The short story "Her Lover" was written by the famous Russian-Soviet writer Maxim Gorky. The narrator told the author about the time when he was a student in Moscow. He lived alongside a neighbor, a lady called Teresa. The narrator described her as "a tallish, powerfully-built brunette, with black, bushy eyebrows and a large coarse face as if carved out by a hatchet." The narrator characterized her reputation as questionable. He avoided meeting her on the staircase. When they randomly met in the yard, she would smile which seemed to the narrator as sly and cynical.
One morning, Teresa asked for a favor- to write a letter for her acquaintance who lived in her homecountry- Poland. "My dear Boles ... my darling", she started to dictate. She finished her letter with the phrase "your sorrowing little dove, Teresa". The narrator nearly burst out laughing, hearing this from the woman who was more than five feet high. He asked, "Who is this Boles?". "My young man.", she answered. "Young man?!". "Why are you so surprised, sir? Cannot I, a girl, have a young man?".
Next time, Teresa asked the narrator to write a letter again. "To Boles?” he asked. "No, this time it is from him." "Wha-at?", the narrator exclaimed.
The narrator understood at last. Alongside him lived "a human creature who had nobody in the world to treat her kindly, affectionately, and this human being had invented a friend for herself!". Since that time, the narrator wrote a letter to Boles twice a week, and an answer from Boles to Teresa.
The main themes of Maxim Gorky's story are:
- human loneliness, lack of communication;
- Teresa represented a sense of romantic imagination which was expressed by inventing an imaginary lover;
- overcoming a prejudice which divides the society leads to a new level of understanding people.
As a Master of literature, Gorky's work represented the universal idea of struggling people because of indifference, lack of self-sufficiency, prejudice, callousness, superiority complex and so on. If we looked around, we can see under cruel appearance a tender, sentimental soul of individuals like Teresa. This idea of humanism according to Maxim Gorky leads society to a peaceful and happy life.
This is the link to the audio of the story:
https://omny.fm/shows/morning-short/p-remiere-her-lover-by-maxim-gorky
This is the link to the text of the story:
http://faculty.tnstate.edu/lpowers/Short%20Story/gorki_her%20lover.pdf
Original version in Russian:
http://az.lib.ru/g/gorxkij_m/text_1897_boles.shtml
The author of "Plymouth Plantation Chronicle," William Bradford, was born in 1590 and lived until 1657. He was the leader of a group of Puritans who set off to form a new society in North America.
William Bradford was born in England. It was a time of religious upheaval. He was inspired by the ideals of the Puritans, a Protestant religious group that wanted to purify the traditions of the Church of England. They were called Separatists because they supported the idea of a total break with the official church.
The emigration to North America offered the hope of freedom. Therefore, in 1620 Bradford and his wife joined nearly 40 other Separatists on the ship named the Mayflower.
Bradford documented the trip's planning phase, the journey on the ship, and the life of the growing colony. Bradford described the group as “pilgrims,” or religious wanderers, the name we use for them today. He also wrote his experiences during his 30 years as governor.
The author described the travelers’ first impressions when they stepped on the earth, "Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean."
Bradford recorded their significant experiences. The Pilgrims arrived in winter and during the subsequent months, many of the travelers died.
Bradford described in his memoirs the starvation, tragic encounters with Indians, and the first Thanksgiving. During the first years on land, the settlers were attacked by hostile Indians. Other tribes were more peaceful and the colonists tried to establish good relationships with them.
The Chronicle "Of Plymouth Plantation" by William Bradford is a priceless historical document. Bradford's work is also well-written, easy to read, and has a captivating plot.
This is the link to the story:
https://www.hamilton.k12.nj.us/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=11315&dataid=12672&FileName=u1_ply_plantation_se.pdf
The short story "Through the Tunnel" by Doris Lessing told about the young English boy, Jerry, who came with his mother for a summer vacation to the sea abroad. The author described in the first paragraph these two people: the mother walked on in front of the boy, carrying a bright-striped bag and the boy who stopped at turning off the path and looked down at a wild and rocky bay.
