Hotel World: Ali Smith

7 minutes

PPT/ Prezi

Some topics:

- Symbols such as: the elevator shaft

- Themes such as: sexuality, social acceptance, the passage of time, mourning, watching
and observing

1. PASADO:

Dumbwaiter: montaplatos

Plummet:

Make a wager:

The story opens as nineteen-year-old swimmer Sara Wilby describes her death. As he
attempted to climb into the dumbwaiter of the Global Hotel, she lost her footing and
plummeted down the shaft. Now, six month later, Sara is a ghost, visiting all the spots she
once frequented in life, still trying to make sense of her death, and losing the sense of
what it was like to be alive. She explains that she haunted her family for a period but,
quickly growing bored by the endeavour, abandoned it.

Sara remembers visiting her body, buried underground, and having a conversation with it;
it was during this discussion that her body reminded her that just before her death, Sara
fell in love with a young woman who worked in a story selling watches. Sara had made a
wager with another hotel employee that she could fit inside the contraption. It had all
been a silly and senseless accident.

Sara visits various rooms in the hotel, where she sees other young women, including the
girl working at the front desk, who is sick but not yet aware of that fact, and a homeless
woman sitting outside.

PRESENTE HISTÓRICO

Else: a homeless woman sitting outside

GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Introduction:

The story of a fatal accident and its traumatic consequences.

Sara’s death has repercussions which are minutely analysed through six compelling
sections narrated by five different characters:

- Sara’s ghost (Past)

- Else, a homeless lady (Future conditional)
- Lise, the hotel’s receptionist (Present historic)
- Penny, a journalist (Perfect)
- Clare, Sara’s sister (Present)

And the narration is retaken in the last section by Sara’s ghost (Present).

“It doesn’t matter where you are in the world if you’re anywhere near a Global Hotel. You
could be, literally anywhere”. (Smith 2001: 180)

THE CONS AND PROS OF BEING DEAD. THE REMAINING OF LIFE…

LANGUAGE IN HOTEL WORLD?

The language that Smith uses to render the experience of a tragic death. It is a striking
mixture of lyricism and brutality, morbidity and subtlety, black humour and sensuality. Her
elegy is based on a variety of linguistic devices which make the protagonists’ identity and
their condition at a certain stage of life, or, more precisely, posthumous existence.

A young chambermaid Sara dies a tragic death when she, as a joke, squeezes herself into a
hotel dumbwaiter and inadvertently falls down three floors. While her buried body rest in
peace, her restless “rest”, an insubstantial trace of her spiritual and mental existence,
remains on earth for a few more months, experiencing a variety of self-revelatory
emotions. The emotions concern primarily the physicality of life that can be solely
rendered through the senses. Unfortunately, immaterial Sara is already partly devoid of
them. Although she is still able to see and hear, she desperately longs for the feeling of
touch, taste and smell.

what I want more than anything in the world is to feel a stone rattling about in my shoe as
I walk, a small sharp stone, so that it jags into diff erent parts of the sole and hurts just
enough to be pleasure, like scratching in itch. Imagine an itch. Imagine a foot, and a
pavement beneath it, and a stone, and pressing the stone with my whole weight hard into
the skin of the sole… (Smith 3-4)

While the body is quietly rotting in its grave, Sara’s spectre is vainly trying to recall the
details about her fall. She must finally resort her decaying body which appears to be much
more knowledgeable, especially when it concerns Sara’s failing to death and her falling in
love.