Salinger.

For Esme - With Love and Squalor.

The target skills: analysis of compositional devices and of the role of dialogue in bringing the message home to the readers.

0. Provide a few phrases in Russian to be translated back into English.

1. Salinger is known as a keen student of children. His extraordinary achievement in this area rests on the principle of viewing children not from the adult perspective, but from their own, from the inside. He portrays children who are extraordinarily mature for their age, who speak, or attempt to speak like 'adults and who want to be accepted by adults on an adult basis. His grown-ups, suffering from loneliness and misunderstanding, often find a source of spiritual cure in communication with children. Their contact is always sincere and deeply moving, though never sentimental.

Sum up the information and add a few sentences explaining whether it can be applied to both stories of Salinger you have read so far.

2. Salinger's fiction is not strong on plot, and is sometimes plotless. His stories are essentially character studies revealed through accurate and clever dialogue, or through precise characterization which bears an unmistakable personal mark.

Can the above-said be applied to the story under discussion? Give a brief introduction to it showing what the reader may or may not find in the story. (Suspense? An exciting interplay of events? Gentle irony? etc.)

3. Salinger has an unerring eye for dialogue and a sharp eye for detail. How is the personality of the girl revealed in her vocabulary? In her manner of introducing herself? In her manner of speaking of her parents, of her little brother of herself? (Does she display self-consciousness? Is she natural or phony, friendly or haughty? Does she feel at ease or is she obviously ill at ease? Etc.)

4. Give the author's reasons for shifting the narrator's point of view from the first to the third person. Explain whether the narrative follows a strictly chronological sequence. Account for any deviation from a straight disposition line.

5. Comment on the specific use of high-flown vocabulary.

6. Salinger's sensitive character, suffering from the moral wounds inflicted by the war, writes below the desperate inscription “Life is hell” a quotation from Dostoyevsky: "Fathers and teachers, I ponder ‘what is hell?’ I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

Can this be said of the story in question? Could it be used as a sort of epigraph? Explain.

7. What is there in common between the novel and the two stories by Salinger you have read?

J. D. SALINGER

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 1076