An Ordinary Woman

Bette Greene “An Ordinary Woman”.

Graham Greene “I spy”.

3. Marjorie Sharmat “May I have your autograph?”

4. M.E. Kerr “Do you want my opinion?”

Rosa Guy “She”.

James Joyce “Eveline”.

Harry Mazer “Furlough”.

William Somerset Maugham “The Happy Man”.

Stephen Leacock “My Financial Career”.

Susan Beth Pfeffer “Pigeon Humour”.

Eleanor Farjeon “Anthony in Blue Alsatia”.

Jesse Stuart “Love”.

Judie Angell “Turmoil in a Blue and Beige Bedroom”.

Richard Peck “Priscilla and the Wimps”.

Hector Munro “From the Lumber-Room”.

Sid Chaplin “The Day of the Sardine”.

Robert Lipsyte “Future Tense”.

Kevin Major “Three People and Two Seats”.

Edgar Allan Poe “The Raven”.

An Ordinary Woman

1. Bette Green is noted for the intense emotional connection that readers have with her novels. She studied in Paris and at Columbia University. Her first novel--Summer of my German Soldier. In l975 Bette Greene won Newbery Honor Book Award for Philip Hall Likes Me.

3. The title prepares us to the context of the text. This is a story about an ordinary teacher with ordinary life problems. She has such problems that everybody can have.

4. the story takes place in her house and the author pay attention to the description her daughter’s room(со сл. So I stand there at the threshold…).By this description the author shows the problems and helps us to imagine her life. “Although the centre hall has always been the darkness room in the house”—shows her inner world. After husband’s death everything in her life is dark, pity, without sense of life.

5.psycological (many recollections)

6. exposition—when she calls to school and say that she’ll be late

Climax—when she is in the daughter’s room

Denouement—when she changes the lock(“But if you someday return to slip…”)

7. 1^st person

8.A lot of recollections which help to make psychological portraitures of the characters; not many descriptions (daughter’s room),dialogues

9. The basic conflict—internal. She makes a complicated decision to say good-bye to her past.

10.The main character-Mrs Brooks. The minor—her husband Steve, daughter Caren and her ex-student David. She loved her husband very much, missed him (So you see way to help us…).She loved Caren too but she decided to part with Caren(When you were a little thing…).The relations with David shows us that she is a very good teacher(You were my favorite English teacher).

11.inderect(through actions, thoughts, recollections)

13.I pity Mrs Brooks because she has a lot of problems and has to go through a lot of troubles (Steve’s death, fire, daughter’s drug addiction).But I think she is a very strong person.

14. colloquial (junkie)

15.dark, heavy, pity, depressive, melancholic (ex. Пункт 4)

16. dark house, daughter’s burn room—symbols of the past

17. rhetorical questions(Where did I go wrong with our daughter? Was I too strict? No time for that now- now time?);exclamations (Stopit! Christ! I’m not listening to you any more!); set expressions (Never mind that now); epithets(acrid smelt, extraordinary power, lucky lady, the darkest room, smoke-grey glasses);metaphors(all-protecting arms);comparisons(He grins as though I have given him a present. His eye drop as though he is taking in the intricate pattern of the hall rug); repetitions)luck, lucky lady, ordinary woman, may be);complex sentences.

18. the destiny of ordinary woman

19. the message of the story is explicit: it shows us how difficult to live alone,to make decisions alone without help, to forget the past, say goodbye to it, begin new life.

20. I like this text. It is very true to life and make us to think about our life.

2. G.Greene ‘I Spy’

1. Graham Green was born in 1904 and educated at Berkhamsted School. On coming down from Balliol College, Oxford, where he had published a book of verse, he worked for four years as a sub-editor on “The Times”. He established his reputation with his fourth novel, Stamboul Train. He wrote The Lawless Roads and, later, The Power and the Glory. One of major post-war novels, The Heart of the Matter is set in West Africa. This was followed by The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, the story set in Vietnam, Our Man in Havana, and A Burnt-out Case. His autobiography A Sort Of Life was published in 1971.

3. The title prepares us to context of the text. This is a story about a little boy who heard and saw by chance how his farther was arrested.

4. The description of the house and the nature at the beginning of the story prepare us for smth unpredictable and mysterious. The description of the shop and footsteps (“It was too dark to see his way…”)

The setting of "I Spy" does a great deal to support the central idea of having to choose ones moral decisions.

5. Chronological.

6. Exposition – when he decided to go to the father's shop to smoke

Climax – when the policemen came to the shop and arrested his farther.

Denouement - when he understood that his farther loved him and mother.

7. 3rd person.

8. There are a lot of author’s narrations. There are a lot of descriptions (house, nature, shop, boy) and dialogue and psychological portraiture of the character.

(Boy: “He was 12 years old…”

Farther: “Had no doubt…”).

9. The basic conflict is internal. At first the boy think that his farther doesn't love him and mother but then he understood that his farther loved him and mother and cares about them.

External – conflict between farther and the police.

Greene explains, through the conflict that his protagonists suffer, that sometimes society's morals are artificially removed, for example in a time of war in which the object is to kill as many people as possible that aren't on your side. In these situations, people have to make their own decisions about morality and right and wrong, and this absolutely terrifies them. This is shown in "I Spy" through the characters, imagery, and setting in the story.

10. The main character is Charlie Stowe. The minor characters are farther, mother, policemen. Charlie loves his mother very much and thinks that the farther he doesn't love farther(“Had no doubt…”). He thinks that the farther shows only ”demonstrative love” for him and his mother. But accident with the police shows that farther truly loves them.

11. Direct (author's descriptions)

Indirect (through actions, speech)

13. At the beginning of the story boy was foolish, he didn't understand that his farther and had a children idea of life. I think Mr Stowe was a real farther of his family and cared about his close persons.

14. Literal

15. The tone and atmosphere are tense and heavy (“Charlie cowered in the darkness. Charlie Stowe was frightened”). Heavy and depressive atmosphere makes the dialogue between the police and the farther.

16.

17. There are a lot of complex sentences but in the dialogue use short sentences(“There.” ”Well.”)

Proverb: Never do today what you can put off tomorrow.

The author compares his father’s «little shop» with the Reszke, Abdulla, Woodbines which under a «thin haze» of «stale smoke» – epithet, which disguise his crime. To point out a steal author uses parallel construction «his crime», «it was a crime». Then author tells us Charlie didn’t love him at all, to prove it Graham Greene uses comparison: he was unreal to him, a wraith, pale. thin, and indefinite – all this is the enumeration. To show us the relation between boy’s parents author uses epithet: for his mother «he felt a passionate demonstrative love», «her boisterous presence», «noisy chanty» filled the world for him.

Also Green uses cliché «from the restor;s wife to the dear Queen» except «Huns», which shows how boy’s father judged his mother to everyone.

Then we can see antonomasia «affection» and «dislike», comparison «as indefinite as his movements» which points at the fact that Charlie don’t know whether to do his work or not. And he decided to do it.

18. The text under stylistic analysis «I Spy» is written by Graham Greene in the style of fiction. It deals with author’s feelings and emotions about relations at school, relations in the family.

The main theme of the story is how main character of the story Charlie Stowe was able to steal some of his father’s stock – a packet with cigarettes from his father’s shop, with the purpose to prove his classmates that he is not a little boy.

19. The theme of the story is that real parents should pay enough attention to their children, to bring them up properly in order that there wasn’t conflicts in their family.

20. I like this story. It is very true to life and make us to think about our life an relationships in our families.

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