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Contents
INTRODUCTION 2

The Open Window Hector Hugh Munro 11

Once Upon A Time Nadine Gordimer 16

The Doll's House Katherine Mansfield 23

In Another Country Ernest Hemingway 32

There will Come Soft Rains Ray Bradbury 39

The Lady or the Tiger Frank Stockton 47

Boys and Girls Alice Munro 55

Mirage Talat Abbasi 69

Never H. E. Bates 75

The Wish Roald Dahl 80

………………………..

LANGUAGE PRACTICE

(End notes adapted from various sources)

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INTRODUCTION
Literature has its roots in one of the most basic human desire-the desire for pleasure. Its creators
find one source of pleasure in mastering the difficult demands of their craft. If they write well,
they then reap a second delight from witnessing the pleasure their work gives to others. Readers,
meanwhile, derive pleasure not only from the “escape” value of reading but also from literature’s
power to imitate life. A truly good book can speak of imaginary people vividly that they seem
more alive than people we meet, and can make us care about its characters as if they were close
friends.

We are always curious about each other, and usually curious about ourselves as well. Why do we
behave as we do? What are the causes of our action? Literature is far from having all the
answers, but it does offer hints, suggestions and flashes of insight. Moreover, it offers them in
such a way as to refresh and encourage our own thinking, and so leads us to insights of our own.
Readers have many standards for judging a writer. But one enduring standard is the writer’s
power of interpretation- to interpret us, as humans, to ourselves. We prize those writers who
seem to know people deeply, and to share that knowledge with us openly and honestly. We speak
with disdain of shallow or insincere writers; we demand truth and sincerity even in the most
fantastic fiction.

Literature, then, exists primarily because it pleases us by imitating life- or, more precisely, by
displaying a vision of life as it is or as the writer thinks it should be. But how does it contrive its
imitation? Its only medium is words; and we know how hard it is to make words say what we
want them to say. How do writers handle words so as to get such powerful effects from them?
What guidelines help them make the million-and-one choices that result in a play, a poem, or a
story?

The most important things that a writer must consider in this context are plot and character.
These may occur to a writer in either order. That is, a writer may first imagine some characters,
and then decide what actions they are to perform; or a writer may envision some action and then
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decide on the people who must perform it. Every work of literature, however, must have both
actions and characters. If it lacks either, it cannot please us or hold our interest.

In addition to a plot and to characters who act and feel, a work of literature must have unity and
coherence. It should make us believe that its characters really would have performed the actions
it says they did, and that the actions could reasonably have taken place. At its best, the movement
of a play or a story ought to make us feel that the tale could have reached no other end, and that
it could have reached there in no other way. When this happens, the story’s ending seems
inevitable. Its characters and its actions have completely convinced us. A sense of inevitability is
thus another hallmark of a fine work of literature.

The language of a work of literature is also important. Words have so many undercurrents of
meaning that the change of one word may change our image of a scene or character. Consider,
for instance, the difference among a thin, tense man; a thin, nervous man; and a thin, harried
man- or the difference among a plump woman, a well-rounded woman and an overweight
woman. A writer should choose his or her language with care. The language of literature should
carry overtones of that which enrich our sense of the story, thus adding to the pleasure we get
from the tale.

When we read, we usually don’t want to be aware of these choices of words and acts and
characters. When we discuss and analyze works of literature, however, we do become aware of
the choices the writer made. We note who the characters are and how they relate to each other.
We observe how the action begins, how it ends, and how it is carried from beginning to ending.
We study how the language characterizes people and events and consider the broader or deeper
meanings it suggests.

These questions, we may note, are questions of fact. Their answers can be searched for, found,
and agreed upon. Questions of fact, however, are only beginning in thinking about a work of
literature. They tell us certain choices a writer makes, but they rarely tell us why the writer made
those particular choices. To learn that, we must go to the questions of interpretation, questions
that deal with the artistic vision underlying the work and thus with such issues as theme, pattern,
message, and meaning.
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Message and meaning are not universal to literature. They belong to one school of literature, the
didactic. When the writers or critics demand that a story carry a message to its readers, that it
“mean something” to them, they are saying that literature should “teach” us something in the
moral sense of the word. At the most reductive, this approach ends in pat morals: “always speak
the truth, stop beating up your fellow humans. On a more sophisticated level, however,
didacticism becomes what the critic Mathew Arnold called “High seriousness” and produces
literature that deals with such complex questions as the value of human life and the sources of
human ideals and aspirations.

Not all literature is didactic. Some writers believe that literature does not need to make moral
statement. As Ernest Hemingway once famously remarked “if you want to send a message, try
Western Union”. For such writers, a work of literature is important for its own sake, not for any
telegram like message it might carry. The question of theme and pattern, however, concern all
literature. Within any imaginative work that strikes us as unified and complete, we will find
some sort of pattern into which its parts fit or through which they are perceived. Didactic tales,
for example, present acts and people in terms of a, moral order. Hence the tales tend to be built
around patterns of good and evil, temptation and response.

There may be many patterns- of action, characterization, language, or metaphor- within a single
work. Sometimes each work will work separately; sometimes two or more will intertwine.
Sometimes, several themes will combine within one work to create complexity of vision that no
single theme could contain. But always there will be that sense of a single, ordered vision
embracing and unifying all the patterns and themes.

When we study literature, we first look at each story as an entity in itself, existing on its own
terms. We enter the world of the story and speak of its characters and narrator as though they are
living people. Eventually, however, we begin to wonder about the writers of the stories. Why did
they choose to create these characters, to have them perform these actions, to tell their tales from
this particular point of view?

We can never know exactly what writers had in mind when they were writing their stories. The
process of writing is too complex, with too much of it hidden even from the writers themselves,
to allow any sure or simple answers to that question. In this sense, there are limits to the author’s
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interpretation. But we should examine our own ideas on the subject- our sense of what the
writers seem to consider important and what values or feelings of ours they seem to be invoking-
because our impression of the writer’s value and intentions play an important part in our
response to their work. The interpretation becomes most individual and most varied. We all read
the same words when we read a story. We observe the same characters acting out the same deed
and passions. But each of us interprets them differently because of our individual views of life,
our interests, and our experiences. Therefore, when we try to explain how the story works, or
decide what themes are important, we read some of our own perceptions into the story.

If we realize that we are interpreting, all is well. Then we can say, “This is how it seems to me”.
We can look for patterns of imagery or language and details of action or characterization to
support our view. We can listen to others who have other views and evaluate the support they
bring for their arguments; and, in the end, we can probably come to a pretty fair idea of what the
story does have to offer and how it is able to offer that.

On the other hand, if we do not recognize the extent to which we are active interpreters of what
we read, we may have trouble when we try to deal with such subjective issues as theme or
message. For then we may make the error of saying, “I see this. Therefore the author intended it
that way, and I have found the only correct interpretation this story can possibly have.” Literary
critics call this error of interpretation, the intentional fallacy. Because very few works of
literature will not admit some variation in interpretation, definitive statements about what an
author “intended” are wrong more often than not. It is true that there are limits to the range of
interpretations we can apply to a work of literature if we are to read it honestly on its own terms.

We must also be willing to allow our perceptions to change. It, often, happens that what we
notice the first time we read a story is not what seems to us important later on. Nor would it
make sense to talk of the writer of a story if our perception of it could not be enriched by the
discussion. Further, we must be willing to use our full judgment, to read the story carefully and
attentively. We must try our best to discover what it really does say rather than simply assuming
that it says what we want it to say. Once we have done this, however, we should be able to feel
comfortable with our judgment and our responses. Above all, we must not undervalue ourselves.
We are the people for whom these stories, plays and poems are written. If we cannot trust
ourselves, we will have a hard time trusting them.
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Literature allows writers to share their ideas and visions with their readers. Their work is not
complete until someone has read it and responded to it.

The first part of writing about literature is thinking about it. This step is perhaps the most vital
part of the process, because we need to know not only what we think but why we think as we do.
Which of our thoughts come from the work itself? Which have been inspired by it? Which come
from our predispositions and perceptions about literature?

We enjoy stories for many reasons. Some are intrinsic to the story itself; artful language,
characters we believe in and care about, actions that carry significant message for us or give us
new insight into ourselves and our society. Other causes of enjoyment are external, coming not
from the artistry of the story, but from the fact that the story fits our current notions of what a
story should be like or calls forth some pleasant personal memories. In short, the external factors
in our response to a story come from the things we already think or feel. Intrinsic factors come
from the writer’s craftsmanship and art.

A story’s intrinsic qualities, therefore, and our responses to them, are what we focus on when we
write about literature. When we rule out the external responses to literature and say that we are
only going to talk and write about the intrinsic qualities, we are not denying the individuality of
our responses. In fact, only when we escape from our prejudices and preconceptions about
literature can we respond most freely to the stories we read. Even when we write most directly of
the story itself and the art that created it, our writing will contain an emotional component as
well as an intellectual one. Emotion and intellect together answer such questions as “Does the
hero’s death seem inevitable?” and “How has it been made to seem so?”

Literature appeals to mind and emotions alike: our responses to it, therefore must be both
analytic and emotional, objective and subjective. Concentrating on intrinsic aspects of the story
does not deny the subjective component of our response. Rather, it frees us for more truly
personal reactions, subjective and objective alike, even while it helps us recognize how and why
we are responding.

Before we begin to write about a story, therefore, we should ask ourselves some version of the
following questions:
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1. Which aspects of the story had the greatest impact on me and Why?
2. How did other aspects of the story support or contribute to my response?
3. How did these particular aspects of the story help create the story’s total effect?

We start with our response to the story, we move from there to an analysis of the art that creates
the response, and then we return to the overall impression or effect.

When we write, we follow the same pattern of response, analysis and final judgment. As you
progress further in your studies, you will learn more about various critical approaches to
literature and the kinds of writing resulting from their application. Some of these approaches
include but are not limited to biographical, formalist, mythic, Freudian, Marxist, Feminist, reader
Response, Deconstructive, and Neo-realist readings of literature. These different lenses through
which the literary critic may look at a particular work have the advantage of focusing attention
on a particular facet of the story at hand.

Biographical criticism, for example, draws connection between the writer’s personal experience
and his or her own work. Formalist criticism focuses on the internal structures of the work itself
and excludes the external factors such as the author’s biography or social milieu. The New
Critics of the 1930s championed formalism- the careful analysis of irony, tension, paradox in
literature. In the 1950s and 1960s, mythic criticism proponents like Northrop Frye emphasized
universal mythical patterns in literary works- the quest, the encounter with one’s dark twin or
doppelganger and the recurrent idea of the loss of golden age. Freudian and Marxist criticism
systematically apply the insights of those two important thinkers both to literary works and their
authors. Freudians focus on the individual’s psyche, with its conflicts between the conscious ego
and the unconscious id, while Marxists focus on the historical level, seeing economic forces as
the determinants of human interactions and personalities.

Since the 1970s, feminist criticism has been a particularly rich literary field. Feminists range
from essentialist who believes that women have certain universal character or traits to those who
reject essentialism in favor of a critique of historically constructed gender roles. Reader response
criticism focuses on the fact that literary work exists in the fullest sense only in the minds of
readers, and that those minds differ from each other, consequently, we can agree on a reading of
a work only to the extent that we live in an interpretive community of like-minded readers.
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Likewise, Deconstruction, tries to decanter the authority of a text to suggest that such traditional
ideas as “meaning” or “organic unity” are highly problematic. Deconstruction insists on the
indeterminacy of both literature and culture. From this critical perspective, humanistic or even
scientific truths are simply social constructions with no real authority behind them.

In the last decade of the 20th century critical reactions against deconstruction gained momentum,
Critics of deconstruction say that the idea is self contradictory and even nihilistic. Neo-realists
insists that there is an objective world outside of language, and that literature, like the sciences,
should strive to become a more accurate “map” of that world.

………………………….

Guide for Studying the Short Story

As you read short stories, review the following guide in order to appreciate how an author
creates a fictional world.

Plot, Character, and Setting

1. What kinds of the conflict does the story present?

2. What is the exposition?
3. What event is the climax? Does the resolution logically follow the conflict and the
climax?
4. What does the author directly tell about the characters? What does the author indirectly
show through their words and actions?
5. Are the characters round or flat? Static or dynamic?
6. When and where does the story take place?
7. What details are used to describe the setting?
8. Does the setting change during the story?

Point of View and Tone

1. Does the author use the first-person narration, in which a character tells a story?
2. Does the author read the thoughts of only one character through limited third-person
narration/point of view?
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3. Does the author reveal the thoughts of several characters through omniscient point of
view?
4. What is the author’s tone?

Themes

1. Is the theme, or central idea, directly stated?

2. If the theme is not stated directly, what theme is implied by the story’s other elements?

Symbol and Irony

1. Is an object, place, person, or experience in the story given symbolic meaning?

2. Does the story include situational irony? Does it include verbal irony?

Terminologies

Atmosphere – the general mood, feeling or spirit of a story.

Characterization – the way that the author creates characters.

Protagonist – the main character who is faced with a problem.

Antagonist – the person, place, idea or physical force against the protagonist.

Climax – the point of the highest dramatic intensity; the turning point.

External conflict – happens outside the character.

Internal conflict – happens inside the character; (character vs. himself/herself)

Foreshadowing – clues of hints which prepare the reader for future action or events.

Irony – contrast or contradiction of what is expected and what results.

Verbal irony – occurs when a character or narrator says one thing but means the opposite.

Dramatic irony – occurs when the reader knows more than the character.

Situational irony – occurs when the contrast between what appears to be and what actually exists.
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Plot – action of the story.

Chronological – places events in order of time from first to last.

Flashback – looks back at events that have already occurred.

Point of View – the angle from which the author tells the story.

First Person Narrative – the narrator uses “I” and participates in the action.

Third Person Narrative – the narrator uses “he” and “she” and is an outside observer.

Omniscient – narrator can see, know and tell all of the characters of a story.

