13. W.S. Maugham “The Verger”.

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 The author. William Somerset Maugham was an English playwright, novelist,
and short story writer whose work is characterized by a clear unadorned style,
cosmopolitan settings, and a shrewd understanding of human nature. He was
among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid
author during the 1930s. His stories could be characterized by great narrative
facility, an ironic point of view. Giving Maugham his due for brilliance of style
and a pointed many social vices, such as snobbishness, money-worship,
pretense, self-interest, etc., we realize his cynical attitude to mankind. His
ironical cynicism combined with a keen wit and power of observation affords
him effective means of portraying English reality without shrinking before its
seamy side. There isn't a simple answer as far as themes in his works because
he was so prolific, but Maugham is considered a Modernist . In his work, S.
Maugham turned to various literary forms: novel, short story, drama and
comedy, memoirs. He wrote such famous works as “Of Human Bondage”,
"Rain", "Footprints in the Jungle", “Liza of Lambeth”.

 Summery. The verger is about Albert Edward Foreman, who has been the
verger of St. Peter’s Neville Square for sixteen year. One day when a new vicar
comes to ST. Peter’s and finds out that Foreman is illiterate, the vicar talk whit
him but Foreman is refuses to learn, so the new vicar feels he has no choice
but to fire him. When Foreman is coming back home back, lonely and sad, he
wants to buy some cigarette but he realizes that there no shops around and
thinks it will be a good idea to open one. When he comes home, talks about it
with his wife, and the next day go back and find a place to rent and set up in
business as a tobacconist and newsagent. After a year he opens another shop.
In the course of 10 years he is the owner of about ten shops around London.
One day Foreman goes to the bank, and the manager recommends that he can
invest his money, but when he has to sign a contract, the manager realize that
Foreman is illiterate. He is so surprise that he ask Foreman what he would be
now if he was able to read and write, Foreman told him he would be the
verger of St Peter’s Neville Square.

 The setting. The clearest setting of this short story is the place, is takes place in
London. I can say that the type of conflict of the story is subtle and complex, it
is not a story about with the main conflict between good and evil. William
Somerset Maugham is known for this philosophical, irony works and that story
 is exactly one of these. The conflict is internal, because the character struggles
against the circumstances of life faced him.

 The text. The text is written in belles-letters style. The bookish words prevail
there (compliance, dignified, vacant, lamentalle and etc.). The story is written
in the 3rd person form, the author uses mostly narration with short dialogs. In
the text we also can find a lot of church term (verger’s gown, vicar, chancel
and other). The author uses it to get the right atmosphere and to describe
settings of the story.

 The plot. The plot is rich for events. The main character lost his job and after
that tried to run a business and succeed. In my opinion the introduction of the
story started from the beginning and ends after the scene when Albert was
fired, and his life suddenly changed, after that started the development of the
story where he created his tobacco business, started to get more money and
continue to open new shops around London. The climax of the story comes in
the movement he is proved to be unable to read when he is proposed to sign
the agreement in order to invest his money. The denouement is the Forman’s
reply that he would be the verger of the St. Peter’s, Neville Square to
manager’s question about what he would be now if he could read. It is an
omniscient narration. The story is told from the character’s point of view. And
it have free access to felling, thoughts and motivation of each character, and
do not interfere in any point of the story.

 The characters. The main character of the story is Albert Edward Foreman. He
is thrifty, simple, calm, reasonable. He wanted has been a verger for 16 years
and didn’t want to change anything, he dreamed about been the verger for
the rest of his life. It shows that he wasn’t a risky man. He was honest and got
what he had honestly because he was a hardworker. Before he was appointed
to his ecclesiastical office, after started to work as a page-boy in the household
of a merchant-prince, for a year he had been single-handed butler to a
widowed peeress, and, till the vacancy occurred at St Peter’s, butler. He took
his work seriously, even according to the new vicar and the wardens, apart
from the fact that he could not write or read, there were no other complaints
about his work. In addition, he was careful about things and money. He was
saving his old vestments. He respected himself and his position. And he saved
the money he received, which saved him after his dismissal. He was confident
and knew his own worth. He knew how to keep a straight face and not show
his emotions. Even when he was asked to learn to read and write, he refused,
 because he knew that even without this skill, he was doing his job
conscientiously. As the author says “his character was unimpeachable. He had
tact, firmness, and self-assurance”. In my opinion, he is a flat character,
despite the fact that he is the main character. In fact, such character of Albert
Edward Foreman is used by author also for ironic purpose. The writer wishes
to focus on the characteristic he represents – that he was illiterate. And this
exact characteristic is one that changed all. He is a static character. The fact
that he didn’t changed trough the story is exactly one of the tools which W.S.
Maugham used to bring irony in the work. It also shows that the difficulty of
social environment in which the main character lived and how he dialed with
them. The author presents the character using direct method and indirect
method. He comments on the character’s personality and also shows it
through his words and actions. But he uses more direct methods. Albert
Edward Foreman speaks respectfully, uses addresses, But it also uses graphical
devices – they are forms of such colloquial words as naggin’, ‘ustle, jockeyd,
doin’, alf, when he speaks, it shows that he was an ordinary man. He also uses
colloquial idioms in his speech such as too old a dog to learn new tricks or have
the knack for it. In Albert’s speech the author employs simple words and
constructions to show the simple character. He uses wrong words and doesn’t
know grammar (don’t know I want my tea? All his hustle in me head). The
author also uses many metaphors to convey emotions of the character in the
critical situations, for example when the main character lost his job (the blow
inflicted upon him, his heart was heavy). This stylistic device helps the reader
to understand the importance of this work for Albert, his attitude to the
situation and his condition in that moment.

