Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Largely through Rossetti's efforts, the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of young British painters was formed in 1848 in reaction against what they conceived to be the unimaginative and artificial historical painting of the Royal Academy. They purportedly sought to express a new moral seriousness and sincerity in their works. They were inspired by Italian art of the 14th and 15th centuries, and their adoption of the name Pre-Raphaelite expressed their admiration for what they saw as the direct and uncomplicated depiction of nature typical of Italian painting before the High Renaissance and, particularly, before the time of Raphael. They aimed at “truth to nature,” which was to be achieved by minuteness of detail and painting from nature outdoors. The style evolved featured sharp and brilliant lighting, a clear atmosphere, and a near-photographic reproduction of details. They also frequently introduced a private poetic symbolism into their representations of Biblical subjects and mediaeval literary themes.

Rossetti expanded the Brotherhood's aims by linking poetry, painting, and social idealism and by interpreting the term Pre-Raphaelite as synonymous with a romanticized mediaeval past.

Although the Brotherhood's active life lasted less than 10 years, its influence on painting in Britain, and ultimately on the decorative arts and interior design, was profound.

The Primitivives

The Italian art of the 15 -16 centuries.

O.T.C. -officers training camp.

Militia- a body of men enrolled for military service, and called out periodically for drill and exercise but serving full time only in emergencies.

Food for thought

1. Speak about the associations evoked by the title. Explain the use of the indefinite article.

2. What idea is revealed by the opposition between the very first sentences and the very last sentence of the passage?

3. What do we get to know about the main character? Comment on the use of reported speech.

4. How is the conflict between George and people surrounding him revealed in the first paragraph?

5. Comment on the use of the artists’ names in the text.

6. Speak about the relationship between George and his parents. Comment on the choice of the verbs revealing George’s love for painting.

7. Analyse the first paragraph as a complete unit.

8. Compare the choice of words revealing George’s love of art and his abhorrance of killing. What stylistic devices support the idea? Why does the author create such a preceptable picture?

9. What thematic set is clearly seen in the description of School?

10. Comment on the implications of Kipling’s poem alluded to in the passage.

11. Define the role of transitional sentences between the parts. What principles of foregrounding are used there?

12. Speak about the general idea of the text.

Topics for discussion

1. Account for the conflict between social standards of a real man and George’s love for painting.

2. Aldington’s individual style.

3. Irony in the text.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899 - 1961)

Born in Oak Park, Ill. son of a doctor (who would commit suicide), Ernest Hemingway never attended college but became a journalist for the Kansas City Star (1917-18). He served with the Red Cross Ambulance Corps in France (1917-18) and was wounded while accompanying the Italian army into battle. He worked as a journalist, covering the Greco-Turkish war for the Toronto Star (1920). In Chicago, Ernest Hemingway married and went back to Europe to serve as a foreign correspondent (1921-24). He made frequent trips to Spain and the Austrian Alps but for the most part was based in Paris where he fell in with the expatriate circle centered around Gertrude Stein. His first published work was Three Stories already his distinctive voice was in evidence--simple sentences, enigmatic dialogue, precise description. The Sun Also Rises (1926) gained him instant acclaim and seemed to capture what Stein labeled "the lost generation." Men Without Women (1927), another collection of stories, maintained his reputation, while his next novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), advanced him to the front ranks of contemporary writers.

Ernest Hemingway had a favorite expression: il faut d'abord durer. He used the saying in his private letters and on occasion inscribed the words in books he signed for friends. The saying (French in origin) roughly translates to "first, one must endure." He himself explained Iceberg Theory in the following way: "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water." ( Death In the Afternoon, Scribner's, 1932, Chap. 16, 192. )

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 for his "mastery of the art of modern narration," Hemingway used a spare and tight journalistic type of prose. He used the objective, detached point of view and his vocabulary and sentence structure are deceptively simple. He has written about failure, moral bankruptcy, death, deception, and sterility in the post World War I society. His "code-heroes" are characters with inner moral discipline who are usually involved with rituals like bullfighting, big-game hunting, and fishing.