Limited Omniscient – narrator can only see, know and tell all of one character.

Objective – narrator describes the characters statements but doesn’t reveal thoughts or feelings.

Resolution – the outcome of a story.

Setting – the background where the action takes place.

Suspense – anticipation as to the outcome of events.

Symbol – a similar object, action, person, or place or something else that stands for something
abstract.

(Adapted from various sources)

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The Open Window

Hector Hugh Munro

"My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen;
"in the meantime you must try and put up with me."

Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece
of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more
than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards
helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.

"I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural
retreat; "you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be
worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know
there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice."

Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the
letters of introduction came into the nice division.

"Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece, when she judged that they
had had sufficient silent communion.

"Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some
four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here."

He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

"Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?" pursued the self-possessed young lady.

"Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton
was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to
suggest masculine habitation.

"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your
sister's time."
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"Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of
place.

"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the
niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

"It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton; "but has that window got anything to
do with the tragedy?"

"Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers
went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite
snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that
dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly
without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the
child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks
that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and
walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every
evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband
with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie,
why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you
know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all
walk in through that window - "

She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the
room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.

"I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said.

"She has been very interesting," said Framton.

"I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; "my husband and
brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been
out for snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you
menfolk, isn't it?"
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She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck
in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially
successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, he was conscious that his hostess was
giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the
open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should
have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

"The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and
avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who
laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances
are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the
matter of diet they are not so much in agreement," he continued.

"No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then
she suddenly brightened into alert attention - but not to what Framton was saying.

"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were
muddy up to the eyes!"

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey
sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed
horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked
in the same direction.

In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window,
they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white
coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they
neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: "I said, Bertie, why do
you bound?"

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate
were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into
the hedge to avoid imminent collision.
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"Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window,
"fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?"

"A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappleton; "could only talk about his
illnesses, and dashed off without a word of goodby or apology when you arrived. One would
think he had seen a ghost."

"I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece calmly; "he told me he had a horror of dogs. He
was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah
dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning
and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve."

Romance at short notice was her speciality.

NOTE:

Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916), pseudonym Saki, was a British short story writer, essayist, and
journalist. He was killed in action in the First World War. His stories depict the social reality of
his time with the help of a flippant wit and power of fantastic invention. His short stories and
sketches are written in a style studded with epigrams and with well contrived plots, often turning
on practical jokes and surprise endings. His stories reveal a view of cruelty in their author and a
self-identification with the enfant terrible.

“The Open Window”, possibly his most famous story and frequently anthologized, was
published in 1914. In the story, Vera, a charming teenager, plays a practical joke on a nervous
visitor, causing him to flee the house. The story’s surprise ending, its witty concise narrative, and
its slightly sinister tone are the trademarks of Munro’s fiction. It is one of the Munro’s shortest
stories. Barely three pages in length, it is perfectly crafted and stands out for the writer’s deft use
of language and verbal economy. “The Open Window” follows the same essential setup as many
of Munro’s other stories, in having an adolescent character whose supposed innocence turns out
to be guile, cunning, and mischief in disguise. The window in the story is at once a symbol of the
aunt’s hope that her husband and brother will return and a symbol of Vera’s expansive
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imagination. Vera uses the window as a means to escape the boring, adult world and imagine a
more fantastical reality. It is a symbolic window to a different world through which Vera can
travel into an alternate reality, entirely of her own making. To Vera, the window is a blank
canvas. She uses it to create a world separate from the dull adult world she is forced to inhabit.

“The Open Window” is about the capacity of story-telling to entertain through humour and
trickery. The story itself is therefore an imagined world that inverts the normal power between
adult and children, and casts Vera as the holder of truth and power (through her trickery) and
Framton as the gullible adult. Just as Vera tricks Framton, so Munro tricks readers by leading
them to believe that Vera is a credible story-teller. The story is a timeless tale about truth and
fiction. Vera, the fiction master, is characterized as a story-teller whose specialty is ‘romance at
short notice’ i.e. made-up stories of a wild or improbable nature. The issues of fiction,
perception, absolute truth, and absolute reality are brought up in this miniature short story.

QUESTIONS:

1. How does Munro create an atmosphere of the supernatural and sinister in the story?
2. What is the climax of the story?
3. What does romance mean in the concluding sentence of the story?
4. Write a paragraph on the power of imagination.
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ONCE UPON A TIME

Nadine Gordimer

Someone has written to ask me to contribute to an anthology of stories for children. I

reply that I don't write children's stories; and he writes back that at a recent congress/book
fair/seminar a certain novelist said every writer ought to write at least one story for children. I
think of sending a postcard saying I don't accept that I "ought" to write anything.

And then last night I woke up — or rather was awakened without knowing what had roused me.

A voice in the echo-chamber of the subconscious?

A sound.

A creaking of the kind made by the weight carried by one foot after another along a wooden
floor. I listened. I felt the apertures of my ears distend with concentration. Again: the creaking. I
was waiting for it; waiting to hear if it indicated that feet were moving from room to room,
coming up the passage — to my door. I have no burglar bars, no gun under the pillow, but I have
the same fears as people who do take thse precautions, and my windowpanes are thin as rime,
could shatter like a wineglass. A woman was murdered (how do they put it) in broad daylight in
a house two blocks away, last year, and the fierce dogs who guarded an old widower and his
collection of antique clocks were strangled before he was knifed by a casual laborer he had
dismissed without pay.

I was staring at the door, making it out in my mind rather than seeing it, in the dark. I lay
quite still — a victim already — the arrhythmia of my heart was fleeing, knocking this way and
that against its body-cage. How finely tuned the senses are, just out of rest, sleep! I could never
listen intently as that in the distractions of the day, I was reading every faintest sound, identifying
and classifying its possible threat.
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But I learned that I was to be neither threatened nor spared. There was no human weight
pressing on the boards, the creaking was a buckling, an epicenter of stress. I was in it. The house
that surrounds me while I sleep is built on undermined ground; far beneath my bed, the floor, the
house's foundations, the stopes and passages of gold mines have hollowed the rock, and when
some face trembles, detaches and falls, three thousand feet below, the whole house shifts
slightly, bringing uneasy strain to the balance and counterbalance of brick, cement, wood and
glass that hold it as a structure around me. The misbeats of my heart tailed off like the last
muffled flourishes on one of the wooden xylophones made by the Chopi and T songa 1 migrant
miners who might have been down there, under me in the earth at that moment. The stope where
the fall was could have been disused, dripping water from its ruptured veins; or men might now
be interred there in the most profound of tombs.

I couldn't find a position in which my mind would let go of my body — release me to

sleep again. So I began to tell myself a story, a bedtime story.

In a house, in a suburb, in a city, there were a man and his wife who loved each other
very much and were living happily ever after. They had a little boy, and they loved him very
much. They had a cat and a dog that the little boy loved very much. They had a car and a caravan
trailer for holidays, and a swimming-pool which was fenced so that the little boy and his
playmates would not fall in and drown. They had a housemaid who was absolutely trustworthy
and an itinerant gardener who was highly recommended by the neighbors. For when they began
to live happily ever after they were warned, by that wise old witch, the husband's mother, not to
take on anyone off the street. They were inscribed in a medical benefit society, their pet dog was
licensed, they were insured against fire, flood damage and theft, and subscribed to the local
Neighborhood Watch, which supplied them with a plaque for their gates lettered Y OU HAVE
BEEN WARNED over the silhouette of a would-be intruder. He was masked; it could not be
said if he was black or white, and therefore proved the property owner was no racist.

It was not possible to insure the house, the swimming pool or the car against riot damage.
There were riots, but these were outside the city, where people of another color were quartered.
These people were not allowed into the suburb except as reliable 1 Chopi and T songa: two
peoples from M ozambique, northeast of South Africa housemaids and gardeners, so there was
nothing to fear, the husband told the wife. Yet she was afraid that someday such people might
 18

come up the street and tear off the plaque YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED and open the gates and
stream in... Nonsense, my dear, said the husband, there are police and soldiers and tear-gas and
guns to keep them away. But to please her — for he loved her very much and buses were being
burned, cars stoned, and schoolchildren shot by the police in those quarto's out of sight and
hearing of the suburb — he had electronically controlled gates fitted. Anyone who pulled off the
sign YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED and tried to open the gates would have to announce his
intentions by pressing a button and speaking into a receiver relayed to the house. The little boy
was fascinated by the device and used it as a walkie-talkie in cops and robbers play with his
small friends.

The riots were suppressed, but there were many burglaries in the suburb and somebody's
trusted housemaid was tied up and shut in a cupboard by thieves while she was in charge of her
employers' house. The trusted housemaid of the man and wife and little boy was so upset by this
misfortune befalling a friend left, as she herself often was, with responsibility for the possessions
of the man and his wife and the little boy that she implored her employers to have burglar bars
attached to the doors and windows of the house, and an alarm system installed. The wife said,
she is right, let us take heed of her advice. So from every window and door in the house where
they were living happily ever after they now saw the trees and sky through bars, and when the
little boy's pet cat tried to climb in by the fanlight to keep him company in his little bed at night,
as it customarily had done, it set off the alarm keening through the house.

The alarm was often answered — it seemed — by other burglar alarms, in other houses,
that had been triggered by pet cats or nibbling mice. The alarms called to one another across the
gardens in shrills and bleats and wails that everyone soon became accustomed to, so that the din
roused the inhabitants of the suburb no more than the croak of frogs and musical grating of
cicadas' legs. Under cover of the electronic harpies' discourse intruders sawed the iron bars and
broke into homes, taking away hi-fi equipment, television sets, cassette players, cameras and
radios, jewelry and clothing, and sometimes were hungry enough to devour everything in the
refrigerator or paused audaciously to drink the whiskey in the cabinets or patio bars. Insurance
companies paid no compensation for single malt 2 , a loss made keener by the property owner's
knowledge that the thieves wouldn't even have been able to appreciate what it was they were
drinking.
 19

Then the time came when many of the people who were not trusted housemaids and
gardeners hung about the suburb because they were unemployed. Some importuned for a job:
weeding or painting a roof; anything, baas 3, madam. But the man and his wife remembered the
warning about taking on anyone off the street. Some drank liquor and fouled the street with
discarded bottles. Some begged, waiting for the man or his wife to drive the car out of the
electronically operated gates. They sat about with their feet in the gutters, under the jacaranda
trees that made a green tunnel of the street — for it was a beautiful suburb, spoilt only by their
presence — and sometimes they fell asleep lying right before the gates in the midday sun. The
wife could never see anyone go hungry. She sent the trusted housemaid out with bread and tea,
but the trusted housemaid said these were loafers and tsotsis 4 , who would come and tie her and
shut her in a cupboard. The husband said, She's right. Take heed of her advice. You only
encourage them with your bread and tea. They are looking for their chance ... And he brought the
little boy's tricycle from the garden into the house every night, because if the house was surely
secure, once locked and with the alarm set, someone might still be able to climb over the wall or
the electronically closed gates into the garden.

You are right, said the wife, then the wall should be higher. And the wise old witch, the
husband's mother, paid for the extra bricks as her Christmas present to her son and his wife —
the little boy got a Space Man outfit and a book of fairy tales.

But every week there were more reports of intrusion: in broad daylight and the dead of
night, in the early hours of the morning, and even in the lovely summer twilight — a certain
family was

2 Single malt: an expensive Scotch whiskey

3 baas: boss

4 tsotsis: hooligans

at dinner while the bedrooms were being ransacked upstairs. The man and his wife, talking of the
latest armed robbery in the suburb, were distracted by the sight of the little boy's pet cat
effortlessly arriving over the seven-foot wall, descending first with a rapid bracing of extended
forepaws down on the sheer vertical surface, and then a graceful launch, landing with swishing
 20

tail within the property. The whitewashed wall was marked with the cat's comings and goings;
and on the street side of the wall there were larger red-earth smudges that could have been made
by the kind of broken running shoes, seen on the feet of unemployed loiterers, that had no
innocent destination.

When the man and wife and little boy took the pet dog for its walk round the
neighborhood streets they no longer paused to admire this show of roses or that perfect lawn;
these were hidden behind an array of different varieties of security fences, walls and devices.
The man, wife, little boy and dog passed a remarkable choice: there was the low-cost option of
pieces of broken glass embedded in cement along the top of walls, there were iron grilles ending
in lance-points, there were attempts at reconciling the aesthetics of prison architecture with the
Spanish Villa style (spikes painted pink) and with the plaster urns of neoclassical facades
(twelve-inch pikes finned like zigzags of lightning and painted pure white). Some walls had a
small board affixed, giving the name and telephone number of the firm responsible for the
installation of the devices. While the little boy and the pet dog raced ahead, the husband and wife
found themselves comparing the possible effectiveness of each style against its appearance; and
after several weeks when they paused before this barricade or that without needing to speak, both
came out with the conclusion that only one was worth considering. It was the ugliest but the most
honest in its suggestion of the pure concentration-camp style, no frills, all evident efficacy.
Placed the length of walls, it consisted of a continuous coil of stiff and shining metal serrated
into jagged blades, so that there would be no way of climbing over it and no way through its
tunnel without getting entangled in its fangs. There would be no way out, only a struggle getting
bloodier and bloodier, a deeper and sharper hooking and tearing of flesh. The wife shuddered to
look at it. You're right, said the husband, anyone would think twice... And they took heed of the
advice on a small board fixed to the wall: Consult DRAGON 'S TEETH The People For Total
Security.

Next day a gang of workmen came and stretched the razor-bladed coils all round the
walls of the house where the husband and wife and little boy and pet dog and cat were living
happily ever after. The sunlight flashed and slashed, off the serrations, the cornice of razor thorns
encircled the home, shining. The husband said, Never mind. It will weather. The wife said,
You're wrong. They guarantee it's rust-proof. And she waited until the little boy had run off to
 21

play before she said, I hope the cat will take heed ... The husband said, Don't worry, my dear,
cats always look before they leap. And it was true that from that day on the cat slept in the little
boy's bed and kept to the garden, never risking a try at breaching security.

