CHARACTERS

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 568.

NARRATOR

1. What kind of narrator is used in this passage?

a) first person b) limited third person c) omniscient third person ?

2. Does he comment on and guide the reader's interpretation of events? How?

I. Focus on the character of Sylvia Seltoun.

1. The story opens with the description of Sylvia's character. Underline lexical, synonymic and semantic repetitions. What trait is emphasized through them? Pick out more cases of recurrence of this idea later in the text.

2. Why is Sylvia's marriage described as an ‘achievement'? What aspect of social life is satirically portrayed? Who/what is the object of the author's satire?

3. What is Sylvia's attitude to her husband? Is it expressed openly or implied?

4. Identify the expression rendering Sylvia's feelings at the sight of the bunch of grapes at the feet of Pan. How does it characterize her?

5. Disclose the implications of the following expressions characterizing Sylvia:

town-bred tastes

with a School-of-Art appreciation

accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than “leafy Kensington”

her imagination unsexed the most matronly dairy cows and turned them into bulls liable to “see red” at any moment

6. Which of the following adjectives would you choose to characterize Sylvia:

independent

decisive

arrogant

naive

matter-of-fact

snobbish

selfish

self-assured

conceited

self-conscious

businesslike

active

other______?

II. Focus on the character of Mortimer Seltoun

1. Comment on the play on words in “Dead Mortimer”. What other phrases or facts justify the token name of Mortimer? Could there be any hint at his own character in Mortimer's phrase most of his children have been stillborn?
2. What epithets are used to describe the expression of his face and his manners?
3. Pick out expressions describing the change in Sylvia's husband. How could the change be interpreted?