ON THE AMERICAN DEAD IN SPAIN

The dead sleep cold in Spain tonight. Snow blows through the olive groves, sifting against the tree roots. Snow drifts over the mounds with the small headboards. (When there was time for headboards.) The olive trees are thin in the cold wind because their lower branches were once cut to cover tanks, and the dead sleep cold in the small hills above the Jarama River. It was cold that February when they died there and since then the dead have not noticed the changes of the seasons.

It is two years now since the Lincoln Battalion held for four and a half months along the heights of the Jarama, and the first American dead have been a part of the earth of Spain for a long time now.

The dead sleep cold in Spain tonight and they will sleep cold all this winter as the earth sleeps with them. But in the spring the rain will come to make the earth kind again. The wind will blow soft over the hills from the south. The black trees will come to life with small green leaves, and there will be blossoms on the apple trees along the Jarama River. This spring the dead will feel the earth beginning to live again.

For our dead are a part of the earth of Spain now and the earth of Spain can never die. Each winter it will seem to die and each spring it will come alive again. Our dead will live with it forever.

Just as the earth can never die, neither will those who have ever been free return to slavery. The peasants who work the earth where our dead lie know what these dead died for. There was time during the war for them to learn these things, and there is forever for them to remember them in.

Our dead live in the hearts and the minds of the Spanish peasants, of the Spanish workers, of all the good simple honest people who believed in and fought for the Spanish republic. And as long as our dead live in the Spanish earth, and they will live as long as the earth lives, no system of tyranny ever will prevail in Spain.

The fascists may spread over the land, blasting their way with weight of metal brought from other countries. They may advance aided by traitors and by cowards. They may destroy cities and villages and try to hold the people in slavery. But you cannot hold any people in slavery.

The Spanish people will rise again as they have always risen before against tyranny.

The dead do not need to rise. They are a part of the earth now and the earth can never be conquered. For the earth endureth forever. It will outlive all systems of tyranny.

Those who have entered it honourably, and no men ever entered earth more honourably than those who died in Spain, already have achieved immortality.

Notes

olive – In ancient Greece the olive was sacred to Athene ( the patron goddess of Athenes and patroness of art and crafts, the goddess of wisdom and subsequently identified with Minerva by the Romans), in allusion to the story that at the naming of Athens she presented it with an olive branch. It was the symbol of peace and fecundity, and brides wore or carried an olive garland, as British brides often do a wreath of orange blossom. A crown of wild olive was the highest distinction of a citizen who deserved well of his country, and was the highest prize in the Olympic Games.

the Jarama River – a small river in Spain

Lincoln– the 16th President of the USA (1861-65). The Civil War for keeping unity of the country and abolishing the slavery took place in that period of time (in his presidency).

the Lincoln Battalion – one of the international battalions of volunteers taking part in the Civil War in Spain (1936-39)

endureth – obsolete ending “th” of the 3rd person singular. The word here is used as an allusion to The Book of Ecclesiastes: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the Earth endureth forever… The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose… The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it wirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuits… All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again”.

Food for thought

1. What can you say about the effect produced by alliteration in the initial lines?

2. What is the symbolic meaning of the word “olive”?

3. What thematic set comes into being in the first paragraph? How does the precise timing add to the atmosphere.

4. Speak about the anaphorical beginning of the first and the third paragraphs.

5. What is the function of the opposed thematic set in the third paragraph?

6. Comment on the usage of the definite article in the third paragraph.

7. Why is the word “Spain” reiterated in the text? Comment on the usage of other geographical names in the text.

8. How does the use of polysematic words (cf . “rise”, “people”) contribute to the idea of an iceburg?

9. Comment on the treatment of religeous ideas in the text. Discuss the motif of Resurrection.

10. How do you understand the expression “to enter the earth honorably”?

11. Comment on the strong positions of the text.

12. Give a summary of analysis of the story.

Topics for discussion

1. Speak about the Civil War in the USA (1861-65) and in Spain (1936-39).

2. Divide the text into two thematic parts and compare them. What idea is developed through the pairs of opposed words?

3. Analyse the way the principle of iceburg is revealed in the text.

GRAHAM GREENE (1904 - 1992)

GRAHAM GREENE (b. Oct. 2, 1904, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Eng.-d. April 3, 1991, Vcvcy, Switz.), English novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist whose novels treat life's moral ambiguities in the context of contemporary political settings. The Quiet American (1956) chronicles the doings of a well-intentioned American government agent in Vietnam in the midst of the anti-French uprising there in the early 1950s.

