суббота, 26 апреля 2014 г.

Done!!!!
So, here I finish my work. 

I guess it's high time to share emotions and expectations.

It was interesting to blog. It was a new experience for me, but it took a lot of time and I didn't manage to do my work in a proper way. 





From the very title I liked the story, though I didn't know the plot of it. I relied on my intuition and it didn't dissapointed me. I really liked the story. To be fair,the situation described in "The Cactus", in some extent, is familiar to me. Therefore to work on it was fascinating twice. 

Finally, I want to thank our lecturer, Victoria Victorivna, for conducting such an interesting course. Maybe, I wasn't such a diligent student, but took pleasure searching for numerous stylistic devices. 

Thanks all who visited my blog!




Composition

From the viewpoint of composition the story includes introduction, exposition, development of the events, climax and denuouement. A conclusion the author left on the reader.=)
In the introduction O' Henry prepares the reader to the intrigue and makes him think about the events which may happen.
In the exposition we get acquainted with  the main character, Trysdale, and the setting ( the action takes place in the Trysdale's house). 
The goes the development of the evnts, which mostly is an author's description of the Trysdale' s flight of ideas, concerning his foolishnes and egoism. Here the character tries to find the answers. And he does it, but that fact upsets him a lot. 
The climax of the story, I suppose, is when Captain Carruthers asks about the cactus which stands by a table in the bachelor appartament. 
And the denouement. All answers to the questions were given, when the Captain translates the name of the green plant, which in English means: "Come and take me".
To sum up, I’d like to say that the plot of the story is logically built, though it goes without author's conclusion. Unexpected endings are typical of O'Henty's writings. The story is rather intriguing and the interest is maintained till the very end. It demonstrates that love demands truth and openness of heart. Vanity and pride are killers of love. 
Expressive means and Stylistic devices
The story under analysis isn't very big, but it is overrun with expressive means and stylistic devices.
The beginning of the story starts with the emphatic construction: "That it what Trysdale was doing", which emphasizes the relation of the time. In the first paragraph is capitalization - Time. The author shows us a importance of it.
The story is full of epithets, most of which are related to Trysdale: a swift, scarifying retrospect; incontinent admirers; his large pride hurt vanity; or a singular-looking green plant, i.e. cactus. 
Metaphors are employed to show how unfeeling he was: he saw all the garbs of pretence and egoism; the garment of his soul; she insisted on the placing him upon a pedestal; and she became: turned to snow and ice.
Other lexical stylistic devices such as:
simile:  white favors like stars upon their coats shone, he had absorbed the oblation as a desert drinks the rain;
oxymoron: sullen exultation;                                                                    
- hyperbole: for the thousandth time, supernatural number are emloyed in the text. 
To emphasize the whole utterance the writer uses enumeration in his story several times: his own innermost, unmitigated, arid unbedecked himself; that swift, limpid, upward look.
To impart imagery the author uses personification: garbs of pretence now turn to rags of folly; the garment of his soul must have appeared sorry and threadbare; rain that can coax from it no promice of blossom or fruit; his large pride and hurt vanity kept him from seeking her; the leaves are reaching out and beckoning you.
To show the state of pondering the problem we come across:
- rhetorical questions: Vanity or conceit?; Why had he ended thus?; Where were his fault?; Who had been to blame?
aposiopesis: But why...; If...                                                                                  
- inversion: Indeed, his conceit had crumbled. The tide had so suddenly turned. Without protest, he allowed her to twine about his brow this spurious bay of Spanish scholarship. How glad. how shy, how tremulous she was.
- separation: There had been no quarell between them, nothing.                                 
detachement: He could not, now, for the pain of it, allow his mind to dwell upon the memory. The next      day he waited, impatient, in his rooms for the word. 
- parallelism: He could have sworn, and he could swear now.                                                                    
Trough out the story we collide with the exclamations: But, alas! How glad. how shy, how tremulous she was! Come now! Hallo!
To show the intensity of the emotions the author uses gradation: she looked at him, breathless, wondering, eager. 
Polysyndeton is used to show the Trysdale's advantages: high attributes and excellencies and talents.
Incomplete sentences, such as: Know the species? Know any Spanish, Trysdale?, and elliptical sentence, such as: A present from a friend can be seen in the dialogue between Trysdale and Carruthers.