 The mood. The mood of the story is ironical. The irony lies in the fact that it
took 16 years of Foreman's service as verger for people to understand that he
does not fit. Of course, the vicar just came there, but he was ignorant and
didn’t not take into account that Foreman had been working all this year
without any accident. The peak of the irony in this story we can observe in the
last sentence. Foreman's answer is ironic because the banker expected him to
be a greater businessman if he were educated, but Foreman knew that he
would still be a verger at his church, because in this case he would never been
forced to leave. That’s paradox.

 The main idea. I think there is two main ideas that we can find in the text. First
of all, education is not the main thing, sanity becomes the basis of success. The
important thing is that the story perfectly reflects the real-life stories of the
 creation of your business. As is often the case at the beginning of success
stories, Foreman's old established life collapsed, and he had to find his place in
the world anew. The church minister became a successful businessman
because he had such qualities as observation, decency, was not greedy, and he
did not have only money looming before his eyes. He built his business step by
step, year by year. But on the other hand, the story shows that the lack of
knowledge can be a serious limitation for the further development of the
business. This also happens often in life, the business (or rather the
entrepreneur) reaches a certain level of competence and stops growing. The
principle of sufficiency does not always work in favor. It is not always possible
to sit quietly in a cozy niche, especially in these days, when the market is
changing rapidly. And the second idea, that I see in the story is deeper. When I
was reading the story, I payed my attention on one phrase: “he was going to
render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s” - is a phrase attributed to Jesus in the
synoptic gospels. It means to each its own. You need to remember that you
need to live your own life. This time, Maugham presents us with a
philosophical reflection on the fate of a person - a church minister is faced
with a choice: learn to read and write and keep his job, or give up and become
a retired churchman. Almost any reader would be surprised by the choice
made by the hero, but he was guided, no less, by instinct - by choosing the
path of self-immutability, he achieved more than he could, succumbing to the
stereotype and thinking of the majority. Listening to yourself is one of the
most important values given to a person. It is not known how the fate of the
character would have developed, if he had agreed to the standard version -
after all, nothing special was wanted from him. But, I think, he did everything
right-right for himself, choosing what his heart led to, not changing his desires
and impulses, taking a risk and only winning in the end.

14. K.Mansfield “Miss Brill”. Роль лексики и стилистических средств в

создании тональности текста.
 The author. Catherine Mansfield is a famous English and New Zealand writer
who was born in the late 19th century. She was called the master of short
stories, who evolved a distinctive prose style with many overtones of poetry.
Her delicate stories, focused upon psychologic. She, in turn, had much
influence on the development of the short story as a form of literature. In
addition to this story, she also wrote such famous works as "At the Bay," "The
Voyage," "The Stranger" and others. Her writing style is very descriptive, has
many symbols, metaphors, and tons of imagery. She has an eye for the
 subtleties of human conduct and the dramatic effect of her stories is based on
significant little details, which play an important role in the lives of her
personages. She is very sensitive to class distinctions, and her sympathy is
always on the side of the have-nots. Besides that, any kind of egoism and
pretense on the part of her bourgeois characters is treated with ironic
objectivity. It should be noted that her works were written under the influence
of such an artistic movement as Modernism. Literary modernism, or modernist
literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

 Summery. It's a fine day with a slight chill in the air in the Jardin Publiques, a
park in France. Miss Brill wears her fur stole, which is starting to show its age a
bit. She'll touch it up when it's necessary. She had taken it out of storage that
afternoon and brushed it. It's more crowded than last Sunday. The band plays
louder and the atmosphere feels lighter. Seated next to Miss Brill is an old
couple who don't speak. She's disappointed as she's very good at
surreptitiously listening in on people's conversations. Miss Brill hopes they'll
leave soon. Last week wasn't that interesting, either. A couple had a dull
conversation about the wife needing glasses that went nowhere. Miss Brill
turns her attention to the crowd. There are people walking, talking and buying
flowers, and children wearing their best clothes. Others sit on benches and
chairs—they're old and odd, like they've come out of dark rooms or
cupboards. She continues watching—young people pair off; two peasant
women lead donkeys; a nun hurries by; a beautiful woman drops flowers, has
them returned, and discards them again. A woman in an ermine toque has a
conversation with a dignified looking man. He abruptly ends it by blowing
smoke in her face and walking off. The woman waves like she sees someone
and leaves. The old couple next to Miss Brill get up and march off. She loves
sitting there watching it all. It's like a play and they're all part of the
performance, including her. Someone would notice if she was missing. It's the
first time she's realized this. She's shy about telling her English pupils what she
does on Sundays, and she gets there the same time every week because she's
an actress. She thinks of the old invalid man she reads to four times a week,
and imagines him realizing she's an actress.
The band starts up again. It's a light, uplifting tune and Miss Brill feels that
everyone could start singing. She senses that everyone shares an
understanding of some sort. A really young, beautiful couple sit next to her.
They seem like the hero and heroine of the performance. Miss Brill listens in.
The girl rebuffs an advance. The boy asks if it's because of Miss Brill's presence.
 He calls her a "stupid old thing" and asks, "who wants her?" The girl makes fun
of her fur stole.
Miss Brill walks home. She usually buys a slice of cake at the bakery as a
Sunday treat. Today she doesn't. She climbs the stairs to her dark, little room
and sits on the bed. She takes off her fur and quickly puts it back in its box. She
closes the lid. She thinks she hears something crying.