The world Grcene's characters inhabit is a fallen one, and the tone of his works einphasizes the presence of evil as a palpable force. His novels display a consistent preoccupation with sin and moral failure acted out in seedy locales characterized by danger, violence, and physical decay. Greene's chief concern is the moral and spiritual struggles within individuals, but the larger political and social settings of his novels give such conflicts an enhanced resonance. His early novels depict a shabby Depression-stricken Europe sliding toward fascism and war, while many of his subsequent novels are set in remote locales undergoing wars, revolutions, or other political upheavals.

Despite the downbeat tone of much of his subject matter, Greene was in fact one of the most widely read British novelists of the 20th century. His books' unusual popularity is due partly to his production of thrillers featuring crime and intrigue but more importantly to his superb gifts as a storyteller, especially his masterful selection of detail and his use of realistic dialogue in a fast-paced narrative.

THE QUIET AMERICAN

Part III. Chapter II

“There mustn't be any American casualties, must there?” An ambulance forced its way up the rue Catinat into the square, and the policeman who had stopped me moved to one side to let it through. The policeman beside him was engaged in an argument. I pushed Pyle forward and ahead of me into the square before we could be stopped.

We were among a congregation of mourners. The police could prevent others entering the square; they were powerless to clear the square of the survivors and the first-comers. The doctors were too busy to attend to the dead, and so the dead were left to their owners, for one can own the dead as one owns a chair. A woman sat on the ground with what was left of her baby in her lap; with a kind of modesty she had covered it with her straw peasant hat. She was still and silent, and what struck me most in the square was the silence. It was like a church I had once visited during Mass – the only sounds came from those who served, except where here and there the Europeans wept and implored and fell silent again as though shamed by the modesty, patience and propriety of the East. The legless torso at the edge of the garden still twitched, like a chicken which has lost its head. From the man’s shirt, he had probably been a trishaw-driver.

Pyle said, “It’s awful.” He looked at the wet on his shoes and said in a sick voice, “What’s that?” “Blood,” I said. “Haven't you ever seen it before?”

He said, “I must get them cleaned before I see the Minister.” I don’t think he knew what he was saying. He was seeing a real war for the first time: he had punted down into Phat Diem in a kind of schoolboy dream, and anyway in his eyes soldiers didn’t count.

“You see what a drum of Diolacton can do,” I said, “in the wrong hands.” I forced him, with my hand on his shoulder, to look around. I said, “This is the hour when the place is always full of women and children – it’s the shopping hour. Why choose that of all hours?” He said weakly, “There was to have been a parade.” “And you hoped to catch a few colonels. But the parade was cancelled yesterday, Pyle.” “I didn’t know”.

“Didn’t know!” I pushed him into a patch of blood where a stretcher had lain. “You ought to be better informed.” “I was out of town,” he said, looking down at his shoes. “They should have called it off.”

“And missed the fun?” I asked him. “Do you expect General Thieu to lose his demonstration? This is better than a parade. Women and children are news, and soldiers aren't , in a war. This will hit the world's Press. You've, put General Thieu on the map all right, Pyle. You've got the Third Force and National Democracy all over your right shoe. Go home to Phuong and tell her about your heroic deed - there are a few dozen less of her country people to worry about.”

A small fat priest scampered by, carrying something on a dish under a napkin. Pyle had been silent a long while, and I had nothing more to say. Indeed I had said too much. He looked white and beaten and ready to faint, and I thought, “What’s the good? He’ll always be innocent, you can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.”

He said, “Thieu wouldn’t have done this. I’m sure he wouldn't. Somebody deceived him. The Communists...”

