analiticheskoe_chtenie

"He out there," Nancy said. "He looking through that window this minute, waiting for yawl to go. Then I gone."

"Nonsense," Father said. "Lock up y"our house and we'll take you on to Aunt Rachel's."

"'Twon't do no good," Nancy said. She didn't look at Father now, but he looked down at her, at her long, limp, moving hands. "Putting it off won't do no good."

"Then what do you want to do?" Father said.

"I don't know," Nancy said. "I can't do nothing. Just put it off. And that don't do no good. I reckon it belong to me. I reckon what I going to get ain't no Illtlre than mine."

"Get what?" Caddy said. "What's yours?"

"Nothing," Father said. "You all must get to bed." "Caddy made me come," J ason said.

"Go on to Aunt Rachel's," Father said.

"It won't do no good," Nancy said. She sat before the fire, her elbows on her knees, her long hands between her knees. "When even ·your own kitchen wouldn't do no good. When even if I was sleeping on the floor in the room

with your chillen, and the next morning there I am, and
blood -:-- "	1
"Hush," Father said. "Lock the door and put out the
lamp and go to bed."

"I scared of the dark," Nancy said. "I scared for it to happen in the dark."

"You mean you're going to sit right here with the lamp lighted?" Father said. Then Nancy began to make the sound again, sitting before the fire, her long hands between her knees. "Ah, damnation," Father said. "Come along, chillen. It's past bedtime." .

"When yawl go home, I gone," Nancy said. She talked quieter now, and her face looked quiet, like her hands. "Anyway, I got my coffin money saved up with Mr. Lovelady." Mr. Lovelady was a short, dirty man who collected the Negro insurance, coming around to the cabins or the kitchens every Saturday morning, to collect fifteen cents. He and his wife lived at the hotel. One morning his wife committed suicide. They had a child, a little girl. He and the child went away. After a week or two he came back alone. We would see him going along the lanes and the back streets on Saturday mornings.

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"Nonsense," Father said. "You'll be the		first	thing
I' 11 see in the kitchen tomorrow morning."
"You'll see what you'll see,	I reckon,"	Nancy	said.
"But it will take the Lord to say	what that will be.".

VI

We left her sitting before the fire.

"Come and put the bar up," Father said. But she didn't move. She didn't look at us again, sitting quietly there between the lamp and the fire. From some distance down the lane we could look back and see her through the open door.

"What, Father?" Caddy said. "What's going to happen?" "Nothing," Father said. Jason was on Father's back, so Jason was the tallest of all of us. We went down into

the ditch. I looked at it, quiet. I couldn't see much where the moonlight and the shadows tangled.

"If Jesus is hid there, he can see us, can't he?"Caddy said~ "He's not there," Father said. "He went away a long

time ago."

"You made me come," Jason said,' high; against the sky it looked like Father had two heads, a little one and a big one. "I didn't want to."

We went up out of the ditch. We could still see Nancy's house and the open door, but we couldn't se_e Nancy now, sitting before the fire with the door open, because she was

tired.
''I just		got tired," she said. "I just a	nigger. It	ain't
no fault	of	mine."
But	we	could hear her, because she	began just	after

we came up out of the ditch, the sound that was not singing and not unsinging. "Who will do our washing now, Father?" I said.

	"I'm not a nigger," Jason said, high and close above
Father's head.
If	"You're worse," Caddy said. "You		are	a tattletale.
	something was to jump out, you'd		be	scairder than
a	nigger."
	"I wouldn't," Jason	said.
	"You'd cry," Caddy said.
	"Caddy," Father said.
	"I wouldn't!" .Jason	said.
	"Scairy cat," Caddy	said.

"Candace!" Father said.

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TASKS

I.What facts about Nancy do you come to know on reading part one of the story? Enumerate them in their succession. Dwell on the cause of Nancy's trying to commit

suicide and on that of Jesus' leaving her. State summarily the developments narrated in the other five parts of the story.

2.Who is the narrator of the story? How does his perception of the described events tint the story?