Next morning Jerry asked his mother to permit him to go and have a look at the rocks there. She agreed. He was an only child, eleven years old, she was a widow. She thought that he mustn't feel he ought to be with her.
Jerry went down to the rock, he jumped into the sea, he was a good swimmer. He dived and when he appeared on the surface, he noticed a group of boys. They spoke a language which he didn't understand. He very much wanted to be with them. He was so glad to see that one boy noticed him and smiled. They shouted cheerfully at him and when they understood that he was a foreigner they proceeded to ignore him. Jerry was happy to be with them.
Next time Jerry saw one boy dived into the water and didn't come up. Jerry yelled in warning, the other boys looked at him idly and turned their eyes back toward the water. After a long time, the boy came up on the other side of a rock and shouted triumphantly. The other boys followed the example of the fellow, and Jerry understood that they swam through the tunnel in the rock.
The idea of going through the tunnel intrigued Jerry. He had passed several classes at a diving school. He thought he must learn to control his breathing. He counted the time being underwater, Jerry exercised his lungs as if it was the goal of his whole life. At night, the boy dreamed of the water-filled cave in the rock. His nose was bleeding.
He continued training. The boys made a pause while he counted a hundred and sixty. He thought that now if he tried, he could get through that long tunnel, but he was not going to try yet. The author wrote, "A curious, most unchildlike persistence, a controlled impatience, made him wait."
He understood how dangerous swimming through the tunnel could be. He was frightened but he said to himself that if he did not do it now, he never would. Eventually, he did it. It happened in the morning, he went to the beach and swam through the tunnel. When he came to the surface, he saw "the local boys diving and playing half a mile away. He did not want them. He wanted nothing but to get back home and lie down."
He told his mother that he can stay underwater for three minutes. The mother looked at him closely. She noticed that his face was pale, he was strained. His eyes were glazed-looking. She was worried. She was ready to argue against his underwater swimming, "but he gave in at once. It was no longer of the least importance to go to the bay."
A reader can assume that when the boy becomes an adult he would be recognized for the great achievements. The idea that if you set your mind to something, then you can accomplish it - was expressed in Jerry’s desire to getting through the tunnel and as a result, he did that. After Jerry reached his goal, he no longer felt the desire to demonstrate it or to be congratulated by the other boys. In the case of Jerry, the tunnel symbolizes the passage from childhood to adulthood. In the story of the boy who went through the tunnel, the author represented people who are able to overcome difficulties.
Here is the link to the text of the story:
http://bclearningnetwork.com/LOR/media/EN11/Forums/Through_Tunnel.pdf
The short story "Tuesday Siesta" by Gabriel García Márquez started from the positive description of the journey of two people - mother and daughter. The author highlighted the commonness of the life around. He wrote:
"On the narrow road parallel to the railway there were oxcarts loaded with green bunches of bananas. Beyond the road, in uncultivated spaces set at odd intervals there were offices with electric fans, red‐brick buildings, and residences with chairs and little white tables on the terraces among dusty palm trees and rose bushes. It was eleven in the morning, and the heat had not yet begun."
Before the final stop, the mother said her daughter to prepare herself, “Put on your shoes, ... comb your hair”. That's what mothers usually say in these circumstances. They arrived in the small town in midday during the siesta. There was nobody on the streets. The woman and her daughter went directly to the parish house. She asked the priest.
When the priest came the woman asked him for keys to the cemetery. This is a dialog which occurred between the priest and the woman:
“Which grave are you going to visit?” he asked.
“Carlos Centeno's,” said the woman.
“Who?”
“Carlos Centeno,” the woman repeated.
The priest still did not understand.
“He's the thief who was killed here last week,” said the woman in the same tone of voice. “I am his mother.”
