2020-01-14
178
The Useof Force
They were new patients to me, all I had was the name, O1son. Please come down as soon as you can, my daughter is very sick.
When I arrived I was met by the mother, a big startled looking woman, very clean and apologetic who merely said, Is this the doctor? and let me in. In the back, she added. You must excuse us, doctor, we have her in the kitchen where it is warm. It is very damp here sometimes.
The child was fully dressed and sitting on her father’s lap near the kitchen table. He tried to get up, but I motioned for him not to bother, took off my overcoat and started to look things over. I could see that they were all very nervous, eyeing me up and down distrustfully. As often, in such cases, they weren’t telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them; that’s why they were spending three dollars on me.
The child was fairly eating me up with her cold, steady eyes, and no expression to her face whatever. She did not move and seemed, inwardly, quiet; an unusually attractive little thing, and as strong as a heifer in appearance. But her face was flushed, she was breathing rapidly, and I realized that she had a high fever. She had magnificent blonde hair, in profusion. One of those picture children often reproduced in advertising leaflets and the photogravure sections of the Sunday papers.
She’s had a fever for three days, began the father and we don’t know what it comes from. My wife has given her things, you know, like people do, but it don’t do no good. And there’s been a lot of sickness around. So we tho’t you’d better look her over and tell us what is the matter.
As doctors often do I took a trial shot at it as a point of departure. Has she had a sore throat?
Both parents answered me together, No... No, she says her throat don’t hurt her.
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Does your throat hurt you? added the mother to the child. But the little girl’s expression didn’t change nor did she move her eyes from my face.
Have you looked?
I tried to, said the mother, but I couldn’t see. As it happens we had been having a number of cases of diphtheria in the school to which this child went during that month and we were all, quite apparently, thinking of that, though no one had as yet spoken of the thing.
Well, I said, suppose we take a look at the throat first. I smiled in my best professional manner and asking for the child’s first name I said, come on, Mathilda, open your mouth and let’s take a look at your throat. Nothing doing.
Aw, come on, I coaxed, just open your mouth wide and let me take a look. Look, I said opening both hands wide, I haven’t anything in my hands. Just open up and let me see.
Such a nice man, put in the mother. Look how kind he is to you. Come on, do what he tells you to. He won’t hurt you.
At that I ground my teeth in disgust. If only they wouldn’t use the word «hurt» I might be able to get somewhere. But I did not allow myself to be hurried or disturbed but speaking quietly and slowly I approached the child again.
As I moved my chair a little nearer suddenly with one cat-like movement both her hands clawed instinctively for my eyes and she almost reached them too. In fact she knocked my glasses flying and they fell, though unbroken, several feet away from me on the kitchen floor.
Both the mother and father almost turned themselves inside out in embarrassment and apology. You bad girl, said the mother, taking her and shaking her by one arm. Look what you’ve done. The nice man...
For heaven’s sake, I broke in. Don’t call me a nice man to her. I’m here to look at her throat on the chance she might have diphtheria and possibly die of it. But that’s nothing to her. Look here, I said to the child, we’re going to look at your throat. You’re old enough to understand what I’m saying. Will you open it now by yourself or shall we have to open it for you?
Not a move. Even her expression hadn’t changed. Her breaths however were coming faster and faster. Then the battle began. I had to do it. I had to have a throat culture for her own protection. But first I told the parents that it was entirely up to them. I explained the danger but said that I would not insist on a throat examination so long as they would take the responsibility.
If you don’t do what the doctor says you’ll have to go to the hospital, the mother admonished her severely.
Oh yeah? I had to smile to myself. — After all, I had already fallen in love with the savage brat, the parents were contemptible to me. In the ensuing struggle they grew more and more abject, crushed, exhausted while she surely rose to magnificent heights of insane fury of effort bred of her terror of me.
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The father tried his best, and he was a big man but the fact that she was his daughter, his shame at her behavior and his dread of hurting her made him release her just at the critical moment several times when I had almost achieved success, till I wanted to kill him. But his dread also that she might have diphtheria made him tell me to go on, go on though he himself was almost fainting, while the mother moved back and forth behind us raising and lowering her hands in an agony of apprehension.