One evening, the mother read the little boy to sleep with a fairy story from the book the
wise old witch had given him at Christmas. Next day he pretended to be the Prince who braves
the terrible thicket of thorns to enter the palace and kiss the Sleeping Beauty back to life: he
dragged a ladder to the wall, the shining coiled tunnel was just wide enough for his little body to
creep in, and with the first fixing of its razor- teeth in his knees and hands and head he screamed
and struggled deeper into its tangle. The trusted housemaid and the itinerant gardener, whose
"day" it was, came running, the first to see and to scream with him, and the itinerant gardener
tore his hands trying to get at the little boy. Then the man and his wife burst wildly into the
garden and for some reason (the cat, probably) the alarm setup wailing against the screams while
the bleeding mass of the little boy was hacked out of the security coil with saws, wire-cutters,
choppers, and they carried it — the man, the wife, the hysterical trusted housemaid and the
weeping gardener — into the house.

NOTE:

Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014), South African novelist and short story writer whose major
themes were exile and alienation. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.
Gordimer’s subject matter was the effect of apartheid on the lives of South Africans and the
moral and psychological tensions of life in a racially-divided country, which she often wrote
about by focusing on oppressed non-white character. She was an ardent opponent of apartheid
and refused to accommodate the system. A fine descriptive writer, thoughtful and sensitive,
Gordimer was noted for the vivid precision of her writing about the complicated personal and
social relationships in her environment: the interplay between races, racial conflicts, and the pain
inflicted by South Africa’s unjust apartheid laws. Some of her work was banned in her home
country due to its critique of the system. For Gordimer, literature is an instrument that can help a
society rooted in hypocrisy transform with the one that is just, fair and tolerant.
 22

“Once upon a Time” written in 1989, a story about apartheid follows many of the devices and
elements of a fairy tale. The story begins with a framing element in which the author herself is a
character, who is asked to write a story for a chhildren’s book. She rejects the idea as an
impingement of authorial and artistic freedom. The character Gordimer in the story after
rejecting the request is disturbed by a noise while sleeping and decides to tell herself a story to
fall asleep. She starts telling herself a ‘bed time story’ about a couple who scramble to protect
themselves from people of colour, only to inadvertently kill their son. The story is rich in irony
and the ironic and fatal outcome of the story conveys the moral that human fear normally stands
in the way of human happiness. Gordimer makes the point that in the modern world, continued
fear of the unknown is not sustainable. Her own bedtime story that she imagines is a dark
somber, violent tale about humankind’s ability to self-destruct through fear. In fact one of the
themes of the story is about the devastating consequences that can result when one overreacts to
fear or perceived danger. The more a group of people attempt to isolate themselves against the
outside world, and any threats they think are there, the worse off they are going to be in the long
run.

The story is structured like a frame story (story within a story). The frame and the main story are
linked by the theme of irrational fear. Elements of the fairy tale in the story are ironical and
satirical, mocking the genre. The family seems to live in a magical ‘happily ever after’ but it is
only an illusion. The security firm called ‘Dragon teeth’ and the husband’s mother being referred
to as a ‘witch’ are derived from the genre of fairy tale.

QUESTIONS

1. What purpose does the opening of the story serve?

2. How is the structure of the story similar to a fairy tale?
3. What commentary about racism and fear does Gordimer make through her story?
4. What is the moral of “Once upon a Time”?
5. What can you infer about what Gordimer leaves unstated at the end of her story?
 23

The Doll's House

Katherine Mansfield

WHEN dear old Mrs. Hay went back to town after staying with the Burnells she sent the children
a doll's house. It was so big that the carter and Pat carried it into the courtyard, and there it
stayed, propped up on two wooden boxes beside the feed-room door. No harm could come to it;
it was summer. And perhaps the smell of paint would have gone off by the time it had to be
taken in. For, really, the smell of paint coming from that doll's house ('Sweet of old Mrs. Hay, of
course; most sweet and generous ! ')—but the smell of paint was quite enough to make anyone
seriously ill, in Aunt Beryl's opinion. Even before the sacking was taken off. And when it was...

There stood the Doll's house, a dark, oily, spinach green, picked out with bright yellow. Its two
solid little chimneys, glued on to the roof, were painted red and white, and the door, gleaming
with yellow varnish, was like a little slab of toffee. Four windows, real windows, were divided
into panes by a broad streak of green. There was actually a tiny porch, too, painted yellow, with
big lumps of congealed paint hanging along the edge.

But perfect, perfect little house! Who could possibly mind the smell? It was part of the joy, part
of the newness.

“Open it quickly, someone!"

The hook at the side was stuck fast. Pat prized it open with his penknife, and the whole house
front swung back, and—there you were, gazing at one and the same moment into the drawing-
room and dining-room, the kitchen and two bedrooms. That is the way for a house to open! Why
don't all houses open like that? How much more exciting than peering through the slit of a door
into a mean little hall with a hat stand and two umbrellas! That is—isn't it?—what you long to
know about a house when you put your hand on the knocker. Perhaps it is the way God opens
houses at the dead of night when He is taking a quiet turn with an angel...

"O-oh!" The Burnell children sounded as though they were in despair. It was too marvellous; it
was too much for them. They had never seen anything like it in their lives. All the rooms were
papered. There were pictures on the walls, painted on the paper, with gold frames complete. Red
carpet covered all the floors except the kitchen; red plush chairs in the drawing-room, green in
 24

the dining-room; tables, beds with real bedclothes, a cradle, a stove, a dresser with tiny plates
and one big jug. But what Kezia liked more than anything, what she liked frightfully", was the
lamp. It stood in the middle of the dining-room table, an exquisite little amber lamp with a white
globe. It was even filled all ready for lighting, though, of course, you couldn't light it. But there
was something inside that looked like oil and moved when you shook it.

The father and mother dolls, who sprawled very stiff as though they had fainted in the drawing-
room, and their two little children asleep upstairs, were really too big for the doll's house. They
didn't look as though they belonged. But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to smile at Kezia, to
say, “I live here." The lamp was real.

The Burnell children could hardly walk to school fast enough the next morning. They burned to
tell everybody, to describe, to—well —to boast about their doll's house before the school-bell
rang.

“I’m to tell," said Isabel, “because I'm the eldest. And you two can join in after. But I'm to tell
first."

There was nothing to answer. Isabel was bossy, but she was always right, and Lottie and Kezia
knew too well the powers that went with being eldest. They brushed through the thick buttercups
at the road edge and said nothing.

“And I'm to choose who's to come and see it first. Mother said I might."

For it had been arranged that while the doll's house stood in the courtyard they might ask the
girls at school, two at a time, to come and look. Not to stay to tea, of course, or to come traipsing
through the house. But just to stand quietly in the courtyard while Isabel pointed out the beauties,
and Lottie and Kezia looked pleased...

But hurry as they might, by the time they had reached the tarred palings of the boys' playground
the bell had begun to jangle. They only just had time to whip off their hats and fall into line
before the roll was called. Never mind. Isabel tried to make up for it by looking very important
and mysterious and by whispering behind her hand to the girls near her, "Got something to tell
you at playtime."
 25

Playtime came and Isabel was surrounded. The girls of her class nearly fought to put their arms
round her, to walk away with her, to beam flatteringly, to be her special friend. She held quite a
court under the huge pine trees at the side of the playground. Nudging, giggling together, the
little girls pressed up close. And the only two who stayed outside the ring were the two who were
always outside, the little Kelveys. They knew better than to come anywhere near the Burnells.

For the fact was, the school the Burnell children went to was not at all the kind of place their
parents would have chosen if there had been any choice. But there was none. It was the only
school for miles. And the consequence was all the children of the neighbourhood, the Judge's
little girls, the doctor's daughters, the store-keeper's children, the milkman's, were forced to mix
together. Not to speak of there being an equal number of rude, rough little boys as well. But the
line had to be drawn somewhere. It was drawn at the Kelveys. Many of the children, including
the Burnells, were not allowed even to speak to them. They walked past the Kelveys with their
heads in the air, and as they set the fashion in all matters of behaviour, the Kelveys were shunned
by everybody. Even the teacher had a special voice for them and a special smile for the other
children when Lil Kelvey came up to her desk with a bunch of dreadfully common-looking
flowers.

They were the daughters of a spry, hardworking little washerwoman, who went about from house
to house by the day. This was awful enough. But where was Mr. Kelvey? Nobody knew for
certain. But everybody said he was in prison. So they were the daughters of a washerwoman and
a gaolbird. Very nice company for other people's children! And they looked it. Why Mrs. Kelvey
made them so conspicuous was hard to understand. The truth was they were dressed in "bits"
given to her by the people for whom she worked. Lil, for instance, who was a stout, plain child,
with big freckles, came to school in a dress made from a green art-serge table-cloth of the
Burnells', with red plush sleeves from the Logans' curtains. Her hat, perched on top of her high
forehead, was a grown-up woman's hat, once the property of Miss Lecky, the postmistress. It was
turned up at the back and trimmed with a large scarlet quill. What a little guy she looked! It was
impossible not to laugh. And her little sister, our Else, wore a long white dress, rather like a
nightgown, and a pair of little boy's boots. But whatever our Else wore she would have looked
strange. She was a tiny wishbone of a child, with cropped hair and enormous solemn eyes—a
little white owl. Nobody had ever seen her smile; she scarcely ever spoke. She went through life
 26

holding on to Lil, with a piece of Lil's skirt screwed up in her hand. Where Lil went, our Else
followed. In the playground, on the road going to and from school, there was Lil marching in
front and our Else holding on behind. Only when she wanted anything, or when she was out of
breath, our Else gave Lil a tug, a twitch, and Lil stopped and turned round. The Kelveys never
failed to understand each other.

Now they hovered at the edge; you couldn't stop them listening. When the little girls turned
round and sneered, Lil, as usual, gave her silly, shamefaced smile, but our Else only looked.

And Isabel's voice, so very proud, went on telling. The carpet made a great sensation, but so did
the beds with real bedclothes, and the stove with an oven door.

When she finished Kezia broke in. “You’ve forgotten the lamp, Isabel."

“Oh, yes," said Isabel, " and there's a teeny little lamp, all made of yellow glass, with a white
globe that stands on the dining-room table. You couldn't tell it from a real one."

"The lamp's best of all," cried Kezia. She thought Isabel wasn't making half enough of the little
lamp. But nobody paid any attention. Isabel was choosing the two who were to come back with
them that afternoon and see it. She chose Emmie Cole and Lena Logan. But when the others
knew they were all to have a chance, they couldn't be nice enough to Isabel. One by one they put
their arms round Isabel's waist and walked her off. They had something to whisper to her, a
secret. "Isabel's my friend."

Only the little Kelveys moved away forgotten; there was nothing more for them to hear.

Days passed, and as more children saw the doll's house, the fame of it spread. It became the one
subject, the rage. The one question was, "Have you seen Burnells' doll's house? Oh, ain't it
lovely!" "Haven't you seen it? Oh, I say!"

Even the dinner hour was given up to talking about it. The little girls sat under the pines eating
their thick mutton sandwiches and big slabs of johnny cake spread with butter. While always, as
 27

near as they could get, sat the Kelveys, our Else holding on to Lil, listening too, while they
chewed their jam sandwiches out of a newspaper soaked with large red blobs. "Mother," said
Kezia, "can't I ask the Kelveys just once ? "

"Certainly not, Kezia"

"But why not?"

"Run away, Kezia ; you know quite well why not."

At last everybody had seen it except them. On that day the subject rather flagged. It was the
dinner hour. The children stood together under the pine trees, and suddenly, as they looked at the
Kelveys eating out of their paper, always by themselves, always listening, they wanted to be
horrid to them. Emmie Cole started the whisper.

"Lil Kelvey's going to be a servant when she grows up."

"O-oh, how awful!" said Isabel Burnell, and she made eyes at Emmie.

Emmie swallowed in a very meaning way and nodded to Isabel as she'd seen her mother do on
those occasions.

"It's true—it's true—it's true," she said.

Then Lena Logan's little eyes snapped. "Shall I ask her?" she whispered.

"Bet you don't," said Jessie May.

"Pooh, I'm not frightened," said Lena. Suddenly she gave a little squeal and danced in front of
the other girls."Watch! Watch me! Watch me now! "said Lena. And sliding, gliding, dragging
one foot, giggling behind her hand, Lena went over to the Kelveys.

Lil looked up from her dinner. She wrapped the rest quickly away. Our Else stopped chewing.
What was coming now?

"Is it true you're going to be a servant when you grow up, Lil Kelvey " shrilled Lena.
 28

Dead silence. But instead of answering, Lil only gave her silly, shamefaced smile. She didn't
seem to mind the question at all. What a sell for Lena! The girls began to titter.

Lena couldn't stand that. She put her hands on her hips; she shot forward. "Yah, yer father's in
prison ! " she hissed, spitefully.

This was such a marvellous thing to have said that the little girls rushed away in a body, deeply,
deeply excited, wild with joy. Someone found a long rope, and they began skipping. And never
did they skip so high, run in and out so fast, or do such daring things as on that morning.

In the afternoon Pat called for the Burnell children with the buggy and they drove home. There
were visitors. Isabel and Lottie, who liked visitors, went upstairs to change their pinafores. But
Kezia thieved out at the back. Nobody was about; she began to swing on the big white gates of
the courtyard. Presently, looking along the road, she saw two little dots. They grew bigger, they
were coming towards her. Now she could see that one was in front and one close behind. Now
she could see that they were the Kelveys. Kezia stopped swinging. She slipped off the gate as if
she was going to run away. Then she hesitated. The Kelveys came nearer, and beside them
walked their shadows, very long, stretching right across the road with their heads in the
buttercups. Kezia clambered back on the gate; she had made up her mind; she swung out.

"Hullo," she said to the passing Kelveys.

