Heritage of words

Purgatory – William Butler Yeats The boy and his father walk on the moonlight night; they are near a ruined house. Pointing towards the house, the old man describes the past of it. The house used to be occupied by his mother and her husband. The mother of the old man had married with the groom of the stable as soon as she met him. The man later turned out to be a drunkard and gambler. Due to drinking and gambling, he emptied everything he had. The mother died while giving birth to him. The father continued his misdeed, which at last resulted into the complete destruction of house. Because of fear-the fear of his son becoming greater than him, he didn’t send him to school. When he was sixteen, his father burnt down the house. This situation created anger in him. As a result the old man killed his father with a knife. The OLD MAN then became a peddler. The old man tells his bastard son that the night is the anniversary of mother’s wedding. As he finishes telling his son abou...

A Story – Dylan Thomas The boy, with his uncle, was sitting in their room when the boy’s uncle’s friends came there. Their coming had the aim of deciding date for outing. They said that they had collected fund and liquor for outing. Afterwards the uncle’s friends returned back to their home. The next day they came with the list of names for uncle’s acceptance. He read the whole list and accepted all the names. Then there was his wife with china dog. She threatened him that she would go her mother’s house if he did not cancel the program. In anger she asked him to choose either her or outing. The uncle said that he preferred outing. On Saturday morning the uncle’s wife left house. She had written a note to her husband in which she had asked him to put off shoes before going to bed. At about eight the uncle’s friend came to his house with a charabanc. They became ready to go for outing. As they drove off, the women of the village peeped out from windows and boys bid them g...

The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship – Garica Marquez The boy, who is also main character of the story used to go to sea where he had seen a mysterious ship in his childhood. The ship used to appear when there was darkness and vice versa. The ship was bigger than the village and taller than the steeple of the church. But he could not see the ship in the later years. However the boy didn’t stop going to sea. He had determined to show the existence of ship to the villager after he was beaten on charge of being a liar. After many years he saw the same ship by the harbor. He could not believe his eyes. So until next March he waited to see the same ship. No sooner had he seen the ship than he went home to tell about it to his mother. His mother got angry with him; she advised him to get involved in romance with some lady instead of going to sea. The boy’s mother however agreed to go there next march. But unluckily, his mother expired while she was sitting on a chair and thinki...

Important Questions   1. Psychological analysis of Hansel and Gretel Ans. The writer in his adapted story Hansel and Gretel presents the psychological analysis of the story. In this story, he expresses a unique truth of life that poverty and deprivation make human beings selfish and less sensitive to others sufferings. The writer tells us that when the children grow up, they must learn to live separately from their parents. Hansel and Gretel have left in the forest in order to give them a chance to learn to live independently. However, they have come back as they have not been able enough to live apart from their parents. The children have again been left in the forest for the second time and they’ve tried to solve the problem by concentrating on fool only. As they’ve acted like hungry animals rather than human beings, they have been the captive of witch. The house and the old witch being the source of food are symbolized as mother. This story gives us message that greed...

Hansel and Gretel – Jacob and Wilhelm Once there was a famine in a country, which compelled the step mother to think of leaving the children to the forest. The father yielded to the wish of wife, as she was pigheaded. In the morning, the step mother asked them to get ready to go to the forest. Hansel had collected pebbles as he had heard the conversation of parents the earlier night. As they left their home, the boy dropped pebbles on the way. After walking for some duration, they reached to a spot where the step mother asked the children to wait till they return back. But it was only a trick to leave the children in the forest. At midnight, when they got up, the boy thought of returning to house. He could return successfully with the assistance of pebbles he had dropped. At home they were welcomed by the father though the mother was indifferent. There was another famine in the country, which forced the mother to bring the previous idea back again. The father accepted ...

The Gingerbread House – Robert Coover The same fairy tale ‘Hansel and Gretel’ is adopted by Robert Coover with the title ‘The Gingerbread House’. He used the device of exaggeration to parody the form of the original. In order to do so, he eliminated the first part of the story that is exposition of the crisis and the last part such as complication and denouement. In other words, the important events and the sequence between one and the other event are not included in the story. In place of the events, he furnished the story with such as the physical attributes of the characters and the forest. Every detail was exaggerated to such an extent that the action and the movement of the story become slow and sluggish. Besides the addition, he modified the characters, Hansel and Gretel by describing their frequent quarrels and reconciliation. Even the old father who was kind in the original story appears irritant now and then. At one occasion he strikes the boy without any reason. S...

The Little Brother and The Little Sister - Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm ‘The Little Brother and the Little Sister’ an English translation of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, deals with the same story of Hansel and Gretel. The writer sincerely included all the essential points of the original story to make it complete and harmonious. However, one finds the dialogues between the character and other being eliminated. The minute details of the original story are simply summarized and the conversation between one character and the other is narrated. The stepmother is described as a ‘woman’ and shown to have wicked nature in the original is modified to some extent and described as the mother. Her vocatives “you lazybones”, “wicked children”, “You fool” etc. meant for Hansel and Gretel are eliminated. Such expressions make her appear no better than a witch. Removal of these expressions helps in modifying her into a less witch and more unloving mother. In addition to it, t...

Gretel – Garrison Keillor ‘Gretel’ by Garrison Keillor is an interpretation of the story “Hansel and Gretel” from the perspective of a female. The interpreter is Gretel who denies her cowardice in the original story. She claims that the depiction is distorted one. Gretel says that there was an understanding between her and her brother to sell their story to Grimm brothers. They had signed in a contract paper with an agreement to share fifty-fifty of the profit. But unexpectedly, Gretel found the story published the other day totally different order. The story depicts her as coward and her brother as a brave person. She claims the brother was, in reality, a coward not vice versa. It was her brother who wept time and again, and she had to carry him. The portrayal of he father and mother is also distorted. Father was not so kind hearted; he was a drunkard; he liked to watch bull fight. Mother was not cruel in any sense of the word. Gretel describes their parents leaving the...

Important Questions : 1. Sketch the character of Mrs. Mooney. Ans : Mrs. Mooney, the main character in the James Joyce story “The Boarding House” is described as “a woman who deals with moral problems as a cleaver deals with meat”. She was a butcher’s daughter who married her father’s foreman. Later she divorced him because she could not withstand his drinking and bullying nature. Taking charge of her daughter Polly and son Jack, she opened a boarding house in Hardwicke Street. She was strong, strict, determined and practical. She knew how to handle matters- when to act and when to remain silent. When reading further in the story, we find that the boarding house is a trap, where Mrs. Mooney is a hunter who’s looking for a decent husband for her daughter Polly within her guests. She is using Polly as bait to catch Mr. Doran, the victim in the story. Mrs. Mooney manipulates Mr. Doran into her trap by using her daughter’s innocence as the bait and Mr. Doran’s innocence as a...

The Boarding House – James Joyce After a difficult marriage with a drunken husband that ends in separation, Mrs. Mooney opens a boarding house to make a living. Jack, her son and Polly, her daughter live with her in the house, which is occupied by clerks from the city, as well as occasional tourists and musicians. Mrs. Mooney runs a strict and tight business and is known by the lodgers as “The Madam.” Polly, who used to work in an office, now stays at home at her mother’s request, to amuse the lodgers and help with the cleaning. Surrounded by so many young men, Polly ultimately develops a relationship with a rich thirty five years old Mr. Doran. Mrs. Mooney knows about the relationship, but instead of sending Polly back to work in the city, she monitors its developments. Polly becomes increasingly uncomfortable with her mother’s lack of intervention, but Mrs. Mooney waits until “the right moment” to intercede. First she speaks awkwardly with Polly, then arranges to spea...