 The setting. The story is happening in the Paris in the park, where old Miss Brill
goes every Sunday.

 The text. It's told by a third-person limited omniscient narrator. We're given
access to many of the protagonist's thoughts, including some direct inner
monologue. It is a known fact that Catherine Mansfield was a modernist
writer, she loved to speak in her works about inner parts of the people. Her
stylistic peculiarity of mixing the author narration with the thoughts of the
character really points out in her works, and this works isn’t the exception. The
main character becomes a center of the revelation and the reader sees the
events and others from her viewpoint. This is such a technic called interior
monolog, which is a record of a characters, thoughts and sense impressions.
The author abounds traditional syntax and logical connection in order to
represent the flow of character’s thoughts. For example, we see it in the
beginning of the story where the Miss Brill thinks about her old fur. Moreover,
the author uses a technic called Slice of life, which is very common for
modernism writers. For example, when Miss Brill speaks about Englishman and
his wife whom she met a week ago.

 The plot. The plot isn’t eventful, but have many small episodes. The
introduction of the story is the first paragraph which starts with the
description of the weather, when Miss Brill takes out her beautiful old far, and
went to her every-week walk. The development of the story starts from the
second paragraph, where she sets on her special seat in the park watching
people around her and enjoying the so-called performance. The paragraph
where exclamatory sentences most abound is also where the climax is
reached, that is, when Miss Brill coaxes herself into believing she has a part of
the play and that’s why she comes every Sunday: Oh, how fascinating it was!
How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting here, watching it all! After that was
an epiphany, where when the young couple bluntly destroy Miss Brill's
perception of herself as connected to those around her, saying hatful things.
This moment is foreshadowed. The denouement of the story is very dramatic.
 She comes back home, climbs the stairs, go into the little dark room where she
seats for a long time, puts her old far in the box and thinks she heard
something crying.

 The characters. The theme of the story revolves around Miss Brill, a shy old
English school teacher. She is a round character, who significantly changes
through the story. There are also minor characters, such as am old couple in
the beginning, the Englishmen and his wife, and old ill man and the young
couple in the end, but their characters are flat. Miss Brill, to escape from her
lonely abode visits the park every week to seek a much-needed social contact.
That is her ritual that she does. In the beginning of the story she puts on her
old fur and talks to directly her fur. This personification makes me believe that
the author comperes it with Miss Bill. The details about bringing her coat out
of storage and “rubbing the life into it” clearly refer to Miss Brill herself as
well. And so, it becomes clear that Miss Brill is someone who has herself been
in a kind of “storage” – who is intensely alone and lonely – and these trips to
the park are what “rub the life into her.” She is curios about other people’s
lives, she likes to eavesdrop other’s conversations. She tends to insert herself
into the lives of others, as she judges people for what she hears. This park
makes her feel like she was a part of the big performance. I think here
Catherine Mansfield use park as symbol of life, where many people from
different age groups each of them telling a different story. And the old
generation is getting replaced by the younger generation in the end. She feels
empowered like a director creating their painted characters and assuming the
untold stories between them. She is enraged by their pessimistic attitude
towards life and wants them to be interesting, just like how she imagines them
to be. It makes her happy and she always looks forward to enjoying the small
pleasures in life. She is jolted back to the harsh reality that she shuns away
from, when a young couple make mockery out of her existence. In reality she
is lonely and the world that she lives in does not see old lonely woman as an
attractive companion. Something deep within her is already crying due to a
feeling of brokenness, but to the world outside her she is a cheerful old
woman with bright tales in her head.
The author uses the direct method to convey her character. She uses the
nature to create not only the mood of the story but also to show the
emotions. It is apparent that Miss Brill is disturbed by an inexplicable restless,
which stems partly from the “faint chill” she somehow senses in the
motionless air. The author uses a lot of vague words and expressions. It seems
to me that the author used it to create the art feeling, like a painter, she
 pained her work with little strokes. The adjective “faint” is itself a rather
vague term. In this context, it could mean “lacking clearness, brightness or
strength”. Such as “nowhere”, “somehow”, “something” also contributes to
foster a pervasive sense of uncertainty. In her thoughts Miss Brill uses many
exclamatory sentences. She use it also for ironical purpose, when she was
talking about the old generation in the park. Such an exclamation, with a
glimmering of gloat—yet not without deep compassion—might very well have
yielded the anticipation that Miss Brill were a young woman, vital and
blooming.

 The mood. The author not only uses weather to create the emotional and
artistic effect but also music. The music seems to change through the story
mixing with the events that were happening in that moment. It is one of the
peculiarities of modernism. The author uses a lot of compositions in this work
to make a more colorful and beautiful and to convey am exact feeling and
picture in our head (blue sky powdered with gold and great spots of light like
white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques – we imagine light clouds; a
faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, - make us feel
the excitement of the moment ang the feeling that something will change;
small high-stepping mother, like a young hen, rushed scolding to its rescue. –
makes us imagine the exact describe how the person moves).

