Understanding the Selection
1. Present the contents of the selection in a nutshell.
2. What are the structural components of the selection? Dwell on the role of the first-person narration.
3. Tone and atmosphere of the passage. Find the key-sentences and the key words most evidently revealing the tragedy of the situation. Account for the use of rhetorical questions.
4. Expend on the problem of the generation gap touched upon in the selection.
5. Sum up the second character of the narration. What means of portrayal does the author employ?
6. What basically opposite human types are outlined in the selection? What sort of generalizes conflict can be felt through the passage?
7. What human values does Miranda represent? What is her credo?
8. The critics define the genre of “The Collector” as a black novelin its Freud’s variety of erotic psychopathology. What do you make of the term? Can you comment on the title of the novel?
9. Give your review of the language of the selection (peculiarities of syntactical structure, choice of words, graphical means, specific stylistic devices).
10. What elements of psychological and social analysis can be traced in the selection?
Commentary
1. The Slade – художественная академия в Лондоне
2. M & D – мать и отец
3. G.P. – инициалы любимого человека Миранды
Words and Word-combinations to be memorized
1. to stun – оглушать, ошеломлять
2. to believe in smth – возлагать надежды, считать правильным, полезным
3. looks – внешность
4. to suck smb down – поглощать, засасывать
5. to keep the home going – содержать дом, семью
6. to run along after smb – гоняться за кем-то
7. to catch up with smb / smth – догнать кого-то, поймать кого-то / что-то
8. a lame duck – неудачник, несчастненький, калека
9. tolerant – терпимый
10. to put up with smb / smth – мириться с кем-то / чем-то
11. to go down on one’s knees to smb – опуститься перед кем-то на колени
12. for all smth – несмотря на что-то
13. to get in the way of smth / smb – мешать чему-то / кому-то
14. at heart – в душé
Exercises
I. Explain and expand on the following.
1. I want to prove to myself that all marriages needn't be like D and M's. 2. I have a feeling a lazy-cow me would welcome it, would forget what I once wanted to do, and I would just become a Great Female Cabbage. 3. I thought pacifists didn't believe in hurting people, he said. 4. You don't gush. You don't have little set-pieces or set-ideas you gush out to impress people with. 5. You accept that you are English. You don't pretend that you'd rather be French or Italian or something else. 6. You must act, if you believe something. 7. But you don't compromise with your background.
II. Paraphrase the following sentences from the selection paying special attention to unconventional speech.
1. Getting sucked down into the house and the house things and the baby-world and the child-world and the cooking-world and the shopping-world. 2. Or turn into a bitchy ginny misery like M. 3. Then a reaction set in, I thought I was getting a silly schoolgirl hero-pash on him, and the other thing began to happen. 4. Yet of all the lame ducks I've met or heard of, she's the lamest. 5. He's chipped off all my silliness, my stupid fussy frilly ideas about life and art, and modern art. 6. If you are working class, you cauterize the working class in you. 7. I've never been the same since he told me how he hated fey women. 8. You don't gush. 9. He won't be caught by the door trick again.
III. Explain the meaning of these words using an English - English dictionary.
Violence, determination, routine, literally, miserable, knock out, objectively, beastly, overwhelm, tolerant, artistic, compromise, marriage, stun.
IV. Find synonyms for these words and explain the difference in their meaning and use.
To hit, looks, miserable, tolerant, alterations, to better, to get in the way, female, to stun, food, trick, to get away.