They were so astounded that they stopped. Lil gave her silly smile. Our Else stared.

"You can come and see our doll's house if you want to," said Kezia, and she dragged one toe on
the ground. But at that Lil turned red and shook her head quickly.

"Why not?" asked Kezia.

Lil gasped, then she said, "Your ma told our ma you wasn't to speak to us."

"Oh, well," said Kezia. She didn't know what to reply. "It doesn't matter. You come and see our
doll's house all the same. Come on. Nobody's looking."

But Lil shook her head still harder.

"Don't you want to?" asked Kezia.

 29

Suddenly there was a twitch, a tug at Lil's skirt. She turned round. Our Else was looking at her
with big, imploring eyes; she was frowning; she wanted to go. For a moment Lil looked at our
Else very doubtfully. But then our Else twitched her skirt again. She started forward. Kezia led
the way. Like two little stray cats they followed across the courtyard to where the doll's house
stood.

"There it is," said Kezia.

There was a pause. Lil breathed loudly, almost snorted; our Else was still as stone."I'll open it for
you," said Kezia kindly. She undid the hook and they looked inside."There's the drawing-room
and the dining-room, and that's the——"

"Kezia!"

Oh, what a start they gave!

"Kezia!"

It was Aunt Beryl's voice. They turned round. At the back door stood Aunt Beryl, staring as if
she couldn't believe what she saw.

"How dare you ask the little Kelveys into the courtyard?" said her cold, furious voice. "You
know as well as I do, you're not allowed to talk to them. Run away, children, run away at once.
And don't come back again," said Aunt Beryl. And she stepped into the yard and shooed them
out as if they were chickens.

"Off you go immediately!" she called, cold and proud.

They did not need telling twice. Burning with shame, shrinking together, Lil huddling along like
her mother, our Else dazed, somehow they crossed the big courtyard and squeezed through the
white gate.

"Wicked, disobedient little girl!" said Aunt Beryl bitterly to Kezia, and she slammed the doll's
house to.

The afternoon had been awful. A letter had come from Willie Brent, a terrifying, threatening
letter, saying if she did not meet him that evening in Pulman's Bush, he'd come to the front door
 30

and ask the reason why! But now that she had frightened those little rats of Kelveys and given
Kezia a good scolding, her heart felt lighter. That ghastly pressure was gone. She went back to
the house humming.

When the Kelveys were well out of sight of Burnells', they sat down to rest on a big red
drainpipe by the side of the road. Lil's cheeks were still burning; she took off the hat with the
quill and held it on her knee. Dreamily they looked over the hay paddocks, past the creek, to the
group of wattles where Logan's cows stood waiting to be milked. What were their thoughts?
Presently our Else nudged up close to her sister. But now she had forgotten the cross lady. She
put out a finger and stroked her sister's quill; she smiled her rare smile.

"I seen the little lamp," she said, softly.

Then both were silent once more.

NOTE:

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) New Zealand born British master of short story who evolved a
distinctive style with over tones of poetry. Her delicate stories, focused upon psychological
conflicts, love and obliqueness of narration and a subtlety of observation. She had much
influence on the development of the short story as a form of literature. One of the most highly
regarded short story writer of the twentieth century, she played her part in shaping modernism by
experimenting with style, subject matter and theme in the body of work that re- defined the
genre. As well as short stories she also wrote letters, reviews and journals.

In “The Doll’s House,” the main theme is the injustice and cruelty associated with class
distinctions. Mansfield also explores how the high class takes deliberate pleasure in being cruel
to lower classes and how innocently born children who are brought in this atmosphere can easily
become influenced. Mansfield uses the symbols, particularly the doll house and the lamp, to
reveal these themes. The doll house is the revolving symbol which is the base of story and its
happenings. The theme of class, prejudice, connection, hope, appearance and equality are all
centered in it.
 31

The beauty, appearance, color, shape, and size of the doll house i.e. the external aspects of the
house represent the status, assets, economical conditions and the position of human beings in the
society. The interior of the house refers to the true human nature. The extraordinary furniture and
frames show the dark side of human nature and its greed for luxury. The smell of the doll house
represents the cruelty of society. The simple lamp represents the humble side of human nature
and the light that dwells within us. The lamp is also used to symbolize equality as it spreads the
light equally in all directions in real life. The lamp symbolizes hope and connection as well. The
gate in the story may also be symbolic. When the gate is swung open, it suggests the removal of
obstruction or social prejudice.

QUESTIONS:

1. Analyze “The Doll’s House” as a condemnation of class discrimination?

2. What is the conflict in “The Doll’s House”?
3. What is the symbolism of the little lamp?
4. To what extent is symbolism a significant feature of this story?
 32

In Another Country
Ernest Hemingway

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the
fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant
along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and
the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and
heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a
cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.

We were all at the hospital every afternoon, and there were different ways of walking
across the town through the dusk to the hospital. Two of the ways were alongside canals, but
they were long. Always, though, you crossed a bridge across a canal to enter the hospital. There
was a choice of three bridges. On one of them a woman sold roasted chestnuts. It was warm,
standing in front of her charcoal fire, and the chestnuts were warm afterward in your pocket. The
hospital was very old and very beautiful, and you entered a gate and walked across a courtyard
and out a gate on the other side. There were usually funerals starting from the courtyard.

Beyond the old hospital were the new brick pavilions, and there we met every afternoon
and were all very polite and interested in what was the matter, and sat in the machines that were
to make so much difference. The doctor came up to the machine where I was sitting and said:
"What did you like best to do before the war? Did you practice a sport?"

I said: "Yes, football." "Good," he said.

"You will be able to play football again better than ever."

My knee did not bend and the leg dropped straight from the knee to the ankle without a
calf, and the machine was to bend the knee and make it move as riding a tricycle. But it did not
bend yet, and instead the machine lurched when it came to the bending part. The doctor said:"
That will all pass. You are a fortunate young man. You will play football again like a champion."
 33

In the next machine was a major who had a little hand like a baby's. He winked at me
when the doctor examined his hand, which was between two leather straps that bounced up and
down and flapped the stiff fingers, and said: "And will I too play football, captain-doctor?" He
had been a very great fencer, and before the war the greatest fencer in Italy.

The doctor went to his office in a back room and brought a photograph which showed a
hand that had been withered almost as small as the major's, before it had taken a machine course,
and after was a little larger.it had taken a machine course, and after was a little larger. The major
held the photograph with his good hand and looked at it very carefully. "A wound?" he asked.

"An industrial accident," the doctor said.

"Very interesting, very interesting," the major said, and handed it back to the doctor.

"You have confidence?"

"No," said the major.

There were three boys who came each day who were about the same age I was. They
were all three from Milan, and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and
one had intended to be a soldier, and after we were finished with the machines, sometimes we
walked back together to the Café Cova, which was next door to the Scala. We walked the short
way through the communist quarter because we were four together. The people hated us because
we were officers, and from a wine-shop someone called out, "A basso gli ufficiali!" as we
passed. Another boy who walked with us sometimes and made us five wore a black silk
handkerchief across his face because he had no nose then and his face was to be rebuilt. He had
gone out to the front from the military academy and been wounded within an hour after he had
gone into the front line for the first time. They rebuilt his face, but he came from a very old
family and they could never get the nose exactly right. He went to South America and worked in
a bank. But this was a long time ago, and then we did not any of us know how it was going to be
afterward. We only knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it any
more.

We all had the same medals, except the boy with the black silk bandage across his face,
and he had not been at the front long enough to get any medals. The tall boy with a very pale
 34

face who was to be a lawyer had been lieutenant of Arditi and had three medals of the sort we
each had only one of. He had lived a very long time with death and was a little detached. We
were all a little detached, and there was nothing that held us together except that we met every
afternoon at the hospital. Although, as we walked to the Cova through the tough part of town,
walking in the dark, with light and singing coming out of the wine-shops, and sometimes having
to walk into the street when the men and women would crowd together on the sidewalk so that
we would have had to jostle them to et by, we felt held together by there being something that
had happened that they, the people who disliked us, did not understand.

We ourselves all understood the Cova, where it was rich and warm and not too brightly
lighted, and noisy and smoky at certain hours, and there were always girls at the tables and the
illustrated papers on a rack on the wall. The girls at the Cova were very patriotic, and I found
that the most patriotic people in Italy were the café girls - and I believe they are still patriotic.

The boys at first were very polite about my medals and asked me what I had done to get
them. I showed them the papers, which were written in very beautiful language and full of
fratellanza and abnegazione, but which really said, with the adjectives removed, that I had been
given the medals because I was an American. After that their manner changed a little toward me,
although I was their friend against outsiders. I was a friend, but I was never really one of them
after they had read the citations, because it had been different with them and they had done very
different things to get their medals. I had been wounded, it was true; but we all knew that being
wounded, after all, was really an accident. I was never ashamed of the ribbons, though, and
sometimes, after the cocktail hour, I would imagine myself having done all the things they had
done to get their medals; but walking home at night through the empty streets with the cold wind
and all the shops closed, trying to keep near the street lights, I knew that Ì would never have
done such things, and I was very much afraid to die, and often lay in bed at night by myself,
afraid to die and wondering how I would be when back to the front again. The three with the
medals were like hunting-hawks; and I was not a hawk, although I might seem a hawk to those
who had never hunted; they, the three, knew better and so we drifted apart. But I stayed good
friends with the boy who had been wounded his first day at the front, because he would never
know now how he would have turned out; so he could never be accepted either, and I liked him
because I thought perhaps he would not have turned out to be a hawk either.
 35

The major, who had been a great fencer, did not believe in bravery, and spent much time
while we sat in the machines correcting my grammar. He had complimented me on how I spoke
Italian, and we talked together very easily. One day I had said that Italian seemed such an easy
language to me that I could not take a great interest in it; everything was so easy to say. "Ah,
yes," the major said. "Why, then, do you not take up the use of grammar?" So we took up the use
of grammar, and soon Italian was such a difficult language that I was afraid to talk to him until I
had the grammar straight in my mind.

The major came very regularly to the hospital. I do not think he ever missed a day,
although I am sure he did not believe in the machines. There was a time when none of us
believed in the machines, and one day the major said it was all nonsense. The machines were
new then and it was we who were to prove them. It was an idiotic idea, he said, "a theory like
another". I had not learned my grammar, and he said I was a stupid impossible disgrace, and he
was a fool to have bothered with me. He was a small man and he sat straight up in his chair with
his right hand thrust into the machine and looked straight ahead at the wall while the straps
thumbed up and down with his fingers in them.

"What will you do when the war is over if it is over?" he asked me.

"Speak grammatically!" "I will go to the States."

"Are you married?" "No, but I hope to be."

"The more a fool you are," he said. He seemed very angry. "A man must not marry."

“Why, Signor Maggiore?" "Don't call me Signor Maggiore."

"Why must not a man marry?"

"He cannot marry. He cannot marry," he said angrily. "If he is to lose everything, he
should not place himself in a position to lose that. He should not place himself in a position to
lose. He should find things he cannot lose."

He spoke very angrily and bitterly, and looked straight ahead while he talked.

"But why should he necessarily lose it?"

 36

"He'll lose it," the major said. He was looking at the wall. Then he looked down at the
machine and jerked his little hand out from between the straps and slapped it hard against his
thigh. "He'll lose it," he almost shouted. "Don't argue with me!" Then he called to the attendant
who ran the machines. "Come and turn this damned thing off."

He went back into the other room for the light treatment and the massage. Then I heard
him ask the doctor if he might use his telephone and he shut the door. When he came back into
the room, I was sitting in another machine. He was wearing his cape and had his cap on, and he
came directly toward my machine and put his arm on my shoulder.

"I am so sorry," he said, and patted me on the shoulder with his good hand. "I would not
be rude. My wife has just died. You must forgive me."

"Oh-" I said, feeling sick for him. "I am so sorry."

He stood there biting his lower lip. "It is very difficult," he said. "I cannot resign
myself."

He looked straight past me and out through the window. Then he began to cry. "I am
utterly unable to resign myself," he said and choked. And then crying, his head up looking at
nothing, carrying himself straight and soldierly, with tears on both cheeks and biting his lips, he
walked past the machines and out the door.

The doctor told me that the major's wife, who was very young and whom he had not
married until he was definitely invalided out of the war, had died of pneumonia. She had been
sick only a few days. No one expected her to die. The major did not come to the hospital for
three days. Then he came at the usual hour, wearing a black band on the sleeve of his uniform.
When he came back, there were large framed photographs around the wall, of all sorts of wounds
before and after they had been cured by the machines. In front of the machine the major used
were three photographs of hands like his that were completely restored. I do not know where the
doctor got them. I always understood we were the first to use the machines. The photographs did
not make much difference to the major because he only looked out of the window.
 37

NOTE:

Earnest Hemingway (1899-1961) an American novelist and short story writer awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1954 is known to be one of the most influential writer of the twentieth
century. He has written more than one hundred short fiction stories. As a young man, he left
from his hometown to Europe where he worked for The Red Cross during the World War One.
His time spent there inspired him to write some of his most famous novels, most of which spoke
of the horrors of the war.

“In Another Country” shows the damaging psychological and physical effects of the First World
War. Hemingway knew first hand the horrors of war. The story, set in Milan, is about an injured
American soldier in a hospital because of the War. These soldiers have sustained injuries due to
fighting on the battlefield. These men will never be the same again. The devastating injuries due
to the war changed these American soldiers’ lives forever. The story is rife with images of body
and body deformity. Their physical deformity is a metaphor for their inability to find an identity
in a non-military society. The hospital is a place of Sanctuary for these men, isolated from the
“main land” of society and the reality of society in which these men have no place.

