An ex-millionaire

A man spoke in a loud voice at the end of the MTR train. He walked from carriage to carriage, asking the passengers a question one by one. His question was, ‘How much money is a lot for you?’ Some of the passengers held their heads down, or pretended to be sleeping. Some walked to the other carriages. The man was in his early thirties and plump. His shirt was hanging out, so his gut was faintly visible. 

The train began to fill with people and he had to stay in one place.  So he started asking the same question to the people around him. Since nobody answered, he started to talk to himself. He clearly believed he had won the Mark Six at some time, and on this theme he rambled on from one subject to another: his manager had upset him by asking him to pay attention to his work instead of the Mark Six prize money; his landlord had asked him to find money to pay his rent if he wasn’t going to win the mark six again; if he was rich, his friends would not criticise his ideas and personality; he had given one or two million dollars to his father, but his father had spent it all; he shouldn’t have listened to his father’s advice, he should have bought a house rather than putting the money in the bank; he had won nothing on the Mark Six since 2009.

He must have won several million dollars on the Mark Six, but he was young, so he can’t have managed his money very well or else he had wasted it. Whatever, there was nothing left. Maybe he thought he could win the money again rather than using his hands to make his millions.

A review of Lamb to the Slaughter

A happily married housewife, Mary Maloney, is six months pregnant and is waiting for her husband to come home from work. When he arrives, to her horror, he wants to get a divorce. Stunned, she takes a leg of lamb from the freezer, telling him there is lamb for dinner. He stands with his back to her, and tells her he is going out. She hits him over the head with the leg of lamb and kills him. Then she puts the lamb in the oven and turns it on, calms down and goes to a shop to buy vegetables. When she returns, she cries over her husband’s body and calls the police. The police search the flat for a murder weapon until late at night. When they are tired and hungry, Mary offers them the lamb for dinner.

The story is short and simple, but has an amusing twist at the end of it. Also, Mary is an unexpected character. At the beginning of the story, the couple seem to love each other, but the wife is betrayed and left by the man she trusts. And, the pregnant woman moves slowly, but she has the strength to kill her man. While she is sobbing, she waits for an opportunity to tell the police to eat the leg of lamb, the weapon. At the end of the story, she sniggers because her improvised audacious plan has worked.

A review of The Sensible Thing

A young man, George O’ Kelly, wants to get money and success quickly so he can marry his fiancée, Jonquil Cary. For this reason, he quits his job as a construction engineer, and moves from Tennessee to New York City to work as an insurance clerk. He gets fired when he applies for some time off work to visit Jonquil. While they are together, they have a quarrel, because they do not have enough money to get marry. So, they split up and this is the sensible thing to do it. After this, George goes to Peru, and he becomes a successful engineer. A year later, he goes back to the girl, and he realises that he can have her now, but his feelings for her have changed.

Maybe F Scott Fitzgerald based the story on his own early relationship with his wife, Zelda Sayre; George’s love for Jonquil parallels his love for Zelda. George puts love before practical matters, but he is rejected by Jonquil, because he does not have enough money to marry her. At the end of the story, George has become more mature and sensible, and his feelings for Jonquil have changed. The author probably wants to say George still has a chance to decide whether Jonquil is suitable for him, whereas the author has regreted his marriage; if he had not married Zelda, perhaps he would not have had serious health and financial problems. Another point of view is people want things more if they can’t have them; when their relationship is possible, George’s feelings are not as strong as they were before.

A review of A Christmas Song

 

The main character, Clara, is a talented music teacher, who sells sheet-music and records in a music shop. Her wealthy neighbours, The Williamsons, are fond of giving parties several times a year, and Clara and her family are always invited. But this Christmas Eve, she decides not to go. However, one of the Williamson sons, Freddy, goes to her place and persuades her to go. Before they set off, a young man comes to the shop. He came earlier in the day and tried to find a love song to surprise his girlfriend. Eventually she found the song for him and now it is echoing in her mind. When she stands in front of the Williamsons’ house, she thinks of the song again.  

Clara probably feels her life in the town is dull: the scenery, the few songs that people want to know, the Williamsons’ parties and the crass behaviour of the guests. This winter she longs for snow; perhaps this means she wants more a colourful life. When she meets the young man, she might be attracted to him by his shyness, his romantic quest, or his interest in music. We get the impression the song is a metaphor for the life Clara wants; it seems to be within her grasp, but then it floats away. In the end, the frost crackles under her feet. Perhaps this represents the end of her dream of finding a more interesting way of life. It is hard to move somewhere else, so she asks herself what her future holds in terms of her prospects and her love life.

A review of The Jilting of Jane

The main character, Jane, is a servant. She has been engaged to a young man, William, for three years. She considers his behaviour, his prospects and his family background, and she believes he is a very good match for her. William is second porter in a draper’s. However, when he is promoted to head porter, he finds a new girlfriend, a milliner. Jane follows the new lovers a number of times and tells the milliner that she is William’s fiancée. But in the end, William marries the milliner and when they come out of church, Jane throws a boot at the bride, but it hits William’s eye instead. 

 

The author, HG Wells, uses the story to criticise class divisions. The narrator, the master of the house, keeps his distance from his servants, and he probably does not talk to them. Jane is a servant and an orphan, so she needs to find a man who has prospects. She has social ambitions and she is a snob. Since Jane believes William is a respectable man, and his relatives are not labourers, if she married William, it will give her a little bit of security and improve her social status. But, she does not see William as a social climber; he keeps up his good work, reads a self-help book to improve himself, and dresses up to improve his appearance. He also joins a religious group which his employer also belongs to. Eventually, he probably thinks a milliner is better than a servant; the milliner might make hats for him or he may be able to set up a business selling hats, whereas Jane buys him a tie so far.