3.Contrast is known to be one of the main principles of

poetic	expression. Speak on how it manifests itself
in the	present story.

a)What is the background against which Nancy's tragedy is shown?

b)How is Nancy's calamity seen by the children? Interpret the following. "Father said for you togo home and lock the door, and you'll be all right," Caddy said. "All right from what, Nancy? Is Jesus mad at you?" "What have you done that made Jesus mad?" Pick out other sentences of similar kind.

c)Comment on the word "fun" as it occurs in the follow-

ing sentences. Reproduce the situations in which these sentences are uttered: "We had fun that night I stayed in yawls' room, didn't we?" "Let's go down to my house and have some more fun." "We are going to have some fun," Nancy said. "We ought to go," Caddy said. "Unless we have a lot of fun."

"I didn't	have	fun," J ason said. "You hurt me.
You put	smoke	in my eyes."

d)Observe and comment on the situations in which the word "scaired" is used by Nancy and by the children.

4.What .does the reader learn about the family of the narrator? What details may be mentioned as. vividly portraying each member of the family? How much did the family depend upon their Negro servants? Give illustrations.

5.Do you find common traits (phonetic, grammar, lexical) in the speech of the children and of the Negroes? What

do these traits suggest as	to	the life of the children
and the influences they were		subjected	to?
6. What was the attitude of	the mother		and the father

of the family to Nancy in her calamity? Quote sentences

122

from the story to substantiate your statements. What feature does the author emphasize as far as the family's attitude to Nancy is concerned? Comment on the impact of the last part of the story, which begins with the sentence "We left her sitting before the fire."

7.What key-phrase (and its variants) recurs in the story? Find it occurring in Jesus's angry utterances, in Nancy's

bitter	lamentations and in little J ason's proud asser-
tions. Comment on the idea it conveys.
8. Speak	on the implied meaning of the story's title.

9.What is the author's attitude to the problem he had presented in the story? Express your thoughts in a halfpage statement.

IN ANOTHER COUNTRY

by Ernest Hemingway

[E. Hemingway's is a depictive writing. He paints pictures of the things he writes about and that often with the help of details of simple and direct perceptions. ·

In E. Hemingway's works what shows on the surface is only the smaller part of the whole meaning. The rest is submerged in such elements of poetic structure which are not immediately visible. The reader is supposed to be sufficiently trained and attentive to discover the implied meaning. For instance, he should be able to see the meaning emerging out of the interplay of the direct and the metaphorical, the compositional make-up, the key words, and the like.]

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.

We were all at the hospital every afternoon, and there were different ways of walking across the town through the dusk to the hospital. Two of the ways were alongside

canals, but they were long. Always,	though, you crossed
a bridge across a canal to enter the	hospital. There was
a choice of three bridges. On one of	them	a	woman sold
roasted chestnuts. It was warm, standing		in	front of her

123

charcoal fire, and the chestnuts were warm afterward in your pocket. The hospital was very old and very beautiful; and you entered through a gate and walked across a courtyard and out a gate on the other side. There were usually funerals starting from the courtyard. Beyond the old hospital were the new brick pavilions, and there we met every afternoon and were all very polite and interested in what was the matter, and sat in the machines that were to make so much difference.

The doctor came up to the machine where I was sitting and said: "What did you like best to do before the war?

Did	you practise a	sport?"
I	said: "Yes, football."
"Good," he said.		"You	will be able to play football

again better than ever."

My knee did not bend <and the leg dropped strC)ight from the knee to the ankle without a calf, and the machine was to bend the knee and make it move as in riding a tricycle. But it did ·not bend yet, and instead the machine lurched when it came to the bending part. The doctor said: "That will all pass. You are a fortunate young man. You will play football again like a champion."

In the next machine was a major who had a little hand like a baby's. He winked at me when the doctor examined his hand, which was between two leather straps that bounced up and down and flapped the stiff fingers, and said: "And will I too play football, captain-doctor?" He had been a very great fencer, and before the war the greatest fencer in Italy.

The doctor went to his office in a back room and brought a photograph which showed a hand that had been withered almCJst as small as major's before it had taken a machine course, and after was a little larger. The major held the photograph with his good hand and looked at it very carefully. "A wound?" he said.

"An industrial accident," the doctor said.

"Very interesting, very interesting," the major said, and handed it back to the doctor.

"You have confidence?" "No," said the major.