QUESTIONS

1. The wounded soldiers in the story are “in another country” in the sense of being out of
combat. From which “other country” besides the war are they separated? How is the
exclusion of these soldiers from these “other countries” important to the theme of the
story?
2. What separates the narrator “In another Country” from the other soldiers? What connects
him to them? How do they feel about the town, the machines and the war?
3. Referring to the young man whose face was to be rebuilt, Hemingway says: “He had
lived a very long time with death and was a little detached”. What does this sentence
mean to you?
4. In what ways is the narrator of “In another Country” an outsider? What points does the
author make about bravery and hope? What do you think is the main point of the story?
Does it have anything to do with one’s ability to handle physical and emotional wounds?
 38

5. What writers in our national literature have treated the theme of war and the isolation and
the loneliness it brings?
 39

There will Come Soft Rains

Ray Bradbury

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up,
seven o 'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock
ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time,
seven-nine!

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight
pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunny side up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees,
and two cool glasses of milk.

"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of
Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr.
Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are
the water, gas, and light bills."

Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.

Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But no
doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The
weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away; umbrellas, raincoats for today.
.." And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.

Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the
door swung down again.

At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone. An aluminum wedge scraped
them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and
flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and
emerged twinkling dry.

Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.

Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were a crawl with the small
cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their moustached
 40

runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders,
they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean.

Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble
and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive
glow which could be seen for miles.

Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with
scatterings of brightness. The water pelted window panes, running down the charred west where
the house had been burned, evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was
black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a
photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one
titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and
opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.

The five spots of paint - the man, the woman, the children, the ball- remained. The rest was a
thin charcoaled layer.

The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.

Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, "Who goes
there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had
shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old-maidenly preoccupation with self-protection
which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.

It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade snapped up.
The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house!

Twelve noon.

A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch.

The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now
gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud. Behind it
whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience.
 41

For not a leaf fragment blew under the door but what the wall panels flipped open and the copper
scrap rats flashed swiftly out. The offending dust, hair, or paper, seized in miniature steel jaws,
was raced back to the burrows. There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped into
the sighing vent of an incinerator which sat like evil Baal in a dark corner.

The dog ran upstairs, hysterically yelping to each door, at last realizing, as the house realized,
that only silence was here.

It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making
pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odour and the scent of maple syrup.

The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in
circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died. It lay in the parlor for an hour.

Two o'clock, sang a voice.

Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown gray
leaves in an electrical wind.

Two-fifteen.

The dog was gone.

In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney.

Two thirty-five.

Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of pips.
Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played.

But the tables were silent and the cards untouched.

At four o'clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the paneled walls .

Four-thirty.

The nursery walls glowed.

 42

Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in
crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon color and fantasy. Hidden films
clocked through well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to
resemble a crisp, cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the
hot still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors!
There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy
bumble of a purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle
rain, like other hoofs, falling upon the summer-starched grass. Now the walls dissolved into
distances of parched grass, mile on mile, and warm endless sky. The animals drew away into
thorn brakes and water holes. It was the children's hour.

Five o'clock. The bath filled with clear hot water.

Six, seven, eight o'clock. The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a
click. In the metal stand opposite the hearth where a fire now blazed up warmly, a cigar popped
out, half an inch of soft gray ash on it, smoking, waiting.

Nine o'clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here.

Nine-five. A voice spoke from the study ceiling: "Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like
this evening?" The house was silent.

The voice said at last, "Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random." Quiet
music rose to back the voice. "Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favourite...

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

There Will Come Soft Rains

 43

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone."

The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray.
The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played.

At ten o'clock the house began to die.

The wind blew. A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning solvent,
bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant!

"Fire!" screamed a voice. The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the ceilings.
But the solvent spread on the linoleum, licking, eating, under the kitchen door, while the voices
took it up in chorus: "Fire, fire, fire!"

The house tried to save itself. Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by the
heat and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire.

The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease from
room to room and then up the stairs. While scurrying water rats squeaked from the walls,
pistolled their water, and ran for more. And the wall sprays let down showers of mechanical rain.

But too late. Somewhere, sighing, a pump shrugged to a stop. The quenching rain ceased. The
reserve water supply which had filled baths and washed dishes for many quiet days was gone.

The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like
delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.
 44

Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the colors of drapes!

And then, reinforcements. From attic trapdoors, blind robot faces peered down with faucet
mouths gushing green chemical.

The fire backed off, as even an elephant must at the sight of a dead snake.

Now there were twenty snakes whipping over the floor, killing the fire with a clear cold venom
of green froth.

But the fire was clever. It had sent flame outside the house, up through the attic to the pumps
there. An explosion! The attic brain which directed the pumps was shattered into bronze shrapnel
on the beams.

The fire rushed back into every closet and felt of the clothes hung there.

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its
nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in
the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice.
And the voices wailed. Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low,
like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their
sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died.

In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off. The panthers ran
in circles, changing color, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished off toward a
distant steaming river.... Ten more voices died.

In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announcing
the time, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in,
the slamming and opening front door, a thousand things happening, like a clock shop when each
clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity;
singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away!
And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until
all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.
 45

In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making
breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon strips,
which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again, hysterically hissing!

The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-
cellar. Deep freeze, armchair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a
cluttered mound deep under.

Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke.

Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last
voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble
and steam:

"Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is..."

NOTE:

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) was one of the most popular and prolific fantasy and science fiction
American writer of the twentieth century.

When first published in 1950, “There will come Soft Rains” was set in 1986. Later versions
updated the year to 2026 and 2057. The story is not meant to be a specific prediction about the
future, but rather to show a possibility that, at anytime, could be just around the corner. One of
Bradbury’s most anthologized early work; it tells the story of a smart house which has survived a
nuclear blast and keeps functioning after the human inhabitants are all dead. Like a lot of stories,
in the year following the Second World War, it is concerned not only with the threat of nuclear
annihilation, but also with how technology might outlive human beings. The title of the story is
taken from Sara Teasdale’s poem bearing the same title. Teasdale’s poem published in 1920 after
the First World War envisions an idyllic post-apocalyptic world in which nature continues
peacefully, beautifully, and indifferently after the extinction of humankind. Bradbury’s story was
published five years after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The poem and the story
contemplate life after humankind has perished. Bradbury’s house of the future carries on with the
 46

daily tasks and machinations, ignorant that its human inhabitants are missing. Burned into this
story, like the silhouettes on the side of the house, is the emotional aftermath of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. As in a Greek tragedy the real horror of Bradbury’s story, the human suffering,
remains off stage. He shows not the moment of explosion but a wall charred black except where
the past remains intact in the shape of the four people, the family who lived there.

A story of life continuing without humans, it warns against the dangers of nuclear warfare. The
brutality of the atomic warfare is highlighted through horrific images. A mood of emptiness and
sorrow prevails over the story. The writer conveys that technology can be both destructive and
helpful. The deadly power of the nuclear bomb is contrasted with the automated smart house.
One kills, the other devotes itself to the comfort of a family that no longer exists. The house’s
continued service makes its death at the end all the more poignant.

QUESTIONS:

1. How does the writer’s use of figurative language- personification, simile, metaphor-
help him to make his point?
2. What is the significance of the repeated reference to the rain in the story?
3. What impact has the story made on you?
 47

The Lady or the Tiger

Frank Stockton

In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat
polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid,
and untrammeled, as became the half of him which was barbaric. He was a man of exuberant
fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into
facts. He was greatly given to self-communing, and, when he and himself agreed upon anything,
the thing was done. When every member of his domestic and political systems moved smoothly
in its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch,
and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for nothing
pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places.

Among the borrowed notions by which his barbarism had become semified was that of the
public arena, in which, by exhibitions of manly and beastly valor, the minds of his subjects were
refined and cultured.

But even here the exuberant and barbaric fancy asserted itself. The arena of the king was
built, not to give the people an opportunity of hearing the rhapsodies of dying gladiators, nor to
enable them to view the inevitable conclusion of a conflict between religious opinions and
hungry jaws, but for purposes far better adapted to widen and develop the mental energies of the
people. This vast amphitheater, with its encircling galleries, its mysterious vaults, and its unseen
passages, was an agent of poetic justice, in which crime was punished, or virtue rewarded, by the
decrees of an impartial and incorruptible chance.

When a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance to interest the king, public
notice was given that on an appointed day the fate of the accused person would be decided in the
king's arena, a structure which well deserved its name, for, although its form and plan were
borrowed from afar, its purpose emanated solely from the brain of this man, who, every
barleycorn a king, knew no tradition to which he owed more allegiance than pleased his fancy,
and who ingrafted on every adopted form of human thought and action the rich growth of his
barbaric idealism.
 48

When all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the king, surrounded by his court, sat
high up on his throne of royal state on one side of the arena, he gave a signal, a door beneath him
opened, and the accused subject stepped out into the amphitheater. Directly opposite him, on the
other side of the enclosed space, were two doors, exactly alike and side by side. It was the duty
and the privilege of the person on trial to walk directly to these doors and open one of them. He
could open either door he pleased; he was subject to no guidance or influence but that of the
aforementioned impartial and incorruptible chance. If he opened the one, there came out of it a
hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel that could be procured, which immediately sprang upon
him and tore him to pieces as a punishment for his guilt. The moment that the case of the
criminal was thus decided, doleful iron bells were clanged, great wails went up from the hired
mourners posted on the outer rim of the arena, and the vast audience, with bowed heads and
downcast hearts, wended slowly their homeward way, mourning greatly that one so young and
fair, or so old and respected, should have merited so dire a fate.

But, if the accused person opened the other door, there came forth from it a lady, the most
suitable to his years and station that his majesty could select among his fair subjects, and to this
lady he was immediately married, as a reward of his innocence. It mattered not that he might
already possess a wife and family, or that his affections might be engaged upon an object of his
own selection; the king allowed no such subordinate arrangements to interfere with his great
scheme of retribution and reward. The exercises, as in the other instance, took place
immediately, and in the arena. Another door opened beneath the king, and a priest, followed by a
band of choristers, and dancing maidens blowing joyous airs on golden horns and treading an
epithalamic measure, advanced to where the pair stood, side by side, and the wedding was
promptly and cheerily solemnized. Then the gay brass bells rang forth their merry peals, the
people shouted glad hurrahs, and the innocent man, preceded by children strewing flowers on his
path, led his bride to his home.

This was the king's semi-barbaric method of administering justice. Its perfect fairness is
obvious. The criminal could not know out of which door would come the lady; he opened either
he pleased, without having the slightest idea whether, in the next instant, he was to be devoured
or married. On some occasions the tiger came out of one door, and on some out of the other. The
decisions of this tribunal were not only fair, they were positively determinate: the accused person
 49

was instantly punished if he found himself guilty, and, if innocent, he was rewarded on the spot,
whether he liked it or not. There was no escape from the judgments of the king's arena.

The institution was a very popular one. When the people gathered together on one of the great
trial days, they never knew whether they were to witness a bloody slaughter or a hilarious
wedding. This element of uncertainty lent an interest to the occasion which it could not otherwise
have attained. Thus, the masses were entertained and pleased, and the thinking part of the
community could bring no charge of unfairness against this plan, for did not the accused person
have the whole matter in his own hands?

This semi-barbaric king had a daughter as blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul
as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and
was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of
blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal
maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to
a degree unsurpassed in all this kingdom, and she loved him with an ardor that had enough of
barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong. This love affair moved on happily for
many months, until one day the king happened to discover its existence. He did not hesitate nor
waver in regard to his duty in the premises. The youth was immediately cast into prison, and a
day was appointed for his trial in the king's arena. This, of course, was an especially important
occasion, and his majesty, as well as all the people, was greatly interested in the workings and
development of this trial. Never before had such a case occurred; never before had a subject
dared to love the daughter of the king. In after years such things became commonplace enough,
but then they were in no slight degree novel and startling.

The tiger-cages of the kingdom were searched for the most savage and relentless beasts, from
which the fiercest monster might be selected for the arena; and the ranks of maiden youth and
beauty throughout the land were carefully surveyed by competent judges in order that the young
man might have a fitting bride in case fate did not determine for him a different destiny. Of
course, everybody knew that the deed with which the accused was charged had been done. He
had loved the princess, and neither he, she, nor any one else, thought of denying the fact; but the
king would not think of allowing any fact of this kind to interfere with the workings of the
 50

tribunal, in which he took such great delight and satisfaction. No matter how the affair turned
out, the youth would be disposed of, and the king would take an aesthetic pleasure in watching
the course of events, which would determine whether or not the young man had done wrong in
allowing himself to love the princess.

The appointed day arrived. From far and near the people gathered, and thronged the great
galleries of the arena, and crowds, unable to gain admittance, massed themselves against its
outside walls. The king and his court were in their places, opposite the twin doors, those fateful
portals, so terrible in their similarity.

All was ready. The signal was given. A door beneath the royal party opened, and the lover of
the princess walked into the arena. Tall, beautiful, fair, his appearance was greeted with a low
hum of admiration and anxiety. Half the audience had not known so grand a youth had lived
among them. No wonder the princess loved him! What a terrible thing for him to be there!

As the youth advanced into the arena he turned, as the custom was, to bow to the king, but he
did not think at all of that royal personage. His eyes were fixed upon the princess, who sat to the
right of her father. Had it not been for the moiety of barbarism in her nature it is probable that
lady would not have been there, but her intense and fervid soul would not allow her to be absent
on an occasion in which she was so terribly interested. From the moment that the decree had
gone forth that her lover should decide his fate in the king's arena, she had thought of nothing,
night or day, but this great event and the various subjects connected with it. Possessed of more
power, influence, and force of character than any one who had ever before been interested in
such a case, she had done what no other person had done - she had possessed herself of the secret
of the doors. She knew in which of the two rooms, that lay behind those doors, stood the cage of
the tiger, with its open front, and in which waited the lady. Through these thick doors, heavily
curtained with skins on the inside, it was impossible that any noise or suggestion should come
from within to the person who should approach to raise the latch of one of them. But gold, and
the power of a woman's will, had brought the secret to the princess.