Put her in front of you on your lap, I ordered, and hold both her wrists.
But as soon as he did the child let out a scream. Don’t, you’re hurting me. Let go of my hands. Let them go I tell you. Then she shrieked terrifyingly, hysterically. Stop it! Stop it! You’re killing me!
Do you think she can stand it, doctor! said the mother.
You get out, said the husband to his wife. Do you want her to die of diphtheria?
Come on now, hold her, I said.
Then I grasped the child’s head with my left hand and tried to get the wooden tongue depressor between her teeth. She fought, with clenched teeth, desperately! But now I also had grown furious — at a child. I tried to hold myself down but I couldn’t. I know how to expose a throat for inspection. And I did my best. When finally I got the wooden spatula behind the last teeth and just the point of it into the mouth cavity, she opened up for an instant but before I could see anything she came down again and gripping the wooden blade between her molars she reduced it to splinters before I could get it out again.
Aren’t you ashamed, the mother yelled at her. Aren’t you ashamed to act like that in front of the doctor?
Get me a smooth-handled spoon of some sort, I told the mother.
We’re going through with this. The child’s mouth was already bleeding. Her tongue was cut and she was screaming in wild hysterical shrieks. Perhaps I should have desisted and come back in an hour or more. No doubt it would have been better. But I have seen at least two children lying dead in bed of neglect in such cases, and feeling that I must get a diagnosis now or never I went at it again. But the worst of it was that I too had got beyond reason. I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to attack her. My face was burning with it.
The damned little brat must be protected against her own idiocy, one says to one’s self at such times. Others must be protected against her. It is social necessity. And all these things are true. But a blind fury, a feeling of adult shame, bred of a longing for muscular release are the Operatives. One goes on to the end.
In a final unreasoning assault I overpowered the child’s neck and jaws. I forced the heavy silver spoon back of her teeth and down her throat till she gagged. And there it was — both tonsils covered with membrane. She had fought valiantly to keep me from knowing her secret. She had been hiding that sore throat for three days at least and lying to her parents in order to escape just such an outcome as this.
Now truly she was furious. She had been on the defensive before but now she attacked. Tried to get off her father’s lap and fly at me while tears of defeat blinded her eyes.
Exploring Ideas and Questions for Discussion
1. In the story you can find a lot of informal words. What’s the function of the contrast use of neutral and informal words?
2. You can notice the use of synonyms in the description of the girl’s and the doctor’s feelings. In what way do their feelings change and what changes take place in the meanings of synonyms? What sort of connotation changes in the semantic structures of synonyms?
3. How does the use of synonyms account for the tension growth in the story?
4. Why are there many military and medical words in the story? Explain the reasons the author employs terms in abundance.
6
Ray Bradbury
The Pedestrian
To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o’clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pocket through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do. He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go, but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of a. d. 2131, or as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.
Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house. And on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard, because only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest themselves upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in tomblike building was still open.
Mr. Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head, listen, look, and march on, his feet making no noise on the lumpy walk. For a long while now the sidewalks had been vanishing under flowersand grass. In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles. he had never met another person walking, not one in all that time.
He now wore sneakers when strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his journey witht barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might click on and faces appearand an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure, himself, in the early November evening.
On this particular evening he began his journey in a westerly direction, towardthe hidden sea. There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose going in and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow. He listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet whistlebetween his teeth, occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lampplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.
«Hello, in there», he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. «What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?»
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The street was silent and long and empty, with only his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in mid-country. If he closed his eyes and stood very still,frozen, he imagined himself upon the center of a plain, a wintry windless Arizona country with no house in a thousand miles, and only dry riverbeds, the streets, for company.
«What is it now?» he asked the houses. noticing his wrist watch». Eight-thirty p. m. Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?»
