use these notes 1. The slide by of the House of shewEdgar Allen Poe 2. The Open BoatStephen ext displace 3. The Door in the WallHG swell 4. The slew BeforeMaurice Shadbolt 5. A horse and both GoatsRK Narayan 6. tripPatricia lard 7.To Da-Duh, In MemoriamPaule Marshall 8. Of duster Hairs and CricketRohinton Mistry 9. SandpiperAhdaf Soueif 10. TyresAdam Thorpe These notes argon intended to give some background information on to each one author and/or paper as an aid to hike research and to stimulate discussion in the classroom. They are intended hardly as a starting point and are no flip-flop for the teachers and students own study and geog raphic expedition of the texts. Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) The Fall of the House of Usher This is sensation of the most famous knightly stories from one of the masters of the enre and contains many of the traditional elements of the genre, including horror, death, medievalism, an ancient building and signs of neat psychological disturbance. The mood of oppressive melancholy is established at the open of the tier and here readers may note an acknowledgement of the appeal of gothic fiction while there is fear and horror, the shudder is thrilling and the panorama is half-pleasurable. At the centre of the drool are mysteries, ab turn up the psychological pose of Usher himself and about his babes illness and death.The story altogether offers hints and evokeions there is an oppressive secret, while the sister, buried in a strangely secure vault, returns as if risen from the dead to claim her brother. In archetypal gothic fashion, a raging storm of extreme personnel mirrors the destruction of the family and its ancestral home. Horror stories and horror films continue to have wide popular appeal and it is worth considering why this is so, and in what ways this story fulfils the appeal of the horror story. Why are Ushers and his sisters maladies never identified? What does Madelines dodge from the vault suggest?Wider culture other gothic tales by Poe include The Masque of the reddish Death, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat. The Woman in Black by Susan hammock compare with The Door in the Wall by HG surface The Hollow of the Three Hills by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Yellow paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Online biographic material and a searchable magnetic inclination of works can be implant at http//www. online-literature. com/poe/ Stephen hold out (1871-1900) The Open Boat This story is based on Cranes own experience, when as a war correspondent, the gravy boat he was travelling on to Cuba sank.He and others spent a outcome of days drif ting in a small boat onwards reaching acres. The story explores the fortitude of men in a share plight and their companionship in the face of danger. The narrative style is real and plain, perhaps mirroring the honest practicality of the men in the boat whose story is beingness narrated. It engenders an admiration of the skilled seamanship and calm demonstrated by the seamen. The drama in the story comes from the waves the seamen converse, swap roles and encourage each other under the steering of the captain.When they correcttually reach shore, death comes to one of them, who is randomly chosen. Without obviously aiming for pathos, Crane achieves it with the oilers death. The story, like the seamen, betrays no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation, still achieves a real sense of dismissal at its conclusion. Wider interpretation The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane Typhoon by Joseph Conrad equal with The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe How it Hap pened by Arthur Conan Doyle Real Time by Amit Chaudhuri Online biographic material and a searchable list of works can be anchor at http//www. nline-literature. com/crane/ HG rise up (1866-1946) The Door in the Wall As well as famous allegorys such as The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, HG Wells wrote legion(predicate) petty stories, many of which show the authors stake in fantasy and the improbable, tho a feature of the stories is the way in which Wells creates a sense of truthfulness in his narratives. This was demonstrated when a radio broadcast of an adaptation of The War of the Worlds in 1938 fuck offd panic in impertinent York, and can similarly be seen in the fibbers concern with the truth of the story at the beginning of The Door in the Wall.Here the narrator is retelling the story of someone else, who in turn tells it to him with such direct simplicity of conviction. This creates a tension which remains end-to-end the story, which on the one hand is fran kly incredible while we are assured that it was a true story. The temporary childhood escape into the paradisiacal garden is evoked with nostalgic tenaciousing, but remains paradoxical. The character references final death leaves questions for the reader it is every another inexplicable event, or some kind of solution to the mystery.Wider reading Try either of the allegorys listed above, or other short stories by Wells, such as The uncouth of the Blind or The Diamond Maker. Compare with The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe The Signalman by Charles Dickens The contemptible Finger by Edith Wharton Online Wells biography and a searchable