And not only did she know in which room stood the lady ready to emerge, all blushing
and radiant, should her door be opened, but she knew who the lady was. It was one of the fairest
and loveliest of the damsels of the court who had been selected as the reward of the accused
 51

youth, should he be proved innocent of the crime of aspiring to one so far above him; and the
princess hated her. Often had she seen, or imagined that she had seen, this fair creature throwing
glances of admiration upon the person of her lover, and sometimes she thought these glances
were perceived, and even returned. Now and then she had seen them talking together; it was but
for a moment or two, but much can be said in a brief space; it may have been on most
unimportant topics, but how could she know that? The girl was lovely, but she had dared to raise
her eyes to the loved one of the princess; and, with all the intensity of the savage blood
transmitted to her through long lines of wholly barbaric ancestors, she hated the woman who
blushed and trembled behind that silent door.

When her lover turned and looked at her, and his eye met hers as she sat there, paler and
whiter than any one in the vast ocean of anxious faces about her, he saw, by that power of quick
perception which is given to those whose souls are one, that she knew behind which door
crouched the tiger, and behind which stood the lady. He had expected her to know it. He
understood her nature, and his soul was assured that she would never rest until she had made
plain to herself this thing, hidden to all other lookers-on, even to the king. The only hope for the
youth in which there was any element of certainty was based upon the success of the princess in
discovering this mystery; and the moment he looked upon her, he saw she had succeeded, as in
his soul he knew she would succeed.

Then it was that his quick and anxious glance asked the question: "Which?" It was as plain to
her as if he shouted it from where he stood. There was not an instant to be lost. The question was
asked in a flash; it must be answered in another.

Her right arm lay on the cushioned parapet before her. She raised her hand, and made a slight,
quick movement toward the right. No one but her lover saw her. Every eye but his was fixed on
the man in the arena.

He turned, and with a firm and rapid step he walked across the empty space. Every heart
stopped beating, every breath was held, every eye was fixed immovably upon that man. Without
the slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right, and opened it.

Now, the point of the story is this: Did the tiger come out of that door, or did the lady ?
 52

The more we reflect upon this question, the harder it is to answer. It involves a study of the
human heart which leads us through devious mazes of passion, out of which it is difficult to find
our way. Think of it, fair reader, not as if the decision of the question depended upon yourself,
but upon that hot-blooded, semi-barbaric princess, her soul at a white heat beneath the combined
fires of despair and jealousy. She had lost him, but who should have him?

How often, in her waking hours and in her dreams, had she started in wild horror, and covered
her face with her hands as she thought of her lover opening the door on the other side of which
waited the cruel fangs of the tiger!

But how much oftener had she seen him at the other door! How in her grievous reveries had
she gnashed her teeth, and torn her hair, when she saw his start of rapturous delight as he opened
the door of the lady! How her soul had burned in agony when she had seen him rush to meet that
woman, with her flushing cheek and sparkling eye of triumph; when she had seen him lead her
forth, his whole frame kindled with the joy of recovered life; when she had heard the glad shouts
from the multitude, and the wild ringing of the happy bells; when she had seen the priest, with
his joyous followers, advance to the couple, and make them man and wife before her very eyes;
and when she had seen them walk away together upon their path of flowers, followed by the
tremendous shouts of the hilarious multitude, in which her one despairing shriek was lost and
drowned!

Would it not be better for him to die at once, and go to wait for her in the blessed regions of
semi-barbaric futurity?

And yet, that awful tiger, those shrieks, that blood!

Her decision had been indicated in an instant, but it had been made after days and nights of
anguished deliberation. She had known she would be asked, she had decided what she would
answer, and, without the slightest hesitation, she had moved her hand to the right.

The question of her decision is one not to be lightly considered, and it is not for me to
presume to set myself up as the one person able to answer it. And so I leave it with all of you:
Which came out of the opened door - the lady, or the tiger?
 53

NOTE:

Frank R. Stockton (1854-1902) was an American novelist, humorist, and short story writer best
known for his allegorical fairy tales for all ages. Rather than moralizing, he tended to poke fun at
qualities like greed, violence, and abuse of power. “The Lady or the Tiger?”, a much
anthologized tale of Stockton’s, is notable for its end. The open ended resolution is left to the
experience and imagination of the reader. The unpredictability of human nature and the typical
character of the princess make it hard for the reader to choose between a conventional happy end
the other tragic death motivated by the jealousy of a woman. The story offers a compelling
choice for the reader because there is no right answer. It is a fascinating illustration of the
conflict between determination and free will.

The descriptive simplicity of the story projects a complex theme with an effective use of irony by
the writer.

The story is both a fairy tale and an allegory. An allegory has two levels of meaning in which the
deeper level is represented by the symbols. The doors in the story represent fate; the tiger
represents death and punishment; the lady symbolizes innocence and the reward “doleful iron
bells” represent mourning while “gay brass bells” represent celebration and life.

The theme of determinism versus free will, fate versus chance, and barbarism versus
progressivism are evident in the story. The king shows a civilized side in his commitment to
administer justice in an impartial and incorruptible manner by chance. The writer makes use of
the literary device of “suppressed ending”. He suppresses the ending to create suspense for the
reader, which creates more questions than answers.

QUESTIONS:

1. Explain the meaning of ‘semi-barbaric’ and why it is a perfect adjective to describe both
the King and the Princess? How can someone be half cruel, brutal and uncivilized and
half not?
2. Relate the concept of ‘fate’ to a situation in your own life where a ‘choice’ was not really
up to you. Have you ever had to make a “lady or the tiger?” decision?
 54

3. Is this an appealing technique where the writer withholds the ending, leaving the reader
or the audience to determine the ending, or guessing what happens next?
 55

Boys and Girls

Alice Munro

My father was a fox farmer. That is, he raised silver foxes, in pens; and in the fall and early
winter, when their fur was prime, he killed them and skinned them and sold their pelts to the
Hudson's Bay Company or the Montreal Fur Traders. These companies supplied us with heroic
calendars to hang, one on each side of the kitchen door. Against a background of cold blue sky
and black pine forests and treacherous northern rivers, plumed adventures planted the flags of
England and or of France; magnificent savages bent their backs to the portage.
For several weeks before Christmas, my father worked after supper in the cellar of our house.
the cellar was whitewashed , and lit by a hundred-watt bulb over the worktable. My brother Laird
and I sat on the top step and watched. My father removed the pelt inside-out from the body of the
fox, which looked surprisingly small, mean, and rat-like, deprived of its arrogant weight of fur.
The naked, slippery bodies were collected in a sack and buried in the dump. One time the hired
man, Henry Bailey, had taken a swipe at me with this sack, saying, "Christmas present!" My
mother thought that was not funny. In fact she disliked the whole pelting operation--that was
what the killing, skinning, and preparation of the furs was called – and wished it did not have to
take place in the house. There was the smell. After the pelt had been stretched inside-out on a
long board my father scraped away delicately, removing the little clotted webs of blood vessels,
the bubbles of fat; the smell of blood and animal fat, which the strong primitive odor of the fox
itself, penetrated all parts of the house. I found it reassuringly seasonal, like the smell of oranges
and pine needles.
Henry Bailey suffered from bronchial troubles. He would cough and cough until his narrow
face turned scarlet, and his light blue, derisive eyes filled up with tears; then he took the lid off
the stove, and, standing well back, shot out a great clot of phlegm – hss – straight into the heart
of the flames. We admired his for this performance and for his ability to make his stomach growl
at will, and for his laughter, which was full of high whistlings and gurglings and involved the
whole faulty machinery of his chest. It was sometimes hard to tell what he was laughing at, and
always possible that it might be us.
After we had sent to be we could still smell fox and still hear Henry's laugh, but these things
 56

reminders of the warm, safe, brightly lit downstairs world, seemed lost and diminished, floating
on the stale cold air upstairs. We were afraid at nigh in the winter. We were not afraid of outside
though this was the time of year when snowdrifts curled around our house like sleeping whales
and the wind harassed us all night, coming up from the buried fields, the frozen swamp, with its
old bugbear chorus of threats and misery. We were afraid of inside, the room where we slept. At
this time upstairs of our house was not finished. A brick chimney went up on wall. In the middle
of the floor was a square hole, with a wooden railing around it; that was where the stairs came
up. On the other side of the stairwell wee the things that nobody had any use for anymore – a
soldiery roll of linoleum, standing on end, a wicker bay carriage, a fern basket, china jugs and
basins with cracks in them, a picture of the Battle of Balaclava, very sad to look at. I had told
Laird, as soon as he was old enough to understand such things, that bats and skeletons lived over
there; whenever a man escaped from the county jail, twenty miles away, I imagined that he had
somehow let himself in the window and was hiding behind the linoleum. But we had rules to
keep us safe. When the light was on, we were safe as long as we did not step off the square of
worn carpet which defined our bedroom-space; when the light was off no place was safe but the
beds themselves. I had to turn out the light kneeling on the end of my bed, and stretching as far
as I could to reach the cord.
In the dark we lay on our beds, our narrow life rafts, and fixed our eyes on the faint light
coming up the stairwell, and sang songs. Laird sang "Jingle Bells", which he would sing any
time, whether it was Christmas or not, and I sang "Danny Boy". I loved the sound of my own
voice, frail and supplicating, rising in the dark. We could make out the tall frosted shapes of the
windows now, gloomy and white. When I came to the part, y the cold sheets but by pleasurable
emotions almost silenced me. You'll kneel and say an Ave there above me —What was an Ave?
Every day I forgot to find out.
Laird went straight from singing to sleep, I could hear his long, satisfied, bubbly breaths. Now
for the time that remained to me, the most perfectly private and perhaps the best time of the
whole day, I arranged myself tightly under the covers and went on with one of the stories I was
telling myself from night to night. These stories were about myself, when I had grown a little
older; they took place in a world that was recognizably mine, yet one that presented opportunities
for courage, boldness, and self-sacrifice, as mine never did. I rescued people from a bombed
building (it discouraged me that the real war had gone on so far away from Jubilee). I shot two
 57

rabid wolves who were menacing the schoolyard (the teachers cowered terrified at my
back). Rode a fine horse spiritedly down the main street of Jubilee, acknowledging the
townspeople’s gratitude for some yet-to-be-worked-out piece of heroism (nobody ever rode a
horse there, except King Billy in the Orangemen’s Day parade). There was always riding and
shooting in these stories, though I had only been on a horse twice — the first because we did not
own a saddle — and the second time I had slid right around and dropped under the horse's feet; it
had stepped placidly over me. I really was learning to shoot, but could not hit anything yet, not
even tin cans on fence posts.
Alive, the foxes inhabited a world my father made for them. It was surrounded by a high guard
fence, like a medieval town, with a gate that was padlocked at night. Along the streets of this
town were ranged large, sturdy pens. Each of them had a real door that a man could go through, a
wooden ramp along the wire, for the foxes to run up and down on, and a kennel — sometimes
like a clothes chest with airholes — where they slept where they slept and stayed in winter and
had their young. There were feeding and watering dishes attached to the wire in such a way that
they could be emptied and cleaned from the outside. The dishes were made of old tin cans, and
the ramps and kennels of odds and ends of old lumber. Everything was tidy and ingenious; my
father was tirelessly inventive and his favorite book in the world was Robinson Crusoe. He had
fitted a tin drum on a wheelbarrow, for bringing water down to the pens. This was my job in the
summer, when the foxes had to have water twice a day. Between nine and ten o'clock in the
morning, and again after supper. I filled the drum at the pump and trundled it down through the
barnyard to the pens, where I parked it, and filled my watering can and went along the streets.
Laird came too, with his little cream and green gardening can, filled too full and knocking
against his legs and slopping water on his canvas shoes. I had the real watering can, my father's,
though I could only carry it three-quarters full.
The foxes all had names, which were printed on a tin plate and hung beside their doors. They
were not named when they were born, but when they survived the first year’s pelting and were
added to the breeding stock. Those my father had named were called names like Prince, Bob,
Wally, and Betty. Those I had named were called Star or Turk, or Maureen or Diana. Laird
named one Maude after a hired girl we had when he was little, one Harold after a boy at school,
and one Mexico, he did not say why.
Naming them did not make pets out of them, or anything like it. Nobody but my father ever
 58

went into the pens, and he had twice had blood-poisoning from bites. When I was bringing them
their water they prowled up and down on the paths they had made inside their pens, barking
seldom — they saved that for nighttime, when they might get up a chorus of community frenzy--
but always watching me, their eyes burning, clear gold, in their pointed, malevolent faces. They
were beautiful for their delicate legs and heavy, aristocratic tails and the bright fur sprinkled on
dark down their back — which gave them their name — but especially for their faces, drawn
exquisitely sharp in pure hostility, and their golden eyes.
Besides carrying water I helped my father when he cut the long grass, and the lamb's quarter
and flowering money-musk, that grew between the pens. He cut with they scythe and I raked into
piles. Then he took a pitchfork and threw fresh-cut grass all over the top of the pens to keep the
foxes cooler and shade their coats, which were browned by too much sun. My father did not talk
to me unless it was about the job we were doing. In this he was quite different from my mother,
who, if she was feeling cheerful, would tell me all sorts of things – the name of a dog she had
had when she was a little girl, the names of boys she had gone out with later on when she was
grown up, and what certain dresses of hers had looked like – she could not imagine now what
had become of them. Whatever thoughts and stories my father had were private, and I was shy of
him and would never ask him questions. Nevertheless I worked willingly under his eyes, and
with a feeling of pride. One time a feed salesman came down into the pens to talk to him and my
father said, "Like to have you meet my new hired hand." I turned away and raked furiously, red
in the face with pleasure.
"Could of fooled me." said the salesman. "I thought it was only a girl."
After the grass was cut, it seemed suddenly much later in the year. I walked on stubble in the
earlier evening aware of the reddening skies, on entering silence of fall. When I wheeled the tank
out of the gates and put padlocks on. It was almost dark. One night at this time I saw my mother
and father standing talking on the little rise of ground we called the gangway, in front of the
barn. My father had just come from the meathouse; he had his stiff bloody apron on, and a pail of
cut-up meat in his hand.
It was an odd thing to see my mother down at the barn. She did not often come out of the
house unless it was to do something – hang out the wash or dig potatoes in the garden. She
looked out of place, with her bare lumpy legs, not touched by the sun, her apron still on and
damp across the stomach from the supper dishes. Her hair was tied up in a kerchief, wisps of it
 59