 The themes. The main themes of the story are Loneliness and Alienation. The
author depicts the life of a woman living alone in a society that constantly
appraises companionship, it is very similar to the life that the author Katherine
Mansfield led. First, Miss Brill lives alone in a small room. She also goes on her
recurring Sunday outing by herself. She goes all year round, in the busy and
slow seasons. This implies she doesn't have any other engagements. These
things in themselves wouldn't necessarily indicate loneliness, but they're part
of a larger pattern. She considers herself an expert eavesdropper. This seems
like a substitute for personal interaction. She would no doubt like to have the
conversation herself; lacking any connections, the best she can do is pick up
some of the scraps around her. The people who enter the protagonist's
thoughts also tell us how isolated she is. She spends much of the time thinking
about the strangers who sit next to her and strangers whom she can see from
her seat. She briefly thinks of her English students, who have a practical reason
for spending time with her. She thinks of the old man she reads to, how he
could be dead without her noticing—they clearly don't talk much. Also
noteworthy is who Miss Brill doesn't think about. There's no mention of any
family or friends. As an English expatriate in France, it's understandable that
she has no relatives near. The circumstances around her move aren't given. It's
easy to imagine that she had no close ties in her own country, and thus, had
no reason to stay there. It's noteworthy that Miss Brill doesn't say a single
word to anyone during the story. Despite her desire for a connection, she
doesn't greet the people who sit next to her. Her alienation is strong enough
to prevent this small step. The only people in the story to whom we could infer
that she speaks are her students, the old invalid man and the baker. These
interactions are obligatory, rare and transactional. The most overt example of
her alienation is seen in how the young couple reacts to her. At the moment
she feels most connected to everyone, their harshness shatters her epiphany.
Their tactless rudeness makes it clear that she's on her own. Other theme is a
delusion. She believed that she was a part of the play, that people around
remember her and that she would be missing if she faded one day. She was a
part of the performance, like all people around her, but it wasn’t true. On the
syntactic level, the repetition and parallel constructions, which are quite
abundantly used throughout the stories, serve as intensifiers of the concept
loneliness. Moreover, in some cases we can notice that repetition and parallel
construction are the logical base of the stories. (1) And then she too, she too,
and the others on the benches – they would come in with a kind of
accompaniment – something low, that scarcely rose or fell, something so
beautiful – moving. (2) Although it was so brilliantly fine…The air was
motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a
chill from a glass of iced water, before you sip, and now and again a leaf came
drifting – from nowhere, from the sky. Throughout the story the reader is
bombarded with words like motionless, chill, sad, disappointing, yellow leaves
dropping, cold, trembling smile, soundlessly singing, little dark room, etc.
However, in fact it is not with certain words that the concept of loneliness is
produced, rather it is accomplished through a series of stylistic devices, or
rather these are everyday words with no special stylistic coloring that gain one
through their specific arrangement in the sentence. Namely, through
repetition and gradation, the author manages to take the simplest words and
make them absolutely special and decisive in the image of loneliness. “And
when she breathed, something light and sad – no, not sad, exactly something
gentle seemed to move in her bosom. The band had been having a rest. Now
they started again. And what they played was warm, sunny, yet there was just
a faint chill – a something, what was it? – not sadness – no, not sadness – a
something that made you want to sing.”
 Symbols. The are several symbols in the story. The main symbol is an old fur.
At the start of the story, Miss Brill speaks fondly to her coat as if it is alive. This
strange behavior can be seen as reflecting her nostalgia for a lost youth, when
her coat was new and she was at the hopeful age of marriageability At the end
of the story, she puts it back into its box, “without looking”, and “she thought
she heard something crying”. This arc from fond engagement with her fur coat
to her final rejection of it mirrors how she feels about her own place in society
over the course of the story. We also see a parallel between it and the main
character. They both come out of their "boxes"—a literal one and Miss Brill's
small, dark room.
The necklet's nose looks like its taken a hit; Miss Brill is figuratively hit in the
face by the young couple.
The necklet literally keeps the chill away, while she figuratively keeps the "chill"
of her isolation away.
The young man insults Miss Brill's looks, while the young woman insults the
necklets.
The protagonist identifies with the necklet when she thinks she hears it crying.
The bakery is symbolic to a pleasure retreat and the discovery of an almond in
her honey-cake is like magic to her. It makes her happy and she always looks
forward to enjoying the small pleasures in life. Another symbol is fried whiting
which does not actually appear in the story as a physical entity, but the boy
uses the image as a way to swiftly describe and dismiss Miss Brill. In fact, this
has a connection to the name of the main character. K.Mansfield uses the
name Miss Brill for a reason. Brill is a New Zealand fish without any culinary
specialty. She weaves the character in a fantasy world delaying to accept the
truth of living the life of an exile. So, this rude description actually has a hidden
meaning.

