Discussion

With what motives are people usually kidnapped?

Do you think kidnappers’ demands should be met? Why/Why not? If your answer is, ‘It depends’, what does it depend on?

Describe any kidnapping you know about.

How would one kidnap somebody? Consider all the stages. What would be the most dangerous part? How could one make it safer?

The extract above is the beginning of a short story by Damon Runyan, an American writer who wrote about the USA of the nineteen-twenties and thirties. Note down anything you know about the USA during that period.

Did anything in the extract make you smile? What?

Exercise 1. Read the extract and match the slang expressions

with the paraphrases on the right

a) bust i) kidnap

b) put the finger on ii) the police

c) snatch iii) racket, illegal business

d) mobbed up iv) a phoney person, story, etc.

e) scratch v) identify someone to an enemy

f) dodge vi) go out of business

g) the gendarms vii) money

h) chuck a swell viii) in a gang

i) the phonus bolonus ix) spend money extravagantly

Exercise 2. Discuss the following questions in groups

What seems to have brought about the increase in kidnapping?

What kind of people are ‘the citizens of Manhattan’?

‘So of course such a party is no good for snatching.’ Who? Why?

Who is ‘the finger guy’?

What two things must ‘the finger guy’ know about the person he fingers?

What reasons are given for people ‘settling their bill’ (paying the ransom) without making any fuss?

What percentage of the ransom do the kidnappers get?

What, it seems, is the most important factor in making a kidnapping safe?

Exercise 3. Find formal words and expressions in the text

which mean the following:

a) forced f) someone like that

b) people g) doesn’t want to

c) also h) to want

d) in every way i) it wouldn’t be right

e) people are angry

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 897