falling out. She would tie her hair up like this in the morning, saying she did not have time to do
it properly, and it would stay tied up all day. It was true, too; she really did not have time. These
days our back porch was piled with baskets of peaches and grapes and pears, bought in town,
and onions an tomatoes and cucumbers grown at home, all waiting to be made into jelly and jam
and preserves, pickles and chili sauce. In the kitchen there was a fire in the stove all day, jars
clinked in boiling water, sometimes a cheesecloth bag was strung on a pole between two chairs
straining blue-back grape pulp for jelly. I was given jobs to do and I would sit at the table peeling
peaches that had been soaked in hot water, or cutting up onions, my eyes smarting and
streaming. As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my
mother thought of what she wanted me to do next. I hated the hot dark kitchen in summer, the
green blinds and the flypapers, the same old oilcloth table and wavy mirror and bumpy linoleum.
My mother was too tired and preoccupied to talk to me, she had no heart to tell about the Normal
School Graduation Dance; sweat trickled over her face and she was always counting under
breath, pointing at jars, dumping cups of sugar. It seemed to me that work in the house was
endless, dreary, and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors, and in my father's service,
was ritualistically important.
I wheeled the tank up tot he barn, where it was kept, and I heard my mother saying, "Wait till
Laird gets a little bigger, then you'll have a real help."
What my father said I did not hear. I was pleased by the way he stood listening, politely as he
would to a salesman or a stranger, but with an air of wanting to get on with his real work. I felt
my mother had no business down here and I wanted him to feel the same way. What did she
mean about Laird? He was no help to anybody. Where was he now? Swinging himself sick on
the swing, going around in circles, or trying to catch caterpillars. He never once stayed with me
till I was finished.
"And then I can use her more in the house," I heard my mother say. She had a dead-quiet
regretful way of talking about me that always made me uneasy. "I just get my back turned and
she runs off. It's not like I had a girl in the family at all."
I went and sat on a feed bag in the corner of the barn, not wanting to appear when this
conversation was going on. My mother, I felt, was not to be trusted. She was kinder than my
father and more easily fooled, but you could not depend on her, and the real reasons for the
things she said and did were not to be known. She loved me, and she sat up late at night making
 60

a dress of the difficult style I wanted, for me to wear when school started, but she was also my
enemy. She was always plotting. She was plotting now to get me to stay in the house more,
although she knew I hated it (because she knew I hated it) and keep me from working for my
father. It seemed to me she would do this simply out of perversity, and to try her power. It did
not occur to me that she could be lonely, or jealous. No grown-up could be; they were too
fortunate. I sat and kicked my heels monotonously against a feed bag, raising dust, and did not
come out till she was gone.
At any rate, I did not expect my father to pay any attention to what she said. Who could
imagine Laird doing my work – Laird remembering the padlock and cleaning out the watering
dishes with a leaf on the end of a stick, or even wheeling the tank without it tumbling over? It
showed how little my mother knew about the way things really were.
I had forgotten to say what the foxes were fed. My father's bloody apron reminded me. They
were fed horsemeat. At this time most farmers still kept horses, and when a horse got too old to
work, or broke a leg or got down and would not get up, as they sometimes did , the owner would
call my father, and he and Henry went out to the farm in the truck. Usually they shot and
butchered the horse there, paying the farmer from five to twelve dollars. If they had already too
much meat on hand, they would bring the horse back alive, and keep it for a few days or weeks
in our stable, until the meat was needed. After the war the farmers were buying tractors and
gradually getting rid of horses, that there was just no use for any more. If this happened in the
winter we might keep the horse in our stable till spring, for we had plenty of hay and if there was
a lot of snow – and the plow did not always get our roads cleared – it was convenient to be able
to go to town with a horse and cutter.
The winter I was eleven years old we had two horses in the stable. We did not know what
names they had had before, so we called them Mack and Flora. Mack was an old black
workhorse, sooty and indifferent. Flora was a sorrel mare, a driver. We took them both out in the
cutter. Mack was slow and easy to handle. Flora was given to fits of violent alarm, veering at
cars and even at other horses, but we loved her speed and high-stepping, her general air of
gallantry and abandon. On Saturdays we went down to the stable and as soon as we opened the
door on its cozy, animal-smelling darkness Flora threw up her head, rolled here eyes, whinnied
despairingly, and pulled herself through a crisis of nerves on the spot. It was not safe to go into
her stall, she would kick.
 61

This winter also I began to hear a great deal more on the theme my mother had sounded when
she had been talking in front of the barn. I no longer felt safe. It seemed that in the minds of the
people around me there was a steady undercurrent of thought, not to be deflected, on this one
subject. The word girl had formerly seemed to me innocent and unburdened like the word child;
now it appeared that it was no such thing. A girl was not, as I had supposed, simply what I was;
it was what I had to become. It was a definition, always touched with emphasis, with reproach
and disappointment. Also it was a joke on me. Once Laird and I were fighting, and for the first
time ever I had to use all my strength against him; even so, he caught and pinned my arm for a
moment, really hurting me. Henry saw this, and laughed, saying, "Oh, that there Laird’s gonna
show you, one of these days!" Laird was getting a lot bigger. But I was getting bigger too.
My grandmother came to stay with us for a few weeks and I heard other things. "Girls don't
slam doors like that." "Girls keep their knees together when they sit down." And worse still,
when I asked some questions, "That's none of girls’ business." I continued to slam the doors and
sit as awkwardly as possible, thinking that by such measures I kept myself free.
When spring came, the horses were let out in the barnyard. Mack stood against the barn wall
trying to scratch his neck and haunches, but Flora trotted up and down and reared at the fences,
clattering her hooves against the rails. Snow drifts dwindled quickly, revealing the hard gray and
brown earth, the familiar rise and fall of the ground, plain and bare after the fantastic landscape
of winter. There was a great feeling of opening-out, of release. We just wore rubbers now, over
our shoes; our feet felt ridiculously light. One Saturday we went out to the stable and found all
the doors open, letting in the unaccustomed sunlight and fresh air. Henry was there, just idling
around looking at his collection of calendars which were tacked up behind the stalls in a part of
the stable my mother probably had never seen.
"Come say goodbye to your old friend Mack?" Henry said. "Here, you give him a taste of
oats." He poured some oats into Laird’s cupped hands and Laird went to feed Mack. Mack's teeth
were in bad shape. He ate very slowly, patiently shifting the oats around in his mouth, trying to
find a stump of a molar to grind it on. "Poor old Mack, said Henry mournfully. "When a horse's
teethes gone, he's gone. That's about the way.
"Are you going to shoot him today?" I said. Mack and Flora had been in the stables so long I
had almost forgotten they were going to be shot.
Henry didn't answer me. Instead he started to sing in a high, trembly, mocking-sorrowful
 62

voice. Oh, there's no more work, for poor Uncle Ned, he's gone where the good darkies go.
Mack's thick, blackish tongue worked diligently at Laird’s hand. I went out before the song was
ended and sat down on the gangway.
I had never seen them shot a horse, but I knew where it was done. Last summer Laird and I
had come upon a horse's entrails before they were buried. We had thought it was a big black
snake, coiled up in the sun. That was around in the field that ran up beside the barn. I thought
that if we went inside the barn, and found a wide crack or a knothole to look through, we would
be able to see them do it. It was not something I wanted to see; just the same, if a thing really
happened it was better to see, and know.
My father came down from the house, carrying a gun.
"What are you doing here?" he said.
"Nothing."
"Go on up and play around the house."
He sent Laird out of the stable. I said to Laird, "Do you want to see them shoot Mack?" and
without waiting for an answer led him around to the front door of the barn, opened it carefully,
and went in. "Be quiet or they'll hear us," I said. We could hear Henry and my father talking in
the stable; then the heavy shuffling steps of Mack being backed out of his stall.
In the loft it was cold and dark. Thin crisscrossed beams of sunlight fell through the cracks.
The hay was low. It was rolling country, hills and hollows, slipping under our feet. About four
feet up was a beam going around the walls, We piled hay up in one corned and I boosted Laird
up and hoisted myself. The beam was not very wide; we crept along it with our hands flat on the
barn walls. There were plenty of knotholes, and I found one that gave me the view I wanted – a
corner of the barnyard, the gate, part of the field. Laird did not have a knothole and began to
complain.
I showed him a widened crack between two boards. "Be quiet and wait. If they hear you you'll
get us in trouble."
My father came in sight carrying the gun. Henry was leading Mack by the halter. He dropped
it and took out his cigarette papers and tobacco; he rolled cigarettes for my father and himself.
While this was going on Mack nosed around in the old, dead grass along the fence. Then my
father opened the gate and they took Mack through. Henry led Mack away from the path to a
patch of ground and they talked together, not loud enough for us to hear. Mack again began to
 63

searching for a mouthful of fresh grass, which was not found. My father walked away in a
straight line, and stopped short at a distance which seemed to suit him. Henry was walking away
from Mack too, but sideways, still negligently holding on to the halter. My father raised the gun
and Mack looked up as if he had noticed something and my father shot him.
Mack did not collapse at once but swayed, lurched sideways, and fell, first on his side; then he
rolled over on his back and, amazingly, kicked his legs for a few seconds in the air. At this Henry
laughed, as if Mack had done a trick for him. Laird, who had drawn a long, groaning breath of
surprise when the shot was fired, said out loud, "He's not dead." And it seemed to me it might be
true. But his legs stopped, he rolled on his side again, his muscles quivered and sank. The two
men walked over and looked at him in a businesslike way; they bent down and examined his
forehead where the bullet had gone in, and now I saw his blood on the brown grass.
"Now they just skin him and cut him up," I said. "Let's go." My legs were a little shaky and I
jumped gratefully down into the hay. "Now you've seen how they shoot a horse," I said in a
congratulatory way, as if I had seen it many times before. "Let's see if any barn cats had
kittens in the hay." Laird jumped. He seemed young and obedient again. Suddenly I
remembered how, when he was little, I had brought him into the barn and told him to climb the
ladder to the top beam. That was in the spring, too, when the hay was low. I had done it out of a
need for excitement, a desire for something to happen so that I could tell about it. He was
wearing a little bulky brown and white checked coat, made down from one of mine. He went all
the way up just as I told him, and sat down from one of the beam with the hay far below him on
one side, and the barn floor and some old machinery on the other. Then I ran screaming to my
father. "Laird’s up on the top beam!" My father came, my mother came, my father went up the
ladder talking very quietly and brought Laird down under his arm, at which my mother leaned
against the ladder and began to cry. They said to me, "Why weren't you watching him?" but
nobody ever knew the truth. Laird did not know enough to tell. But whenever I saw the brown
and white checked coat hanging in the closet , or at the bottom of the rag bag, which was where
it ended up, I felt a weight in my stomach, the sadness of unexorcised guilt.
I looked at Laird, who did not even remember this, and I did not like the look on this thing,
winter-paled face. His expression was not frightened or upset, but remote, concentrating.
"Listen," I said in an unusually bright and friendly voice, "you aren't going to tell, are you?"
"No," he said absently.
 64

"Promise."
"Promise," he said. I grabbed the hand behind his back to make sure he was not crossing his
fingers. Even so, he might have a nightmare; it might come out that way. I decided I had better
work hard to get all thoughts of what he had seen out of his mind – which, it seemed to m, could
not hold very many things at a time. I got some money I had saved and that afternoon we went
into Jubilee and saw a show, with Judy Canova, at which we both laughed a great deal. After that
I thought it would be all right.
Two weeks later I knew they were going to shoot Flora. I knew from the night before, when I
heard my mother ask if the hay was holding out all right, and my father said, "Well, after
tomorrow there'll just be the cow, and we should be able to put her out to grass in another week."
So I knew it was Flora's turn in the morning.
This time I didn't think of watching it. That was something to see just one time. I had not
thought about it very often since, but sometimes when I was busy, working at school, or standing
in front of the mirror combing my hair and wondering if I would be pretty when I grew up, the
whole seen would flash into my mind: I would see the easy, practiced way my father raised the
gun, and hear Henry laughing when Mack kicked his legs in the air. I did not have any great
feelings of horror and opposition, such as a city child might have had; I was too used to seeing
the death of animals as a necessity by which we lived. Yet I felt a little ashamed, and there was a
new wariness, a sense of holding-off, in my attitude to my father and his work.
It was a fine day, and we were going around the yard picking up tree branches that had been
torn off in winter storms. This was something we had been told to do, and also we wanted to use
them to make a teepee. We hard Flora whinny, and then my father's voice and Henry's shouting,
and we ran down to the barnyard to see what was going on.
The stable door was open. Henry had just brought Flora out, and she had broken away from
him. She was running free in the barnyard, from one end to the other. We climbed on the fence.
It was exciting to see her running, whinnying, going up on her hind legs, prancing and
threatening like a horse in a Western movie, an unbroken ranch horse, though she was just an old
driver, an old sorrel mare. My father and Henry ran after her and tried to grab the dangling
halter. They tried to work her into a corner, and they had almost succeeded when she made a run
between them, wild-eyed, and disappeared round the corner of the barn. We heard the rails
clatter down as she got over the fence, and Henry yelled. "She's into the field now!"
 65