The Character of the Story
Reading the story the reader gets acquainted with one main character - Trysdale. He is a young man, noble, educated and wealthy. He can be characterised as egoistic person, as he takes his girlfriend for granted and "supernatural number of high attributes and excellencies and talents" with which she filled him, accepts, as naturally as "the desert sand soaks up rain". 
Actually, he  himself understands that "his fatuous and tardily mourned egoism" played against him. Having returned from the wedding he rues his vanity and conceit, but, unfortunately, he doesn't understand: How?
He recalls the night on which he proposed her, he remembers how she looked at him, "how glad, how shy, how tremulous she was!". Trysdale was sure that she will answer in the affirmative.
He also can be characterised as weak and faint-hearted, as he doesn't try to find out the reason why she refused his proposal (she sent a cactus, which he have taken as a mark of refusal). This image, primarily, is created through indirect characterization.

Another minor character, who appears in the pages of the story and playes the biggest role in the Trysdale's life, is Captain Caruthers. He is the brother of the bride and Trysdale's friend. Captain is his incontinent admirer, but makes him disservice. We cannot say that Captain does it on purpose (he tells his sister thst Trysdale speaks Spanish fluently, but the latter doesn't).





воскресенье, 23 марта 2014 г.

So, making some intrigue and learning about O'Henry, I think it's time to tell you something about the plot of the story.


"The Cactus"
“The Cactus” is a part of a collection of short stories “Waifs and Strays”. It was written in 1917 and contains 12 stories.

            Trysdale was removing his gloves and was recalling the last few hours of his life. Some time before he was a whiteness of Her marriage. “…most insistently recurring, the drawling words of the minister irrevocably binding her to another”. Thinking of it, he wanted to know what went wrong, why did he lose her?
“For the thousandth time he remarshalled in his mind the events of those last few days before the tide had so suddenly turned”
            He meant more than all for her. She put him on pedestal. When he asked her to stand on the pedestal with him, in other words - proposed her, as a lady, she couldn’t say at once that she wanted to say “Yes” without waiting for a minute. He heard only: "I will send you my answer to-morrow". She did. She sent him a cactus. There was a card with writing in Spanish “Ventomarme”, but he didn’t understand her message as he didn’t know this language (though she thought that he did).
           In two days they met. They waited for explanations, answers from each other, but there were no words, only their suppositions. Unfortunately, their silence brought nothing good.
          Trysdale’s friend helped him to understand how blind and dull-witted he was. The friend said that the cactus’ name in English meant 'Come and take me.' 



To  my mind, the moral of O. Henry's 'The Cactus' is that love can only flourish when people are honest and truthful with one another; pride and insincerity are the downfall of love.





вторник, 18 марта 2014 г.

To be honest, I'm not a great blogger.
I rarely visit blogs as muсh as comment someone's publication.

But still, I'll try to do my best.
In this blog I'll post different information, which deals with stylistic analysis of the literary
works.
Hope you enjoy my blog.

I will be glad to your remarks or praise =)


Have you ever lost your love? Real love...

Have you ever thought about how you communicate with your beloved? Do you express your feelings or you hide them? 

And do you wait for the first step from him? Why don't you to be the first? 




Those questions are directly connected with the plot of the short story "The Cactus" by O'Henry. Words, that were not said...










I suppose it's time to review this instructive story!  



The short story I want to analyze here goes under the title "The Cactus". It was written by O'Henry who is considered to be one of the most noted American writers. "The Cactus" is his short story which is immensely popular.


While reading the story for the first time, I though it would be a story of a person who didn't like to communicate with people, who was considered to be
inimical person.How wrong I was! I didn't guessed it would be a sad love story where the main character loses his beloved one, only because both in the couple misunderstood each other.  This story made a great effect on me. 


This story is incredible, it is worth praising and it is worth reading. "The Cactus" is the best example of the biggest mistake, which peple make in their relationships.


Here you can read this fascinating story:

http://americanliterature.com/author/o-henry/short-story/the-cactus


I think you have heard about O'Henry and have read some stories of him, but if you don't, so I offer you to get acquainted with O'Henry:

O. Henry, pseudonym of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), noted American author of hundreds of short stories including "The Ransom of Red Chief" (1910), "The Duplicity of Hargraves" (1902), and "The Gift of the Magi" (1905).
William Sidney Porter was born 11 September, 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina, to physician Algernon Sidney Porter (1825-1888) and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim (1833-1865). The two brothers of William were Shirley Worth (1860) and David Weir (1865) who both died in early childhood. Mary was a graduate of Greensboro Female College (founded in 1838) now Greensboro College. She wrote poetry and had a promising artistic temperament with a natural eye for drawing and painting, surely a talent which young Will inherited. Tragically she died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty when Will was only three years old. His father Sidney was a gentle and good humoured man, gregarious, and generous to a fault. Absent-minded with a long flowing beard, he travelled Guilford county visiting his patients. As was the custom of the time, he never sent invoices to his patients; they were expected to settle once a year. Without his wife to stay on top of their accounts, finances dwindled and Sidney started to drink.
After Mary's death, widower Sidney and his shy, freckle-faced son moved to his mother's farm, that of Will's paternal grandmother Ruth Coffyn Worth Porter (1805-1890). Sidney became increasingly occupied with various inventions he was developing, poking about in his workshop with such contraptions as a perpetual motion water wheel. 
At the age of fifteen Porter began working as a clerk in his uncle Clark Porter's store. The combined pharmacy, soda fountain, tobacco shop, and newsstand was the local gathering spot. Porter became immersed in the social scene, entertaining the customers with stories and drawing caricatures of them for which he became well known. He saw the humour in the everyday, and made notes of all the colourful characters he encountered, fodder for his future stories. He also obtained a pharmacist license in 1881. Small town life was not to hold him for long, however, and he had developed a persistent cough. Thinking that a change of climate would do him well, at the age of eighteen he moved to Texas, settling in Austin in 1884. He was already writing short stories while he held a number of jobs including pharmacist before working with the Texas Land Office. Around this time he met Athol Estes Roach. They married in 1887 and had a daughter, Margaret Worth (d.1927), in 1889. With a steady income Porter was now able to focus on his writing. In 1891 he began work as a bank teller with the First National Bank. The Porter's were living in the house which is now known as the O Henry House Museum. In 1894 Porter launched a humorous weekly magazine The Rolling Stone (no relation to the current magazine, founded in 1967.) It featured political and every day satirical articles and cartoons, all by Will himself, which he also published. 1895 found the Porter's living in Houston, Texas, where Porter started a column in the Houston Post.
After time spent in Honduras, during which Porter coined the term "banana republic", he had to return to Texas to face charges of embezzlement. His wife was also was suffering from tuberculosis and he rushed to see her. Athol died in July of 1897. At that time Margaret was living with Athol's parents. They then moved to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Margaret never knew that her father had spent time in prison. She was always told he was away on business. After inconsistencies were found with Porter's First National Bank records, Porter was charged with embezzlement. In 1898 he began a five-year sentence in Columbus, Ohio federal prison. Around this time he changed his name to Sydney. The following year, in 1899, from prison, Porter began his short story career by contributing "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" to McClure's Magazine. Thereafter a number of his stories written in prison appeared in print, always under a pseudonym, his favourite being "O. Henry". The general public did not know of his prison term until after his death.
After being released from prison in just three years, Porter moved on to the next chapter in his life: New York City. This was where he really came into his own and all his previous life's experience served to inspire stories. Porter crafted everyday tales of myriad characters, many recurring, based in New York City with humour, wit, and realism. His stories often have a surprise or twist ending, and Porter's fans looked forward to more in such publications as WorldAinslee's, and McClure's. Porter has been compared to other masters of the short story including Nikolai Vasilievich GogolBret HarteRudyard KiplingMark Twain, and French author Guy de Maupassant(1850-1893). Porter also wrote numerous stories set in Western and South and Central America. Despite many of his works being panned by the critics he was becoming one of America's most popular short story authors. So much so that several collections were published including Cabbages and Kings (1904), The Four Million (1909), Options (1909), Roads of Destiny (1909), The Trimmed Lamp (1910), Strictly Business: More Stories of the Four Million (1910), Whirligigs (1910), Sixes and Sevens (1911), The Gentle Grafter (1919) and Rolling Stones (1919).
Troubled by ill-health and heavy drinking for many years, surely Porter was happy when he married his childhood sweetheart from Greensboro, Sara (Sallie) Lindsey Coleman, in 1907. But Porter was living an extravagant lifestyle amid increasing pressure to keep his commitments to publishers for more and more stories. This stress plus added financial problems led to Sara leaving in him in 1909. William Sidney Porter died of cirrhosis on 5 June, 1910. A funeral was held in New York City. He now lies buried at the Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina. His daughter was later buried beside him. His last complete short story is "Let Me Feel Your Pulse". The O. Henry Museum in Austen, Texas, open to the public, serves to preserve artifacts and archival materials related to O. Henry.


Biography written by C.D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc 2013. All Rights Reserved.