He was impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance. I left him standing in the square and went on up the rue Catinat to where the hideous pink Cathedral blocked the way. Already people were flocking in: it must have been a comfort to them to be able to pray for the dead and to the dead.

Notes

trishaw-driver – a bicycle rickshaw

Phat Diem – a town in Viet Nam

Diolacton– an explosive substance

General Thieu – a general who belonged to the Caodaists, one of the influential religious and political sects

The rue Catinat – the name of the street

Food for thought

1. Speak about the paradox in the title.

2. What thematic set comes into being in the initial lines?

3. Find out all the stylistic devices used in the second paragraph.

4. Speak about the impression produced by the sight of victims.

5. Why is the decription of the victims so cynical?

6. Comment on Pyle’s words “It’s awful”.

7. What is the narrator’s attitude to Pyle? How is it revealed in the dialogue?

8. Speak about the context in which the word “innocent” is repeated.

9. Analyse the biblical allusion in the closing paragraph. Speak on the role of religion and the main character’s attitude to it.

Topics for discussion

1. Discuss the aim of introducing the device of retardation.

2. The description is focussed not on the events as such but on the behaviour of people under circumstances. Find some instances to prove the idea.

3. Greene has a graphic eye. Speak about the details permitting the reader to supply the missing links.

4. Comment on the author’s attitude to the West and to the East.

5. Speak about the main idea of the text.

GRAHAM GREENE (1904 – 1991)

THE COMEDIANS.

Chapter III.3.

Doctor Magiot gave me dinner that night at his own home, and in addition he gave me a great deal of good advice which I was unwise enough to discount because I thought he might perhaps have an idea of obtaining the hotel for another client.

It was the one share he possessed in my mother's company which made me suspicious even though I held the signed transfer.

He lived on the lower slopes of Petionville in a house of three storeys like a miniature version of my own hotel with its tower and its lace-work balconies. In the garden grew a dry spiky Norfolk pine, like an illustration in a Victorian novel, and the only modern object in the room, where we sat after dinner, was the telephone: It was like an oversight in a museum-arrangement. The heavy drape of the scarlet curtains, the woollen cloths on the occasional tables with bobbles at each corner, the china objects on the chimney-piece that included two dogs with the same gentle gaze as Doctor Magiot's, the portraits of the doctor's parents (coloured photographs mounted on mauve silk in oval frames), the pleated screen in the unnecessary fireplace, spoke of another age; the literary works in a glass-fronted bookcase (Doctor Magiot kept his professional works in his consulting-room) were bound in old-fashioned calf. I examined them while he was out 'washing his hands,' as he put it in polite English. There were Les Miserables in three volumes, Les Mysteres de Paris with the last volume missing, several of Gaboriau's romans policiers, Renan's Vie de Jesus, and rather surprisingly among its companions Marx's Capital rebound in exactly the same calf so that it was indistinguishable at a distance from Les Miserables. The lamp at Doctor Magiot's elbow had a pink glass shade, and quite wisely, for even in those days the electric-current was erratic, it was oil-burning.

'You really intend,' Doctor Magiot asked me, 'to take over the hotel?'

'Why not? I have a little experience of restaurant-work. I can see great possibilities of improvement. My mother was not catering for the luxury-trade.' 'The luxury-trade?' Doctor Magiot repeated. 'I think you can hardly depend on that here.'

'Some hotels do.'

'The good years will not always continue. Not very long now and there will be the elections...'

'It doesn't make much difference, does it, who wins?'

'Not for the poor. But to the tourist perhaps.' He put a flowered saucer upon the table beside me — an ash-tray would have been out of period in this room where no one had ever smoked in the old days. He handled the saucer carefully, as though it were of precious porcelain. He was very big and very black, but he possessed great gentleness — he would never ill-treat, I felt sure, even an inanimate object, such as a recalcitrant chair. Nothing can be more inconsiderate to a man of Doctor Magiot's profession than a telephone. But when it rang once during our conversation he lifted the receiver as gently as he would have raised a patient's wrist.

'You have heard,' Doctor Magiot said, 'of the Emperor Christophe?'