Was that a murmur of laughter from within a moon-white house? He hesitated, but went on when nothing more happened. He stumbled over a particularly uneven section of walk as he came to a cloverleaf intersection which stood silent where two main highways crossed the town. During the day it was a thunderous surge of cars, the gas stations open, a great insect rustling and ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarab beetles, a faint incense puttering from their exhausts, skimmed homeward to the far horizons. But now these highways too were like streams in a dry season, all stone and bed and moon radiance.
He turned back on a side street, circling around toward his home. He was within a block of his destination when the lone car turned a corner quite suddenly and flashed a fierce white cone of light upon him. He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination and then drawn toward it.
A metallic voice called to him:
«Stand still. Stay where you are! Don’t move!»
He halted.
«Put up your hands».
«But —», he said.
«Your hands up! Or we’ll shoot!»
The police, of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left. Ever since a year ago, 2130, the election year, the force had been cut down from three cars to one. Crime was ebbing; there was no need now for the police, save for this one lone car wandering and wandering the empty streets.
«Your name?» said the police car in a metallic whisper. He couldn’t see the men in it for the bright light in his eyes.
«Leonard Mead», he said.
«Speak up!»
«Leonard Mead!»
«Business or profession?»
«I guess you’d call me a writer».
«No profession», said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.
«You might say that», said Mr. Mead. He hadn’t written in years. Magazines and books didn’t sell any more. Everything went on in the tomblike houses at night now, he thought, continuing his fancy. The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the gray or multi-colored lights touching their expressionless faces but never really touching them.
«No profession», said the phonograph voice, hissing. «What are you doing out?»
«Walking», said Leonard Mead.
«Walking!»
«Just walking», he said, simply, but his face felt cold.
«Walking, just walking, walking?»
«Yes, sir».
«Walking where? For what?»
«Walking for air. Walking to see».
« Your address!»
«Eleven South St. James Street».
«And there is air in your house. You have an air-conditioner, Mr. Mead?»
«Yes».
«And you have a viewing a viewing screen in your house to see with?»
«No».
«No?» There was a crackling quiet that in itself was an accusation.
«Are you married, Mr. Mead?»
«No».
«Not married», said the police voice behind the fiery beam. The moon was high and clear among the stars and the houses were gray and silent.
«Nobody wanted me», said Leonard Mead, with a smile.
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«Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to!»
Leonard Mead waited in the night.
«Just walking, Mr. Mead?»
«Yes».
«But you haven’t explained for what purpose».
«I explained: for air and to see, and just to walk».
«Have you done this often?»
«Every night for years».
The police car sat in the center of the street with its radio throat faintly humming.
«Well, Mr. Mead», it said.
«Is that all?» he asked politely.
«Yes», said the voice. «Here». There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police car sprang wide.
«Get in».
« Wait a minute, I haven’t done anything!»
«Get in».
«I protest!»
«Mr. Mead».
He walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he passed the front window of the car he looked in. As he had expected, there was no one in the front seat, no one in the car at all.
«Get in».
He put his hand to the door andpeered into the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there.
«Now if you had a wife to give you an alibi», said the iron voice. «But —»
«Where are you taking me?»
The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes.
«To the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies».
He got in. The door shut with a soft thud. The police car rolled through the night avenues, flashing its dim lights ahead.
They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all its electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.
«That’s my house», said Leonard Mead.
No one answered him.
The car moved down the empty river-bed streets and off away, leaving the empty streets with the empty sidewalks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.
Заключение
Итак, Вы уже прослушали спецкурс «Лексический анализ семантической структуры художественного текста», прочитали десять рассказов американских и английских писателей, два эссе и главы из романа Э. Хэмингуэя «Прощай, оружие!», самостоятельно проанализировали рассказ Р. Брэдбери и получили долгожданный зачет.
Автор данного учебно-методического пособия надеется, что вам понравилось с ним работать. В результате приобрели хорошие навыки интерпретации художественного текста, образцы авторского анализа помогли вам овладеть испытанными методами анализа текста и найти свои индивидуальные подходы к нему. Вы научились вдумчиво читать художественные произведения на английском языке и глубоко чувствовать язык писателя, то есть понимать, в чем заключается авторское послание читателю.