15. O. Henry “The Green Door”. Композиционный рисунок рассказа и

способы создания эффекта обманутого ожидания.
 The author. William Sydney Porter better known by his pen name O. Henry,
was an American short story writer. His stories are known for their surprise
endings, effect of coincidence on character through humour, grim or ironic,
witty narration. Porter's works include "The Gift of the Magi", "The Duplicity of
Hargraves" and others. Lexical structure of O' Henry’s works includes common
literary, conversational and low colloquial expressions and slang. Puns and
other plays on words are signatures of O. Henry's fiction. His short stories are
 well known for their wit and wordplay. Some common themes of O. Henry are
deception, mistaken identity, the effects of coincidence, the unchangeable
nature of fate and the resolution of seemingly difficulties separating two
lovers. He himself thought that life is a surprise that the unexpected
continually happens. He often wrote about life of the working class in New
York.
The Green Door” was published in 1906 in a collection of short stories, “The
Four Million.”

 The summery. The story begins with a suggest by an unknown narrator. He

asks the reader to think about adventure. You are on your way to a theater
deciding whether to watch a comedy or a tragedy. Suddenly, you feel that a
hand is placed on your arm. You turn around to find a beautiful lady standing
in front of you. She puts bread and butter on your hand and cuts a small piece
of your coat. She says the word “parallelogram” and it doesn’t make sense to
you. She then runs away. The narrator asks the reader how you would react in
such a situation. He says you would probably drop the bread in
embarrassment. Because you are not daring enough to live an adventurous
life. After that the author speaks about Romantism and Adventure, and goes
on to say about differences between the real adventurer and the half-
adventurer. He says history is full of many great stories of famous adventurers,
but they were only half adventurers. Because they had a certain goal to
achieve in their adventures and it was not a blind end. He says that true
adventurers are not those who chase women, property or money but those
who have nothing particular in their mind. Moving forward, the author starts
his story. The story revolves around a man whom the writer calls a true
adventurer, named Rudolf Steiner. He is a young, attractive man who works in
a piano shop. He is walking home, as others are out and about in the city. He
notices a large, black man handing out pieces of paper near a doctor's office
and figures the paper contains the doctor's information. He takes the paper
from the man which reads, The Green Door. As a man is passing by, he tosses
his paper to the ground; Rudolf grabs it and reads a doctor's name and
address. Puzzled, he circles back to the street where he got the paper. When
Rudolf realizes his paper is different from what others are receiving. He passes
the black man again, and again he receives a paper with The Green Door on it.
He also sees more discarded papers in the street that only give the doctor's
name and contact information. He decides to accept Adventure's cue. He goes
to the man again, but this time no paper. He looks at Rudolf with a cold
expression, and Rudolf is convinced that he fails, and then begins to walk
 away. However, he can't resist the mystery of the message and decides to
enter the building that houses the doctor's office. He walks up to the second
floor, searching for clues. He finds the green door and knocks loudly. A girl, no
more than twenty, answers and immediately passes out into his arms. When
she comes to and opens her eyes, He is shocked to find out that the girl has
not eaten in three days. He dashes out and returns with as much food as he
can carry. He helps her to a chair at the table and gives her milk, then some
tea, then finally some food. At first, she simply eats like a starving animal.
Then, as her strength returns, she begins to talk. Rudolph is very much
affected by her story of low wages, lost time through illnesses, and lost
positions. Having eaten and feeling well, the girl suddenly becomes sleepy.
Rudolph bids her goodnight but, in answer to her unspoken question,
promises to come back the next day to check on her. Seeing him off, she asks
how he came to knock at her door. He decides never to tell her that he knows
about the strange means to which she was driven by desperation. Instead he
tells her that he knocked on the wrong door. After the door is closed, Rudolph
goes along the hallway to explore the other end. He then goes up the stairs to
the floor above. All the apartment doors are painted green. Going down to the
sidewalk, he finds the tall man still handing out business cards. Rudolph asks
the man why he gave him those cards, and the man points down the street at
a theater. The sign above the door advertises a new play, The Green Door. The
man explains that the theater agent gave him money to hand out some of
their cards along with the dentist's. Being a true follower of the twin spirits
Romance and Adventure, Rudolph Steiner still believes it was the hand of Fate
that helped him find the girl.

 The Text. The story begins in the second person which is significant. It shows
how (I) and (you) can perform a unit by strengthening the understanding
between the addressee and the addresser about what not been explicitly said,
which serve to foster the inside feelings between them, as the narrator gives
the reader a hypothetical situation about a woman coming up to someone on
the side of the road, handing him bread, and cutting off a piece of his coat.
After that fragment the author uses third person limited narrative. It sounds
more objective, with the author rather distant from the events depicted in the
text. The author does not impose his perspective on us.