'Of course.'

'Those days could return very easily. More cruelly perhaps and certainly more ignobly. God save us from a little Christophe.'

'Nobody could afford to frighten away the American tourists. You need the dollars.'

'When you know us better, you will realize that we don't live on money here, we live on debts. You can always afford to kill a creditor, but no one ever kills a debtor.'

'Whom do you fear?'

'I fear a small country-doctor. His name would mean nothing to you now. I only hope you don't see it one day stuck up in electric-lights over the city. If that day comes I promise you I shall run to cover.' It was Doctor Magiot's first mistaken prophecy. He underrated his own stubbornness or his own courage. Otherwise I would not have been waiting for him later beside the dry swimming-pool where the ex-Minister lay still as a hunk of beef in a butcher’s shop.

Notes.

The action takes place the night after Brown’s mother’s funeral.

Food for thought

1. Divide the text into parts, speak on the subject matter of each and its idea.

2. Speak on the importance of Dr Magiot’s setting, various allusions to literature used in the text. What are the implications?

3. What is the stylistic function of Marx’ Capital mentioned in the passage? What does it reveal about Dr Magiot?

4. Why does the narrator call the telephone “incosiderable for the profession”?

5. What features of Dr Magiot’s appearance are given emphasis in the passage? Why?

6. Comment on the paradox stated by Dr Magiot.

Topics for discussion

1. Give Dr Magiot’s portrayal.

2. Why was Brown so sure of his hotel’s future?

3. Reveal the omniscient position of the narrator. Speak on the role of the flashback in the passage.

GEORGE ORWELL (1903 – 1950)

The British author George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, b. Motihari, India, June 25, 1903, d. London, Jan. 21, 1950, achieved prominence in the late 1940s as the author of two brilliant satires attacking totalitarianism. Familiarity with the novels, documentaries, essays, and criticism he wrote during the 1930s and later has since established him as one of the most important and influential voices of the century.

Orwell's parents were members of the Indian Civil Service, and, after an education at Eton College in England, Orwell joined (1922) the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. Orwell's two best-known books reflect his lifelong distrust of autocratic government, whether of the left or right: Animal Farm (1945), a modern beast-fable attacking Stalinism, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a dystopian novel setting forth his fears of an intrusively bureaucratized state of the future. For a significant portion of his life, he served as a British policeman of sorts (like his father and grandfather) with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. After 6 years, however, he became discouraged and decided to return to England and take up writing for a living. Having spent a significant portion of his life watching and even participating in the oppressive influence of the declining British Empire, he began to develop a unique world-view which would later serve him well as a writer and political essayist and critic. Here he criticized virtually all forms of government.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.

Part I

Chapter V.

‘We’re destroying words-scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.'

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good”, what need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood” will do just as well — better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of “good”, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like “excellent” and “splendid” and all the rest of them? “Plusgood” covers the meaning; or “doubleplusgood” if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words-in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,” he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

“You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations, in your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,” he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. “Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”

“Except———“ began Winston doubtfully, and then stopped.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say “Except the proles,” but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.

'The proles are not human beings,' he said carelessly. 'By 2050 - earlier, probably - all real knowledge of Old-speak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.'

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

Food for thought

1. Comment on the strong positions of the text.

2. Dvide the text into parts, sum up the subject matter and the idea of which.

3. Comment on the usage of occasionalisms (author’s neologisms) and their function. Make afull list of such words used in the pasage.

4. Speak on the new meanings acquired by regular English words in the context of the novel. What is the stylistic function of this method?

5. Define the role of literary allusions in the text.

6. Speak on the linguistic processes described in the passage.

7. The role of Big Brother in the pasage.

8. Comment on the author’s individual style and philosophy as seen in the passage under study.

Topics for discussion

1. The changes in the Newspeak and their influence upon mental climate of the nation. Recall linguistic theories that support this idea. What are the relations between the language and the nation’s picture of the world?