list of works can be found at http//www. online-literature. com/wellshg/ An account of the New York panic can be found at http// level1900s. about. com/od/1930s/a/warofworlds. htm Maurice Shadbolt (1932-1985) The population BeforeMaurice Shadbolt is one of the towering types of New Zealand literature, winning numerous awards and a ccolades for his work, much of which examines the history of the earth through with(predicate) and through narrative. The central characters in this story are carving out a farming existence on the land, and the importance of land self-possession to the family is made apparent in a number of phrases in the story. The narrator tells us that my father took on that farm, he refers to the importance of put down of your own, which becomes your own little kingdom.The suggestions of the history of the land come through the discovery of the greenstone adzes and attitudes to the land are brought to the fore with the visit of the Maori group. Although Shadbolt characterises Tom Taikaka as pleasant, courteous and patient, there is the constant underlying acknowledgement of the Europeans displacing of the Maori from their land. Jims onslaught at restoring the greenstone to Tom is symbolic of an attempt at restitution, and the reader is left(a) to interpret Toms reluctant refusal.The retur n of the Maori elder to the land in death, and his disappearance, is another indication of his unity with the landscape and again demonstrates the antithetic attitudes to land held by the Maoris and the Europeans, attitudes which remain polarised in the brothers at the end of the story. Wider reading Strangers and Journeys or The Lovelock Version by Maurice Shadbolt Playing Waterloo by Peter Hawes Compare with Journey by Patricia grace of God Her First Ball by Katherine Mansfield The opponent by VS Naipaul Online Biographical information and a critical review of Shadbolts work is in stock(predicate) at http//www. ookcouncil. org. nz/writers/shadboltm. html This unseasonedspaper obituary is also interesting http//www. timesonline. co. uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article497710. ece RK Narayan (1906-2001) A Horse and Two Goats Narayan has written numerous novels and short stories, many of them set in Malgudi, a fictional but typical small Indian town. His characters are invariably o rdinary stack finding their route through Indian life. Although A Horse and Two Goats makes no reference to Malgudi itself, it is typical of these stories, as Muni tries to live and ease the agitate of his poverty.The story is narrated with the non-judgemental understanding and gentle humour typical of Narayans writing. The annals emphasises the insignificance of the settlement, and by implication the insignificance of its central character, who is coping with poverty and domestic shinny and seeks to ease his way by deceit and invention. The big deceit of the story, though, happens through misunderstanding and without Munis volition, Narayan creating comedy through the two parallel lines of move dialogue in the midst of Muni and the American tourist.Within the comedy, though, Narayan shows the different values of the two, the Americans dialogue concerned with acquisition and possessions, while Muni is concerned with history and spirituality. Wider reading The Guide (novel) an d Malgudi age (short stories) by RK Narayan Kanthapura by Raja Rao Compare with Games at Twilight by Anita Desai Of black-and-blue Hairs and Cricket by Rohinton Mistry Online teaching about RK Narayan is procurable at http//www. eng. fju. edu. tw/worldlit/india/narayan. html Patricia Grace (1937-) JourneyPatricia Graces first novel, Mutuwhenua, was significant in being the first novel published by a woman Maori writer, and she has become an important figure in Maori writing in English in New Zealand. Journey shows her interest in the Maoris traditional claims on land. The rather dislocated narrative, with express punctuation and no speech markings, creates the effect of creating the old mans perspective, although the narrative is written in the third person. This old mans perspective, with its old Maori wisdom, is shown to be out of balance with these youth people, the cars and railways, the new housing and the growth of the city.His journey into the city makes him feel more and more alienated, and this is accentuated when the narrative is interspersed with the interview dialogue. The official and the old man cannot make each other understand. There is no comprehension on either side of the others view of how land should be used, and the story ends with frustration, emphasis and disillusion. In this story, Grace suggests that traditional Maori governance of land has no pull in modern government and planning. Wider readingMutuwhenua (novel) or The Dream Sleepers and Other Stories (short stories) by Patricia Grace Playing Waterloo by Peter Hawes The Bone People by Keri Hulme Compare with The People Before by Maurice Shadbolt To Da-duh, In Memoriam by Paule Marshall Online Biographical and other information about Patricia Grace is acquirable at http//www. artsfoundation. org. nz/patricia. html Paule Marshall (1929-) To Da-Duh, In Memoriam The narrator in this story remembers her visit from New York to her mothers home country, which to her is the alien disposition and sounds of Barbados.The story hinges on the relationship