 The plot. The plot has unity. All the episodes relevant to the total meaning and
effect the story. The incident grows logically and lead to the next. The end is
quite unpredictable. The suspense of the story created by the theme of the
story – adventure, and from the very beginning the author plays with the
reader and makes them to think about adventure and romanticism, fate,
meaningful events in life that we ignore in real life because we have been
grown stiff with the ramrod of convention down our backs. The suspense is
also created by such stylistic device as foregrounding. For example, “Without
knowing why, we look up suddenly to see in a window a face that seems to
belong to our gallery of intimate portraits”, “Ten steps away he inspected it”,
“Twice he spent the night”. In these sentences anticipatory kind of
foregrounding depicts the meaning of coincidence as in the first and in the
second example and adventure as in the third example. The mystery of the
story is a strange card with words “A Green door” which the main character
picked on the street. And after that he faced a dilemma – to follow the
adventure or not. The main character grabbed the opportunity and believed in
his fate. The story makes a significant surprise in the end, which serves to the
theme of the work. The plot is eventful. The introduction of the story is three
first paragraphs when the author speaks about half-adventurers and true
adventurers, about Romantism and Adventures, the events that may
happened in our lives every day but we aren’t adventurous to faced their
circumstances, and after the author introduce the main character - Rudolf
Steiner – a true adventurer. The development part begins in the fourth
paragraph where the author describes the main plot of the story that changed
main character’s life. And the climax of the story is a part where Rudolf Steiner
found out that all doors of the apartments were green and came out of the
girl’s home and went to the worker on the street to ask him why he had given
him these exact cards. And it turned out that “A green door” is a play and
Rudolf Steiner mistook the meaning of the phrase on the card but he gained
something more significant from his mistake, and it was a hand of Fate. The
author uses irony in this work as well in the development of the story. The
irony is that Rudolf has been dreaming of adventure and romance; a green
door. But all what he has found when he knocked on the " Green Door" was
only a poverty – sicken girl in need for help. He has found the green door but
only the wrong door. In fact, it seems that there is a mistake happens when
the Negro hands him the card, he advertises a play that is going on in his city
entitled The Green Door. It lies in the contrast between what is expected by
the title and, what one reads in the narrative and what actually happens when
the young man opens the green door instead of attending a play of the theatre
besides, it turns out that there are other green doors.
 The setting. The Green Door takes place in New York. O. Henry moved to New
York in the latter part of his life. He wandered in the streets of New York in
search of new ideas for his stories. Henry vividly describes the restless activity
of the city in “The Green Door.” New York was a large cosmopolitan city full of
foreigners, where everything was possible.

 The characters. The main character of the story is Rudolf Steiner. His name
plays a role I creating a mystery atmosphere, because the name of the hero —
Rudolf Steiner – completely coincides with the name of the German mystic
philosopher, the founder of anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner. Being a follower of
the natural philosophy of J. V. Goethe, R. Steiner, like the hero of the story,
was an adept of the Great Spirit and even founded the Goetheanum — "the
free university of the science of the Spirit". So, it could be a reference. His
image is created through the direct and indirect personage’s characterizations.
Directly the author tells us that he is a piano salesman, a commonplace citizen
on the one hand, but on the other hand he is (as the author characterizes him)
“a true adventurer; few were the evenings on which he didn’t go forth from
his hall bedchamber in search of the unexpected”. No matter where he goes,
he tries to find an adventure in everything possible. He is a round character,
and through the story we see his different sides of personality. He is also a
dynamic hero, didn’t remain untouched by the events of the story. Rudolf
Steiner is a real adventure, who followed the fate and created his own
adventure without any real aim. He lives here but he is quite different from
the capitalist majority. He treats poor people the same way as all others and
the financial state of a person he deals with is of no difference for him. We can
draw this conclusion from his conduct towards the girl: he understands not
only her helplessness, but spends his (probably all his) money to support her,
to take her out of trouble, showing his philanthropic. The author uses
hyperbole to describe Rudolph as a “true adventurer” and states that he often
leaves his “hall bedchamber in search of the unexpected and the egregious.”
However, Rudolf is not so brave as he does not go beyond his surroundings in
search of adventures. This is an obvious exaggeration for humor effect.
The are also other minor flat characters in the story. The first one is a black
man, who was giving cards on the street, and the other one is a girl who was
living in the apartment with green door. The black man is described as a giant
negro, fantastically dressed in a red embroidered coat, yellow trousers and a
military cap. He speaks with the strong accent like “Dar it is, boss” this shows
that he might be a foreigner. The author also uses a simile to describe him
“Every half minute he chanted a harsh, unintelligible phrase akin to the jabber
 of car conductors and grand opera”. O. Henry is giving that man this quality to
describe an accurate fact about such persons who mess around selling cards
without considering people who almost are having senseless intentions and
sometimes tricking the people who are passing by. The girl is described as a
starving, tired person who was trapped by a difficult circumstance of life. The
author uses oxymoron to describe what a strong hunger she had. “She began
to eat with sort of dainty ferocity.” Dainty and ferocity are both opposites, yet
the author combines them in one phrase. O. Henry utilizes this device also to
gain the reader’s interest in his story and to support meaning. Here the author
also uses a personification when he describes the situation which happened
with the girl. “It was one of a thousand such a city yawns every day.” the
author speaks of the city as if it were a person who can yawn. It can be
recognizable that it is the most prominent stylistic device that has been used
by the author, as we find here in this passage, perhaps the most noticeable
passage, “In the big city the twin spirits Romance and Adventure are always
abroad seeking wooers. Romance and Adventure are not actually people who
can peep at us and challenge us. The author has given them the quality of
human beings. It seems that other device is used here in this passage, which is
graphological deviation as written in words "Adventure and Romance"
because these words have been capitalized as having proper names although
they are not proper nouns but in fact abstract nouns. The purpose of O. Henry
is to give emphasis to these words so to be recognized by the reader. The
same stylistic device in used in the world Fate, which also in the end of the
story is written with the capital F. The personification makes the reader feel
like Romantism and Adventure are too real characters of the story.