The priest scrutinized her. She endured his glance with quiet self-control, and the Father blushed. He lowered his head and began to write. He asked the woman if she tried to get her son on the right track. She answered that her only son was a very good man, he never stole anything that anyone needed to eat. She said, "before, when he used to box, he used to spend three days in bed, exhausted from being punched.” “All his teeth had to be pulled out,” interrupted the girl. The woman added, “Every mouthful I ate those days tasted of the beatings my son got on Saturday nights.”
The Father had noticed that somebody looked inside the house. It was unusual because during the siesta nobody walked on the streets. Soon they saw that the other people standing in front of all doors. It was suggested the woman and her daughter not to go out, to stay for a night in the house but she refused. These are the last lines in the story:
"Thank you,” replied the woman. “We're all right this way.”
She took the girl by the hand and went into the street."
The story left reader the choice to judge what is good and what is wrong there. Gabriel García Márquez expressed the idea of the responsibility of the mother - she did what she thought was the right thing. In the world of oppression and poverty, she can salvage her pride by not allowing anyone to trample on the love to her only son.
This is the link to the text of the story:
https://articulosparapensar.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/g-garcia-marquez-tuesday-siesta.pdf
The story 'The Student's Wife' by Raymond Carver is about a few hours of the ordinary life of one couple. It is very likely that the purpose of the author was to describe the routine of everyday life and relationships inside one family.
Raymond Carver chose the monotonous rhythm of this narration. He wrote, "He had been reading to her from Rilke, a poet he admired when she fell asleep with her head on his pillow." She asked the narrator to make her a little sandwich. He did nothing because he was almost asleep. When he opened his eyes he saw her watching him. He said that it is late, it's better to sleep. Eventually, as the author said, "He groaned extravagantly as he rolled out of bed."
The wife said that she had a funny little dream. She told her husband that in her dream she saw how they playfully argued about where to sit in the motorboat while they were sailing in it. She laughed, remembering, and leaned forward off the pillow.
He thought that he should say something but only replied: "That's some dream". She continued, "Do you remember that time we stayed overnight on the Tilton River, Mike? When you caught that big fish the next morning? ..."Well? Do you remember or not?" she said, patting him on the shoulder. "Mike?"
She didn't want him to sleep, and so she kept asking him new and new questions. She complained about her health, she remembered what happened many years ago. He hardly answered he thought, "I wish you'd leave me alone".
She tried not to listen to his breathing, but a sound coming from his nose became louder. She tried to regulate her breathing trying to breathe in the same rhythm. She couldn't sleep, she began to cry. She woke up, went to the children's room, pulled the covers up over her son's shoulders, went back to the living room and sat in the big chair. The sky grew whiter. The author wrote in the last line, "She put her hands out on the bed. "God.' she said. "God, will you help us, God?" she said."
The characters of the story idealized expectations of what their lives should be but it turned to the reality. The woman in the story compared the present state of her marriage with an ideal of the "perfect" weekend that they had several years ago. It became clear that she was not happy with the current state of her marriage.
Both characters in the story seemed to care about each other but readers could feel the annoyance of the husband and the desperation of the wife. When the husband fell asleep, feelings of depression for the wife increased.
Raymond Carver presented the idea of lonely individuals which could not be noticeable to others. The feeling of anxiety and desperation presented here is entirely through action. It gave the freedom for readers to think about it and to make own conclusion.
Here is the link to the text of the story:
http://whatsinalaska.blogspot.com/2008/08/by-raymond-carver_25.html
Here is the link to the audio of the story (it was made by The Guardian):
https://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2012/dec/23/richard-ford-raymond-carver-wife
The short story ‘The Beauties’ written by Anton Chekhov doesn’t have much actions. The narrator only told about two episodes of his life when he met beautiful girls. The author described these girls and concluded that “no one knows or can say in what its beauty lies”.