A review of A Shocking Accident

The main character, Jerome, is a boy of nine, who is told that his father had been accidently killed by an overweight pig falling from a balcony. When he grows older, he realises people are unable to suppress their laughter or amusement at the comic aspect of the story of his father’s death and this makes him reluctant to tell the story. In the end, he dares not tell it to his fiancée, Sally, but his aunt does. To his surprise, Sally does not laugh, but she feels it is a horrible accident.

When People usually hear about somebody’s death, they feel sad, and sympathise with the relatives. The author, Graham Greene, is good at observing human nature and this can be seen in the story; when people hear about Jerome’s father’s unusual and unexpected death, they react in different ways. The reactions are very believable and you might think if you heard a similar story then you would react in the same way.

The author uses the characters in the story to show that there are many ways to tell the story of Jerome’s father’s death. He contrasts serious and comic aspects of the story, in particular the serious idea of death with the ridiculous way in which it occurs.

A review of Bliss

The story is set in London. The main character, Bertha, is a married woman of thirty, who thinks she has a perfect life. She is going to hold a dinner party for some friends. She is secretly attracted to one of the guests, Miss Pearl Fulton. As Bertha is always attracted to beautiful women who have something strange about them. In the end, she discovers her husband, Harry, is having an affair with Pearl.

The author, Katherine Mansfield, uses the main character to criticise social conventions. Bertha is inhibited by conventions, and wants to get rid of. Although she struggles against them, this is not easy for her. She can’t follow her impulses to run and dance in the street and she asks herself why you are given a body if you keep it in a case like a rare fiddle. Babies usually are looked after by nannies, and their parents do not want to spoil them, so, she thinks it is not appropriate to tell a nanny that a baby clutching a strange dog’s ear is rather dangerous. When the nanny refuses to give her baby to her, she asks herself again why have a baby if it was held in another woman’s arm like the rare fiddle kept in the case. She can’t express her feelings to Pearl, not even to her husband. On the other hand, her husband and other guests are less inhibited and more easy-going; they criticize and make jokes about other people.

The author also uses Bertha’s point of view to show that the main character does not fully understand herself and her feelings. She misinterprets her feelings for Pearl; they are not her own feelings of bliss; they are Harry’s. He has a perfect life, always loves beautiful women, and falls in love with Pearl. Once Bertha discovers she has been betrayed, her feelings towards her husband change. Before she thought Harry had many good characters, at the end of the story, he becomes roughness and his face becomes ugly.

A review of Second Best

I have read a short love story, Second Best, by D H Lawrence.  Lawrence is good at using words to describe the scenery, animals and the relationships between men and women in great detail.

The Story is set in the British countryside in high summer.  The main character, Frances, is unhappy that she can't get the man of her choice, Jimmy, who is well educated but is a snob, and has got engaged.  So, she decides to go out with Tom, although he is her second choice.  Anne is Frances's younger sister, and thinks Tom is much better than Jimmy.

During my first read, I thought there were too many detailed descriptions of the natural surroundings and an incident in which Frances's sister kills a mole.  These did not interest me.  After I reread it, I realised the surroundings and the mole are used as a metaphor for Frances's feelings.  I did not only admire the author's use of language, but I was also interested in the plot.

At the beginning the author uses the weather and the colours of the scenery to describe Frances's mood, which is bad.  When she looks at the surroundings, which are strange and unfriendly, she feels alone and that she does not belong there.  When she decides to forget Jimmy, she has mixed feelings, both sad and cheerful.  Later, she meets Tom and the description of the scenery changes subtly to emphasize the practical aspect of landscape.

The mole represents Frances's blind love for Jimmy.  When the mole struggles, this represents her internal struggle to forget Jimmy.  The animal opens its mouth uncontrollably and bites her sister.  This represents Frances's anger but she does not know what to do or want to talk to anyone about her feelings.  The mole escapes briefly but does not know which way to go and at the same time Frances wants it to be gone, showing she wants to free herself from the memory of Jimmy but she can't.  If the mole had escaped, she could have secretly continued to love Jimmy.  In the end her love for Jimmy dies and she gives her love to Tom.

I would like to recommend this story to everyone, as it shows how the author uses words to paint pictures.

A rain of white cotton

April 2013

A small park at Mosco, 2013.

We had a long drive between two tourist attractions in Moscow, so our driver needed a break for a cigarette.  We stopped at the side of the road and got out of the coach to stretch our legs and take some fresh air.  There was a small park with a concrete path, which was covered with white cotton. At first I thought it was snow, but then I realised it couldn't be snow as it was spring!  The cotton was light and soft. Most of it had collected along the sides of the path.  I wanted to step on it, but it floated away when I got near it.  My guide saw me so he showed me a trick that amused me and put his lighter to the cotton.

At first I tried to stop him as I was worried he would set the park on fire. But he knew what he was doing. The cotton burned with a small pretty flame, red in the centre, then yellow, and blue at the edges. It only lasted a few seconds since the cotton was not spread equally over the path and where there wasn't much, the fire went out. When he saw this, he pushed more into the fire with his foot. It didn't burn for long and the tiny flame looked harmless, but I thought it would be unwise to touch it.

My guide told me the cotton was part of the seed of a tree, but I forgot the name. I could only find it was called a poplar tree on the Internet.  So I still not sure the name of the tree.

On a windy day, you can see cotton blowing in the wind.  It looks more like driving rain than snow, although it's white. Great clouds of it are blown along.

I enjoyed seeing this while I was sitting in the coach, but when I was walking along the street, I had to cover my nose and mouth.  Some of the cotton bolls occasionally stuck on my head, my shoulders and clothes.  I wondered how long it would take before I was completely covered with cotton if I lay on the ground.