There were thre-e boys who came each day who were about the same age I was. They were all three from Milan; and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to. be a painter, and one had intended to be a soldier, and after

124

we were finished with the machines, sometimes we walked bc,ck together to the Cafe Cova, which was next door to the Scala. We walked the short way through the communist quarter because we were four together. The people hated us because we were officers, and from a wine-shop some one called out, "A basso gli ufficiali!" as we passed. Another boy who walked with us sometimes and made us five wore a black silk handkerchief across his face because he had no nose then and his face was to be rebuilt. He had gone out to the front from the military academy and been wounded within an hour after he had gone into the front line for the first time. They rebuilt his face, but he came from a very old family and they could never get the nose exactly right. He went to South America and worked in a bank. But this was a long time ago, and then we did not any of us know how it was going to be afterward. We only knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it any more.

We all had the same medals, except the boy with the black silk bandage across his face, and he had not been at the front long enough to get medals. The tall toy with a very pale face who was to be a lawyer had been a lieutenant of Arditi and had three medals of the sort we each had only one of. He had lived a very long time with death and was a little detached. We were all a little detached, and there was nothing that held us together except that we met every afternoon at the hospital. Although, as we walked to the Cova through the tough part of town, walking in the dark, with light and singing coming out of the wine-shops, and sometimes having to walk into the street when the men and women would crowd together on the sidewalk so that we would have had to jostle them to get by, we felt held together by there being something that had happened that they, the people who disliked us, did not understand.

We ourselves all understood the Cova, where it was rich and warm and not too brightly lighted, and noisy and smoky at certain hours, and there were always girls at the tables and the illustrated papers on a rack on the wall. The girls at the Cava were very patriotic, and I found that the most patriotic people in Italy were the cafe girls - and I believe they are still patriotic.

The boys at first were very polite about my medals and asked me what I had done to get them. I showed them

125

the papers, which were written in very beautiful language and full of fratellanza and abnegazione, but which really said, with the adjectives removed, that I had been given the medals because I was an American. After that their manner changed a little toward me, although I was their friend against outsiders. I was a friend, but I was never really one of them after they had read the citations, because it had been different with them and they had done very different things to get their medals. I had been wounded, it was true; but we all knew that being wounded, after all, was really an accident. I was never ashamed of the ribbons, though, and sometimes, after the cocktail hour, l would imagine myself having done all the things they had done to get their medals; but walking home at night through the empty streets with the cold wind and all the shops clooed, trying to keep near the street light, I knew that I would never have done such things, and I was very much afraid to die, and often lay in bed at night by myself, afraid to die and wondering how I would be when I went back to the front again.

The three with the medals were like hunting-hawks; and I was not a hawk, although I might seem a hawk to those who had never hunted; they, the three, knew better and so we drifted apart. But I stayed good friends with the boy who had been wounded his first day at the front, because he would never know now how he would have turned out; so he could never be accepted either, and I liked him because I thought perhaps he would not have turned out to be a hawk either.

The major, who had been the great fencer, did not believe in bravery, and spent much time while we sat in the machines correcting my grammar. He had complimented me on how I spoke Italian, and we talked together very easily. On~ day I had said that Italian seemed such an easy language to me that I could not take a great interest in it; everything was so easy to say. "Ah, yes," the major said. "Why, then, do you not take up the use of grammar?" So we took up the use of grammar, and soon Italian was such a difficult language that I was afraid to talk to him until I had the grammar straight in my mind.

The major came very regularly to the hospital. I do not think he ever missed a day, although I am sure he did not believe in the machines. There was a time when none of us believed in the machines, and· one day the major

12(i

said it was all nonsense. The machines were new then and it was we who were to prove them. It was an idiotic idea, he said, "a theory, like another". I had not learned my grammar, and he said I was a stupid impossible disgrace, and he was a fool to have bothered with me. He was a small man and he sat straight up in his chair with his right hand thrust into the machine and looked straight ahead at the wall while the straps thumped up and down with his fingers in them.

"What will you do when the war is over if it is over?"

he asked me. "Speak grammatically!"
"I will go to the States."
"Are you married?"
"No, but I hope to be."
"The more of a	fool you are," he said. He seemed very
angry. "A man must not marry."
"Why, Signor	Maggiore?"
"Don't call me 'Signor Maggiore' ."
"Why must not a man marry?"
"He cannot marry. He cannot marry," he said angrily.
"If he is to lose everything, he should		not	place	himself
in a position to lose that. He should		not	place	himself

in a position to lbse. He should find things he cannot lose." He spoke very angrily and bitterly, and looked straight

ahead	while he talked.
"But why should he necessarily Iose it?"
"He'll lose it," the major said. He was looking at the
wall.	Then he	looked down at	the	machine and jerked
his little hand		out from between	the	straps and slapped

it hard against his thigh. "He'll lose it," he almost shouted. "Don't argue with me!" Then he called to the attendant whG> ran the machines. , ·

"Come and turn this damned thing off."