This is the first description:
“An artist would have called the Armenian girl's beauty classical and severe, it was just that beauty, the contemplation of which -- God knows why!-- inspires in one the conviction that one is seeing correct features; that hair, eyes, nose, mouth, neck, bosom, and every movement of the young body all go together in one complete harmonious accord in which nature has not blundered over the smallest line. You fancy for some reason that the ideally beautiful woman must have such a nose as Masha's, straight and slightly aquiline, just such great dark eyes, such long lashes, such a languid glance; you fancy that her black curly hair and eyebrows go with the soft white tint of her brow and cheeks as the green reeds go with the quiet stream. Masha's white neck and her youthful bosom were not fully developed, but you fancy the sculptor would need a great creative genius to mold them. You gaze, and little by little the desire comes over you to say to Masha something extraordinarily pleasant, sincere, beautiful, as beautiful as she herself was.”
Here is the second description:
“Standing at the window talking, the girl, shrugging at the evening damp, continually looking round at us, at one moment put her arms akimbo, at the next raised her hands to her head to straighten her hair, talked, laughed, while her face at one moment wore an expression of wonder, the next of horror, and I don't remember a moment when her face and body were at rest. The whole secret and magic of her beauty lay just in these tiny, infinitely elegant movements, in her smile, in the play of her face, in her rapid glances at us, in the combination of the subtle grace of her movements with her youth, her freshness, the purity of her soul that sounded in her laugh and voice, and with the weakness we love so much in children, in birds, in fawns, and in young trees.”
As it was mentioned above, it is not possible to classify the beauty. The simplest classification would be:
- the first girl represented a beauty of appearance,
- the second - the beauty of movements.
Chekhov was captivated by the beauty of these two. Their beauty had faded, they lived a hundred years ago, but the picture of their beauty written by the great Russian classic is eternal.
Here is the link to the text in English:
http://livros01.livrosgratis.com.br/ln000349.pdf
Here is the link to the text in Russian (original text):
http://lib.ru/LITRA/CHEHOW/krasavitsy.txt
The short story “My Financial Career” by Stephen Leacock is written in a humorous style, in the style of O'Henry - I would say.
The story was written from the first site the narrator told about his unsuccessful experiment of visiting a bank office. The narrator thought that after his salary had been increased to fifty-six dollars a month he needed something to do with it.
The first person which the narrator saw in the bank was a clerk whose table was marked as “Accountant”'. The narrator asked him, “Can I see the manager” and added solemnly “alone”. The narrator made a remark about this question; “I don't know why I said 'alone.''
When the manager came the narrator asked him if he is really the manager (though there were no reasons to doubt ) and added, “Can I see you alone?” The narrator didn't want to say alone again; however, it happened unintentionally.
The manager led the narrator to a private room and turned the key in the lock. The author wrote,
"We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no voice to speak.”
“You are one of Pinkerton's me I suppose,” he said.
The narrator answered that he is not from the police. He came to the bank because he intended to keep all of his money in this bank. The manager concluded that the narrator was probably a son of a billionaire and asked about the sum of money.
When it became clear that it was a conversation about fifty-six dollars, the manager called another clerk and said unkindly loud that “this gentleman is opening an account. He will deposit fifty-six dollars.”
When it was deposited, the narrator asked in a hollow, and vibrating voice that he wanted to draw a cheque. His idea was to draw out six dollars of it for present use. But when he gave the check to the clerk the narrator realized that he had written fifty-six instead of six. The next dialog between the very surprised clerk and narrator occurred
“You withdraw your money from the bank?”
“Every cent of it.”
“Are you not going to deposit anymore?” said the clerk; astonished.
“Never.”
The author wrote in the last paragraph,
“As the big door swung behind me I caught the echo of a roar of laughter that went up to the ceiling of the bank. Since then I bank no more.”
The author described how a person could feel and behave in an awkward situation. It would so happen that after one unintentional phrase is spoken, the next phrase makes the situation even more embarrassing. The way it was written by the author was very impressive and funny.
Here is the link to the text of the story:
https://web.iiit.ac.in/~nirnimesh/Literature/MyFinancialCareer.htm