Список художественных произведений, предлагаемых
для анализа
1. Finney, Jack. Сontentsof the Dead Man’s Pockets / J. Finney // Configurations: American Short Stories for EFL Classroom. — Washington, 1988. — Р. 17—28.
2. Galsworthy, John. The Japanese Quince / J. Galsworthy // Story and Structure / Perrine L. — New York: Chicago: Burlingame: Harcout, Brace & World, Inc., 1959.
3. Updike, John. The Orphaned Swimming Pool / J. Uhdike// Twentieth Century American Short Stories: McConochie, Jean A. — New York: Collier Macmillan International, Inc., 1979. — Р. 50—54.
4. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms / E. Hemingway. — Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976. — 319 p.
5. Hemingway, Ernest.Old Man at the Bridge / E. Hemingway // Adventures in American Literature / J.Gehlmann, M. Bowman. — New York: Chicago: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958. — Р. 105—107.
6. Saroyan, William. Going Home / W. Saroyan // Configurations: American Short Stories for EFL Classroom. — Washington, 1988. — Р. 1—5.
7. Buckley, William F., Jr. Up from Misery / W. F. Buckley, Jr // Mind Speaks to Mind: Selected American Essay for Advanced Students of English as a Foreign language. — Washington: United States Information Agency, 1994. — Р. 7—8.
8. Epstein, Joseph. The Virtues of Ambition / J. Epstein // Mind Speaks to Mind: Selected American Essay for Advanced Students of English as a Foreign language. — Washington: United States Information Agency, 1994. — P. 16—19.
9. Thurber, James. The Catbird Seat / J. Thurber // Configurations: American Short Stories for EFL Classroom. — Washington, 1988. — Р. 45—51.
10. Foster, Michael. Later / M. Foster // Configurations: American Short Stories for EFL Classroom. — Washington, 1988. — Р. 137—139.
11. Williams,William Carlos. The Useof Force / W. C. Williams // Twentieth Century American Short Stories: McConochie, Jean A. — New York: Collier Macmillan International, Inc., 1979. — Р. 8—11.
12. Bradbury, Ray. The Pedestrian / R. Bradbury // Adventures in American Literature / J. Gehlmann, M. Bowman. — New York: Chicago: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958. — Р. 122—126.
Cписок рекомендуемой литературы
1. Каверина, О. Н. Лексический анализ художественного текста(на примере анализа рассказа Джека Фини «Содержимое карманов мертвого человека») / О. Н. Каверина // Образование на пороге нового тысячелетия: сб. науч. ст. — Балашов: Изд-во БГПИ, 1999. — С. 45—48.
2. Каверина, О. Н. Своеобразие семантики ритма в рассказе Джона Голсуорси «Японская айва» / О. Н. Каверина // Ритм и стиль: сб. ст. филолог. кафедр. — Балашов: Изд-во БГПИ, 2000. — С. 28—33.
3.Каверина, О. Н. Ритм семантической структуры текста (анализ рассказа Джона Апдайка «Осиротевший бассейн») / О. Н. Каверина // Ритм и стиль: сб. ст. кафедр англ. яз. и литературы Балашовского пед. ин-та. — Балашов: Изд-во БГПИ, 1999. — С. 57—60.
4. Каверина, О. Н. Pитмические особенности создания подтекста в романе Эрнеста Хэмингуэя «Прощай, оружие!» / О. Н. Каверина // Ритм и стиль: сб. ст. кафедр англ. яз. и кафедры литературы. — Балашов: Изд-во БГПИ, 2001. — С. 65—69.
5. Каверина, О. Н. Особенности синтаксического ритма эссе / О. Н. Каверина // Ритм и стиль: сб. ст. кафедры англ. яз. и кафедры литературы БФСГУ. — Балашов, 2004. — С. 41—45.
Учебно-методическое пособие