 The main themes. One of the major themes of the story is an adventure and
fate. In this story, we see that the protagonist Rudolf is a true adventurer. In
his quest for adventure, he meets the girl who changes his life for good. From
the beginning the author starts to develop this theme when an unknown
narrator suggests the reader to think of an adventure and after draws a
comparison between true adventurers and half adventurers. All these prepare
the reader to the story. The narrator differentiates the true adventurers, half
adventurers, and those who are not adventurers at all. He says history is full of
many great stories of famous adventurers, but they were only half
adventurers. Because they had a certain goal to achieve in their adventures
and it was not a blind end. He says that true adventurers are not those who
chase women, property or money but those who have nothing particular in
their mind. Discovery and initiation through adventure is one common theme
 in O. Henry’s stories. The role of fate in one’s life weaves its way throughout
the short story. As the story progresses, fate seems to drive Rudolf on his
journey towards meeting the girl.

 The mood. The mood of the story is mysterious and dynamic. From the
beginning the reader are intrigued because the narration is written in the 2 nd
person, and it is very unusual style of narration. The theme of the story is also
bringing a mystery vibe. The story keeps reader’s attention as they are
following the main character in his adventure, trying to solve a mystery of the
strange card.

 The symbol. The symbol in the story is the green door. O. Henry uses the
eponymous green door as a symbol for everyday adventures which he
encourages us to seek out. The message of the story can be interpreted as
following, that sometimes we should rely on Fate and then everyone will find
his green door.

16. K. Mansfield “The Wind Blows”. Экспрессивный синтаксис для

актуализации эмоциональной составляющей рассказа.
 The author. Catherine Mansfield is a famous English and New Zealand writer
who was born in the late 19th century. She was called the master of short
stories, who evolved a distinctive prose style with many overtones of poetry.
Her delicate stories, focused upon psychologic. She, in turn, had much
influence on the development of the short story as a form of literature. In
addition to this story, she also wrote such famous works as "At the Bay," "The
Voyage," "The Stranger" and others. Her writing style is very descriptive, has
many symbols, metaphors, and tons of imagery. She has an eye for the
subtleties of human conduct and the dramatic effect of her stories is based on
significant little details, which play an important role in the lives of her
personages. She is very sensitive to class distinctions, and her sympathy is
always on the side of the have-nots. Besides that, any kind of egoism and
pretense on the part of her bourgeois characters is treated with ironic
objectivity. It should be noted that her works were written under the influence
of such an artistic movement as Modernism. Literary modernism, or modernist
literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- Written in 1915, ‘The Wind Blows’ is one of Katherine Mansfield’s New-
Zealand stories, although it is probably less famous than ‘Prelude’, ‘At the
Bay’, or ‘The Garden Party’. The interesting fact is that many researchers
 connect Katrin Mansfield with the main character. There are several
confirmations for this. First, the first story was published under the
pseudonym Matilda Berry - and this is the name of the main character of the
work. Secondly, the researchers draw parallels with her life. In 1915, her
brother, whom she loved very much, went to the front. His nickname was
Bogay, which is exactly the name of the heroine's brother in the work. And
this atmosphere of fear and the feeling that something terrible happened,
but it didn't really happen - this suspense suggests that Catherine was afraid
for her brother.

 The summery. Matilda is woken up by the wind; she looks out the window; her
mother fetches some flowers from the garden and is called back inside for the
telephone. Matilda is off to Mr. Bullen's for her music lesson. Her mom does
not want her to go due to the strong wind, but she goes anyway. After the
lesson, she goes for a walk with her brother to the esplanade. Here, the story
changes from present to past narrative as Mansfield shows that the music
lesson, the walk etc. all occurred in Matilda's past, and she and her brother are
actually sailing away on board a ship several years down the line, that all that
went before were memories.

 The setting. The story happens in New Zeeland that fact is also may prove that
the main character of the story is a reflection of the author.

 The text. The story is narrated in the third person by an unnamed narrator.
The author uses a limited omniscient narrator. And also uses a technique
called interior monologue; this technique is a part of the Katrine Mansfield’s
style. She uses it very often in order to represent the flow of character’s
thoughts as a representer of the modernism literature. For example, Matilda
was scared to hear the sound of the wind. Consequently, she shifted her
attention to everything in the room, the bed, the mirror, the jug, and the
gleam, everything she saw in the room was viewed as something terrible in the
outside world. At that time, her consciousness traced back to the wind inside

 The plot. The plot is very rich in events. The interesting thing that the plot has
a shift in time. In the end of the story the reader found out that the whole
story had happened many years ago with the main character, and now she
was going to leave the island with her brother. But the difference between the
past and the present time is blurred because the whole work is written in the
present tense. The exposition of the story – from the beginning to the
 movement where the description of the weather ends. The development of
the plot begins after that part and continues to the climax, where Matilda
spoked to her brother about the island when they were on the ship,
remembering the plot of the story which the author has told us. After comes
the denouement – that is the moment when brother and sister left their home
and went forward and they were saying good-bay to their past life. The five
fragments are loosely connected with time and the wind runs through the
whole story. s. A certain mood of the protagonist plays a more important role
than the traditional plot. The work is connected with “present” and “past” by
several memory episodes. The wind revolves from beginning to the ending.
“The wind, the wind” appears three times. Such lyric words create a rhythm
like a poem. The author catches an instant as the frame of The Wind Blows to
represent the elapse of time. On past day, Matilda had her music lesson, when
she faced to Mr. Bullen, there were some complex feelings—grievance,
adoration, and gingerliness. The other windy day, Matilda was lost in various
fancies and conjectures alone in the room. Her little brother Bogey called her
out. The two similar days and different scenes are linked up naturally and
poetically.