He went back into the other room for the light t~eatment and the massage. Then I heard him ask the doctor if he might use his telephone and he shut the door. When he came back into the room, I was sitting in another machine. He was wearing his cape and had his cap on, and he came directly toward my machine and put his arm on my shoulder.

"I am so sorry," he said, and patted me on the shoulder with his good hand. "I would not be rude. My wife has just died. You must forgive me."

"Oh- " I said, feeling sick for him. "I am so sorry."

127

He stood there. biting his lower 1ip. "It is very difficult,'; he said. "I cannot resign myself."

He looked straight past me and out through the window. Then he began to cry. "I am utterly unable to resign myself," he said and ch.oked. And then crying, his head up looking at nothing, carrying himself straight and soldierly, with tears on both his cheeks and biting his lips, he walked past the machines and out the door.

The doctor told me that the major's wife, who was very young and whom he had not married until he was definitely invalided out of the war, had died of pneumonia. She had been sick only a few days. No one expected her to die. The major did not come to the hospital for three days. Then he came at the usual hour, wearing a black band on the sleeve of his uniform. When he came back, there were large framed photographs around the wall, of all sorts of wounds before and after they had been cured · by the machines. In front of the. machine the majbr used were three -photographs of hands like his that were completely restored. I do not know where the doctor got them. I always understood we were the first to use the machines. The photographs did not make much difference to the major because he only looked out of the window.

TASKS

I.Reproduce the exposition to the story. Comment on the emotional atmosphere it conveys. Point out the means that create that atmosphere.

2.How is war referred to in the first paragraph and elsewhere in the story?

3.Tell summarily what you have learned about the young men who came to the hospital for the machine treatment.

4.How do you understand the phrase "we ...sat in the

machines that were to make	so much	difference?"
5. Paraphrase and interpret the	following:		"... they
had done very different things	to get their		medals";·
"I was never ashamed of the	ribbons,	though ... ";
~'The three with the medals were like hunting-hawks,
and I was not a hawk, although I might seem a hawk
to those who'had never hunted."
E. Hemingway, who avoids	straight-forward eva-
luations, often resorts to periphrasis and		understateo

128

.111enL Point out their occurrertces in the above-quoted and other sentences of the text. Speak on their emotive quality. · .·

6.Observe the occurrences of the words "cold" and "warm"; speak on the undercurrent of meaning they carry.

1.Comment on the meaning the word "detached" is imbued with in the story.

8.a) Why, do you think, did the major who had no confidence in the machine treatment come to the hospital very regularly?

b)Interpret the following: "The major who had been the great fencer, did not believe in bravery, and spent much time while we sat in the machines correcting

my	grammar."
c) Reproduce		the 'dialogue between	the major	and
the	American	when the two were	sitting in	the

machines. What was it iri the speech of the major that betrayed his nervousness and preoccupation?

What turned	out to be the cause	of	these? How is
it made known to the reader?			·
d) Why, after	what had happened	to	his wife, d'id

the major come to the hospital again at the usual hour? What poetic detail shows that it was not the

. machine treatment the major came for? Pay attention to the phrase to make much difference. When was it first used and what is its implication in the present case? Observe the two occurrences of .Jhe phrase within the compositional framework of the story; ·speak on the meaningfulness of this compositional

device.
9. Pay	attention to		the verbs and adverbs/agjectives
the	author	uses when he		writes about the major.
Comment on		their	quality.

10.Pick out words and expressions that denote physical injuries the characters have suffered. Comment on the emotive quality of those words. List the Italian words found in the story. Account for their use.

11.What moral message does the author convey through

the image of the major. .

12.Interpret the title of the story, the interplay of the literal and the metaphorical in the phrase in another country. Write a short statement on the idea the author has conveyed in the story.

0 B, B, COCHOBCKall

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