formed between the young miss and her grandmother, Da-duh of the title. While the Caribbean is unfamiliar to the young little girl, who sees it as some dangerous spatial relation, Da-duh wants to show off its qualities, and a competition is established between the girl and the grandmother, between youth and age, between modernity and tradition and between New York and Barbados, which culminates in the girls assertion of the height of the Empire differentiate Building, which dwarfs all that Da-duh shows her.The young girls triumph, however, is tempered at the end of the story by the shadow of Da-duhs death. Wider reading This story is taken from Merle and Other Stories by Paule Marshall. Compare with Journey by Patricia Grace Online Information about Paule Marshall is available at http//www. answers. com/topic/paule_marshall Rohinton Mistry (1952-) Of White Hairs and Cricket This storys concern with age and mortality is reflected in the structure, beginning with the removal of the narrators fathers smock hairs and moving to what seems to be his friends fathers entrepot illness.In the space of the story the narrator has his own recognition of mortality and emerges from boyhood into the adult world. He moves from considering distasteful his task of removing his fathers black-and-blue hairs to a full awareness of the process of ageing which he is weak to stop. There are other signs of this process throughout the story the loss of the childhood cricket matches, the increasing frailty of Mamaiji, the fathers vain hope of a new job. It is the encounter with the friend Viraf, Dr Sidhwa and the coup doeil of Virafs father which gives the narrator his epiphanic moment.Wider reading This story is taken from the assembly Swimming Lessons and Other Stories. You could also try the novel Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry. Malgudi Days by RK Narayan The God of clarified Things by Arundhati R oy Compare with A Horse and Two Goats by RK Narayan To Da-duh, In Memoriam by Paule Marshall The Enemy by VS Naipaul Games at Twilight by Anita Desai Online Biographical material is available at http//www. contemporarywriters. com/authors/? p=auth73 Ahdaf Soueif (1950-)Sandpiper The narrator in this story is unwilling to disturb even one grain of sand, and this reflects her passivity as her relationship with her economize breaks down under cultural pressures. The relationship with him is carefully charted, almost historically, but it is significant that he is never named, and a sense of loss grows at the centre of the narrative. The narrative structure includes disconcerting juxtapositions between memory and the present to show the narrators sate of mind.The narrative describes a spot between the two formed elsewhere it is the return to the husbands country which creates the cultural and family pressures on the relationship, including the loss of female independence, work and iden tity, which cause the couple to drift apart. Such concerns of conflicting cultural pressures are perhaps a natural concern of an author born and educated in Egypt, before continuing education in England. She now divides her time between Cairo and London. Wider reading This story is taken from a collection of short stories by Ahdaf Soueif, also called Sandpiper.The Map of Love is a novel which deals with a love affair between an Egyptian and an English woman. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy Compare with To Da-duh, In Memoriam by Paule Marshall The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Five-Twenty by Patrick White Online Biographical information about Ahdaf Soueif is available at http//www. contemporarywriters. com/authors/? p=auth227 Adam Thorpe (1956-) Tyres The narrative of Tyres is set against the tension of German-occupied France during the flash World War, where relationships are strained, little can be openly communicated and question is rife.The brutality of war suddenly intervenes in the middle of the story with the kill of the suspected members of the French Resistance movement (the Maquis) and the villagers forced to view the bodies, their gutsliterally looped and dripping almost to the floor, before the hanging of the ringleader from the village bridge. Set against this is the gradually developing love affair between the young lad learning to maintain vehicles in his fathers service department and the girl who cycles past each day.The young mans storey leads the reader gradually to his final act of involvement with the resistance against the Germans and its effectuate ill-luck seems to be the cause of guilt, and the final revelation of the age of the narrator shows how grand that guilt and fidelity has lasted. In this story, Thorpe sets ordinariness working on cars, ever-changing tyres, a developing relationship against extraordinariness the Second World War and German occupation to create a small poignant story of war.Wide r reading This story comes from Adam Thorpes short story collection Shifts. His novel Ulverton is a collection of very different narratives which piece together the long history of an English village. Compare with To Da-duh, In Memoriam By Paule Marshall The Moving Finger by Edith Wharton The Taste of Watermelon by Borden Deal Online Biographical information and a review of Adam Thorpes work is available at http//www. contemporarywriters. com/authors/? p=auth95