2. The combination of reality and fantasy in the novel.

3. Totalitarian regime described in the novel.

JOHN RONALD REUEL TOLKIEN (1892 – 1973)

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work of imaginative fiction, The Lord of the Rings. By turns comic, homely, epic, monstrous and diabolic, the narrative moves through countless changes of scenes and character in an imaginary world which is totally convincing in its detail. Tolkien created in The Lord of the Rings a new mythology in an invented world which has proved timeless in its appeal.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING.

Chapter 3.

Three is a Company.

“You do not ask me or tell me much that concerns yourself, Frodo,” said Gildor. “But I already know a little, and I can read more in your face and in the thought behind your questions. You are leaving the Shire, and yet you doubt that you will find what you seek, or accomplish what you intend, or that you will ever return. Is not that so?”

“It is,” said Frodo: “but I thought my going was a secret known only to Gandalf and my faithful Sam.”

He looked down at Sam, who was snoring gently.

“The secret will not reach the Enemy from us.” said Gildor.

“The Enemy?” said Frodo. “Then you know why I am leaving the Shire?”

“I do not know for what reason the Enemy is pursuing you,” answered Gildor: “but I perceive that he is — strange indeed though that seems to me. And I warn you that peril is now both before you and behind you, and upon either side.”

“You mean the Riders. I feared that they were servants of the Enemy. What are the Black Riders?”

“Has Gandalf told you nothing?”

“Nothing about such creatures.”

“Then I think it is not for me to say more — lest terror should keep you from your journey. For it seems to me that you have set out only just in time. if indeed you are in time. You must now make haste, and neither stay nor turn back; for the Shire is no longer any protection to you.”

“I cannot imagine what information could he more terrifying than your hints and warnings,' exclaimed Frodo. “I knew that danger lay ahead, of course: but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can't a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace?”

But it is not your own Shire,' said Gildor. “Others dwelt here before hobbits were: and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in. but you cannot for ever fence it out.”

“I know — and yet it has always seemed so safe and familiar. What can I do now? My plan was to leave the Shire secretly, and make my way to Rivendell: but now my footsteps are dogged, before ever I get to Buckland.”

“I think you should still follow that plan,” said Gildor. “I do not think the Road will prove too hard for your courage. But if you desire clearer counsel, you should ask Gandalf. I do not know the reason for your flight, and therefore I do not know by what means your pursuers will assail you. These things Gandalf must know. I suppose that you will see him before you leave die Shire?”

“I hope so. But that is another tiling that makes me anxious. I have been expecting Gandalf formally days. He was to have come to Hobbiton at the latest two nights ago: but he has never appeared. Now I am wondering what can have happened. Should — I wait for him?”

Gildor was silent for a moment. “I do not like this news,” he said at last. “That Gandalf should be late does not bode well. But it is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. The choice is yours: to go or wait.”

“And it is also said.” answered Frodo: “Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.”

“Is it indeed?” laughed Gildor. “Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill. But what would you? You have not told me all concerning yourself: and how then shall 1 choose better than you'? But if you demand advice, I will for friendship's sake give it. I think you should now go at once, without delay; and if Gandalf does not come before you set out, then I also advise this: do not go alone. Take such friends as are trusty and willing. Now you should be grateful, for I do not give this counsel gladly. The Elves have their own labours and their own sorrows, and they are little concerned with the ways of hobbits, or any other creatures upon earth.”

Notes

Gildor is the leader of an elf group met by Frodo and his company after thier first encounter with the Black Riders.

Food for thought

1. Speak on the subject matter of the text. Is it revealed in the narration, the dialogue?

2. Define the elements of imagined world in the passage. Are they used abundantly or sparsely? Why?

3. What elements of the text contribute to the verisimilitude of the text?

4. Comment on the proverbs quoted in the passage.

5. Analyse the elf’s speech. What general conclusions about elves as a nation can the reader make from this passage? Compare Frodo’s speech to that of Gildor.

6. Account for direct speech tags. How is the emotional tension revealed in the text?

Topics for discussion

1. The image of Middlearth in the text.

2. The portrayal of different races inhabiting the Middlearth.

3. The combination of imagery and reality in the novel.

4. The reasons of Tolkien’s popularity.

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