 The characters. The main character of the story is Matilda, a girl who is going
through a raging transition. She feels fear, loneliness, incomprehension. She
doesn't love her mother. She is a dynamic, round character, which changes
through the story. To describe her emotional state the author uses weather
phenomena, strong colored lexica, repetitions. The feelings of fear are
accompanied with those of helplessness, powerlessness and loneliness in the
face of a problem. She was lost in various fancies and conjectures alone in the
bedroom. In her daydream, her little brother Bogey called her out and took a
walk on the esplanade. The other minor characters are her mother, her
brother and her piano teacher named Mr. Bullen, and girls who also attend
Mr. Bullen’s lessons. All them are flat characters and are used in the story in
order to show emotions that the teenage girl can feel in her raging transition:
hate, romantic love, sexual tension, irritation, family love, jealousy – that is the
wind that where everywhere.

 The theme. The main theme of the story is fear of transition, an unknown
future, loneliness – feelings that teenagers faced when they stacked between
childhood and adulthood. Mansfield may be exploring the theme of fear.
Mathilda is in her bedroom and the sound and actions of the wind frighten
her. It is as though she is unable to relax. It may also be important that she can
 hear the sound of her mother’s voice downstairs which further irritates
Mathilda. If anything, Mansfield appears to be using the wind and Mathilda’s
fear as symbolism for change and transition. Mathilda is a young teenage girl
who is making the transition to womanhood and it is noticeable that this
transition is causing Mathilda angst. Just as the wind is moving outside, inside
Mathilda is also moving. She also going through the realization of her own
sexuality, and the feelings that she suddenly faced on the lesson with Mr.
Bullen. And when she was crying on the lesson, I suppose, it’s because she was
full of controversial emotions. This theme is expressed my different stylistic
devices. On the lexical level, it is the words’ choice. The weather plays a big
part in the plot. Through it Mansfield transferred through referring to natural
phenomena a worldview the feeling of loneliness and fear of unknown.
Generally speaking, the writer turns to natural phenomena to portray the
inner state of the characters, and, somehow, these phenomena take on the
role of symbols in the stories. One of the usual symbols in her stories is the
wind. In fact, it helps convey so many diverse feelings – fear, loneliness,
anticipation of some dreadful event, etc. The author uses such strong colored
words as dreadfully, dreadful, ugly. The author uses such verbs as shaking,
rattling, banging, making the bed trembling with the meaning of strong
movement to show how this period of life between a childhood and an
adulthood and the fear of it knocks her down and shakes her. The theme is
also shown in the parallelism with painting "Loneliness" by Frederick Leighton.
It got the girl’s attention.

 The mood. The mood in the story is disturbing, depressing, foreshadowing. The
author uses such syntactic devices to convey the emotional component of the
story, such as ellipsis. We can find quite a lot of it in the work. For example,
“No, Mother. I do not see why I should. . .”, The author uses this technique to
show indecision, doubt, and fear. And at the end, the ellipsis is used to show
that their road is not over, they are going on. “Don't forget. . . . But the ship is
gone, now.” The author also uses a lot of interrogative sentences to emphasize
again doubts, uncertainty, fear of the unknown. “Hasn't anyone written poems
to the wind?”, “Does Mother imagine for one moment that she is going to
darn all those stockings knotted up on the quilt like a coil of snakes?”. To
create the atmosphere of sadness the authors also uses onomatopoeia and
personification. “… at the bottom of the road outside Mr. Bullen's gate she can
hear the sea sob: "Ah! . . . Ah! . . . Ah-h!". It brings an atmosphere of anxiety.
But in the end the sea water which splashes onto both Bogey and Mathilda in
many ways washes away Mathilda’s fears. She is no longer under the
 management of her mother and in many ways is her own woman. Similarly,
Mathilda takes of her hat when she is by the sea and allows her hair run free.
And this brought the atmosphere pf relief and freedom.

 The symbols. Weather, sea, painting (уже написала об этом в других частях)
In “The Wind Blows”, Katherine Mansfield used many symbols to endure the
characters her particular emotions and significance. Moreover, she endowed
these symbols with special meanings. For example, the wind symbolized a
fetter chaining their pace and the chrysanthemum symbolized a youth panic in
their adolescence. Owing to the wind, she could not have her music class with
Mr. Bullen; due to the wind, she had to put up with mom and grandma’s
annoying words. At that moment, the wind was a chain which confined her to
home. She felt a great desire to escape from. There would never be smooth
sailing for the road to growth and maturity. The wind is a kind of impediment
on this process, which would stop her step. Flower is one of most common
symbols in Katharine Mansfield’s fictions. Chrysanthemum is usually linked to
youth panic and vernal sorrow. It is not a seeming writing but owns its
profound meaning. In The Wind Blows, the chrysanthemum symbolized a
peculiar youth panic in frenzy. The panic was uncontrolled with
incomprehension in the girl’s deep heart, because she did not understand why
she picked the chrysanthemum. That is, her mind was almost out of control
though. She never expected the chrysanthemum to be ruined. How unwilling
she was to let the beauty go. “She likes this room. It smells of art serge and
stale smoke and chrysanthemums … there is a big vase of them on the
mantelpiece behind the pale photograph of Rubinstein”.