That meant she was in the long L-shaped field that ran up by the house. If she got around the
center, heading towards the lane, the gate was open; the truck had been driven into the filed this
morning. My father shouted to me, because I was on the other side of the fence, nearest the lane,
"Go shut the gate!"
I could run very fast. I ran across the garden, past the tree where our swing was hung, and
jumped across a ditch into the lane. There was the open gate. She had not got out, I could not see
her up on the road; she must have run to the other end of the field,. There gate was heavy. I lifted
it out of the gravel and carried it across the roadway. I had it half way across when she came in
sight, galloping straight toward me. There was just time to get the chain on. Laird came
scrambling though the ditch to help me.
Instead of shutting the gate, I opened it as wide as I could. I did not make any decision to do
this, it was just what I did. Flora never slowed down; she galloped straight past me, and Laird
jumped up and down, yelling, "Shut it, shut it!" even after it was too late. My father and Henry
appeared in the field a moment too late to see what I had done. They only saw Flora heading for
the township road. They would think I had not got there in time.
They did not waste any time asking about it. They went back to the barn and got the gun and
the knives they used, and put these in the truck; then they turned the truck around and came
bounding up the field toward us. Laird called to them, "Let me got too, let me go too!" and
Henry stopped the truck and they took him in. I shut the gate after they were all gone.
I supposed Laird would tell. I wondered what would happen to me. I had never disobeyed my
father before, and I could not understand why I had done it. I had done it. Flora would not really
get away. They would catch up with her in the truck. Or if they did not catch her this morning
somebody would see her and telephone us this afternoon or tomorrow. There was no wild
country here for her, we needed the meat to feed the foxes, we needed the foxes to make our
living. All I had done was make more work for my father who worked hard enough already. And
when my father found out about it he was not going to trust me any more; he would know that I
was not entirely on his side. I was on Flora's side, and that made me no use to anybody, not even
to her. Just the same, I did not regret it; when she came running at me I held the gate open, that
was the only thing I could do.
I went back to the house, and my mother said, "What's all the commotion?" I told her that
Flora had kicked down the fence and got away. "Your poor father," she said, "now he'll have to
 66

go chasing over the countryside. Well, there isn't any use planning dinner before one." She put
up the ironing board. I wanted to tell her, but thought better of it and went upstairs and sat on my
bed.
Lately I had been trying to make my part of the room fancy, spreading the bed with old lace
curtains, and fixing myself a dressing table with some leftovers of cretonne for a skirt. I planned
to put up some kind of barricade between my bed and Laird’s, to keep my section separate from
his. In the sunlight, the lace curtains were just dusty rags. We did not sing at night any more. One
night when I was singing Laird said, "You sound silly," and I went right on but the next night I
did not start. There was not so much need to anyway, we were no longer afraid. We knew it was
just old furniture over there, old jumble and confusion. We did not keep to the rules. I still stayed
away after Laird was asleep and told myself stories, but even in these stories something different
was happening, mysterious alterations took place. A story might start off in the old way, with a
spectacular danger, a fire or wild animals, and for a while I might rescue people; then things
would change around, and instead, somebody would be rescuing me. It might be a boy from our
class at school, or even Mr. Campbell, our teacher, who tickled girls under the arms. And at this
point the story concerned itself at great length with what I looked like – how long my hair was,
and what kind of dress I had on; by the time I had these details worked out the real excitement of
the story was lost.
It was later than one o'clock when the truck came back. The tarpaulin was over the back,
which meant there was meat in it. My mother had to heat dinner up all over again. Henry and my
father had changed from their bloody overalls into ordinary working overalls in the barn, and
they washed arms and necks and faces at the sink, and splashed water on their hair and combed
it. Laird lifted his arm to show off a streak of blood. "We shot old Flora," he said, "and cut her up
in fifty pieces."
"Well I don't want to hear about it," my mother said. "And don't come to my table like that."
My father made him go to wash the blood off.
We sat down and my father said grace and Henry pasted his chewing gum on the end of his
fork, the way he always did; when he took it off he would have us admire the pattern. We began
to pass the bowls of steaming, overcooked vegetables. Laird looked across the table at me and
said proudly distinctly, "Anyway it was her fault Flora got away."
"What?" my father said.
 67

"She could of shut the gate and she didn't. She just open’ it up and Flora ran out."
"Is that right?" m father said.
Everybody at the table was looking at me. I nodded, swallowing food with great difficulty. To
my shame, tears flooded my eyes.
My father made a curt sound of disgust. "What did you do that for?"
I didn't answer. I put down my fork and waited to be sent from the table, still not looking up.
But this did not happen. For some time nobody said anything, then Laird said matter-of-factly,
"She's crying."
"Never mind," my father said. He spoke with resignation, even good humor the words which
absolved and dismissed me for good. "She's only a girl," he said
I didn't protest that, even in my heart. Maybe it was true.

NOTE:

Alice Munro (b. 1931) is a Canadian short story writer and winner of Nobel Prize in
Literature in 2013. Regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of fiction, her work has
been described as having revolutionized the architecture of short stories. Her stories explore
human complexities in an uncomplicated pure style. Throughout her life and career, Munro has
meditated the life she has lived herself, the life she has seen others living, and the lives she has
known and imagined. Through their complexity, through their clarity, and through their
precision, Munro’s stories capture the very feelings of what it is like to live, to be alive. Her
stories explore human relationships through ordinary and everyday events. Although not
necessarily directly autobiographical, they reflect her own life experiences and are concerned
with women’s lives and are unveiled in their fullness.

“Boys and Girls” is a story that makes subtle commentary on gender roles by following a
young girl growing up in the family’s fox pelting business. “Boys and Girls” highlights the
almost invisible societal forces which shape children, in this case, the narrator and her brother
into gendered adults. In a time and society pervaded by with gender roles and labels, “Boys and
Girls” tells a story of a young girl’s initial confrontation with domesticity and being pushed into
the female mould. Munro has often written about the seemingly unbridgeable gap that separates
 68

men and women. In “Boys and Girls,” this gap is examined in the small world of a farm. Munro
writes stories about everyday people and ordinary events that triggers flashes of insight.

Here the narrator is unnamed, possibly because her identity is determined so fully by her
gender. Munro’s tone is ironic and deflationary. At first her narrator has grand dreams of action,
heroism and acclaim, but later the daydreams show her as a passive beneficiary of someone
else’s heroism. The differing fantasy roles show the strict split between the genders. Similarly,
the repetition of the phrase ‘only a girl’ shows how society puts an imaginative and energetic girl
firmly in her place.

QUESTIONS:

1. How does the setting have an impact on the interaction of the characters in the story?
2. How does the narrator in “Boys and Girls” change over time?
3. What is the theme in this story?
4. What is learned from the first paragraph that clearly indicates the direction of the story?
5. What is the significance of “she’s only a girl’?
6. “A girl was not, as I had supposed, simply what I was; it was what I had to become.”
How does this observation impact upon women’s life in Pakistan
 69

Mirage
Talat Abbasi

‘November twentieth,’ says Sister Agnes.

November 20, I write.

‘Nineteen eighty,’ says Sister Agnes.

1980, I write.

There is something very practiced about the way she says it. Perhaps they all falter at this point,
the last thing after all on the last form they’ll sign. Scores of parents over the years have come
through the front door of Hope House to hand their children over to Sister Agnes because they
are mentally retarded, schizophrenic, autistic, epileptic or have cerebral palsy. Hardly the
complete list of reasons, just a sample. Young parents on the whole many still in their thirties,
because Hope House is only for ten-year-old and under. Many coming alone, on their own as I
have with Omer.

Mind you, I’m not faltering, not me. Not one bit. If I’m behaving like a puppet it’s
because I’m drained, exhausted. I was exhausted at least mentally even before we left home
today. I’m always tense, in quite a state when I have to take him out in public and, of course,
today I was worse than usual. He sensed it and acted up. I must’ve flung a bag of candies into his
mouth by the time the diaper was done. A dozen of candies at a time every time he bared his
teeth shred it. Understandable, of course, his reaction to a diaper at his age. It isn’t always
needed, but have to, just in case.

It’s candy corn, the sticky kind he can’t just swallow, is forced to chew, gives me time.

‘Candy corn is bad for his teeth.’

The pediatrician says that every time I take him to get the prescription refilled for his
tranquilizer. But not very seriously. He doesn’t expect me to give up on candy corn.
 70

Then I zipped him into his jeans, fastened his belt which he doesn’t have the skill to undo
that’s why it’s jeans not pull-on pants. And then to keep his hands as well as his mouth really
busy for what he hates most of all – his harness – I gave him half a bag potato chips, his greatest
weakness, the salted kinds with lots of msg.

It hasn’t occurred to the doctor to tell me that msg is also bad for him.

Then all of a sudden I threw myself on the top of him, pinning down both his arms with
my elbows, taking him by surprise. Rammed the spoon between his teeth and held there to keep
his mouth open until he’d swallow every drop of his tranquilizer, until it had all gone down. I
realized that I had gritted my teeth so hard, I’d bitten my own tongue! I cried a bit so there was
no time left to his nails. The taxi driver was buzzing me from downstairs.

He was parked across the street two blocks away from the apartment building. That’s
another reason I am exuasted. Just the thought of traffic lights and having to cross the street with
him before they turn green!

He hates harness. And that, too, is understandable. A full grown energetic ten year old in
a toddler’s harness. Imagine being allowed to walk but in leg irons! Still, I have to use that
harness when I take him out just in case he decides to stage a sit-in in the middle of traffic. He
did that only once before I thought of harness and believe me, it wasn’t easy, dragging him by
the collar of his shirt, inch by inch, like a dead weight across the road. And on the top of it –

‘Pair of loonies!’ yelled the driver who had to brake suddenly. ‘Who let you out?’

He meant both of us. And who could blame him? Who could blame them all for staring?
Unexpected, let’s face it, even for New York.

Still he was wrong about me. Not a loony, not me. But always at my wits’ end, it’s true
no matter what. Cooped up with hyperactive frustrated boy in the bare two-room apartment. I
lined the floor with mattresses, quilts and foam after receiving warnings from the landlord about
neighbours complaining of ‘a herd, at least, of thumping, marauding elephants. Just a small
exquisite bird trapped in the room, flying in panic from wall to wall, hurling itself against them,
hurting only itself, incapable of harming others. Watched in silence by the mother.
 71

I thanked God it was at least a corner apartment, no neighbours on the bedroom side.
Imagine having to line the walls too with mattresses, I thought, as I watched in empathy.

Then as the weeks grew into months, even a year and more, and the frightened bird still
found no peace – neither smashed itself against the wall nor found a way to fly out – I watched in
rage and self-pity. And becoming melodramatic at the end, likened myself bitterly to a Pharaoh’s
slave buried alive with him.

Nothing happened this time though, thank goodness. The taxi’s brought us without
incident to Hope House. Omer’s home.

But ‘Omer’s home’ sounds wrong. How can he have a home apart from me?

Am I faltering now?

Maybe I am.

Only ten and striking pretty. His black hair which I am stroking to soothe him, keep him
quiet on my lap, is amazingly still baby soft through the curls are showing signs of straightening
out. His face features are in perfect proportion, chiseled on a small delicate face. Strangers have
always been drawn to him, impulsively reaching out to pet him, complementing me. In fact only
last month I took him to the pediatrician. He had his tranquilizer and so he was sitting quietly by
my side. I didn’t notice this woman, being in a quiet state myself as I usually am when I have to
bring him out in public – there I go repeating myself – especially to small enclosed places like
the doctor’s office. Yes there can be trouble even with tranquilizer! But suddenly she’s there
before me, chapped rid lips parted in smile, hands reaching out to fondle his curls.

‘What a beauti….’

That’s usually how far they get! Then they all stop, awkward, embarrassed, because close up
they all see something. It’s the eyes, of course, under those fantastic eyelashes they were all set
to coo over. They are not blind eyes, seeing nothing. They’re seeing as well as you and I, but
what they are seeing is nothing you and I can understand. That much they tell you as they
confront you in one long, unblinking stare before they go back to darting constantly, nervously,
from left to right and back again, never at rest.
 72

And then they notice other little things about him which can be quite off-putting. The
perfectly shaped lips---which I can tell you have rarely parted in smile----are twitching
uncontrollably, quite unpettily. And the ceaseless whimpering sound can be quite unnerving. It’s
very soft, barely audible, a call which seems to come from miles below.

And I understand the disappointment of strangers at being thus tricked. I, to, have been
taken in by mirage.

But as I said, there can be trouble even with a tranquilizer! So now, in a flash, the pen
which I am passing back to Sister Agnes is knocked out of my hand and I am looking up at Omar
from the floor where somehow I have landed. He is lunging towards the forms to tear them up
with his teeth. But Sister Agnes is quicker. Scores of children, after all, who have a taste for
paper!

There is nothing left but my face and to this he turns. I wince as he rakes my cheek, grab
his hands. He bares his teeth but I am holding him as far from myself as I can. There’s absolute
hatred in his eyes. He cannot speak of it, he can speak only two words. One is pani, the Urdu
word for water which he learnt late as a toddler in Karachi, where he was born. The other is na,
which can mean both no and yes. He’s saying neither now and suddenly he’s neither scratching
nor biting. His nail though are biting into my arms as he clings to me, face hidden against my
chest. He is shaking, his eyes will now be filled with terror.

‘I meant to cut his nails, Sister, I’m so sorry, Sister.’

In fact I’m sorry about his nails that I am close to tears. She must see that because she
comes over, presses my shoulder. Another practiced gesture! The touch is sympathetic but brief.
Scores of parents, after all! Perhaps those others too all remember something which makes them
feel guilty as I do about his nails. I never do hand him over to her. She simply lifts him off my
lap, stands him up on the floor. He doesn’t resist. Puppets, both of us now.

‘He won’t need this anymore,’ she says gently removing his harness and handing it to
me.

The harness goes into the garbage chute as soon as I get home. Also the foam and plastic
which line the floor. Then the mattress and quilts are disposed of. The freshly-vacuumed
 73

Bokhara at last flaunts its buried jewel colours in the sunlight as the blinds are raised for the first
time since I moved into the apartment. And the curious neighbour runs to her window to see at
last, then turns back in embarrassment and disappointment, both. An apartment, then just like
any other.

An apartment, moreover, where knives, kitchen shears, scissors, nail cutters have found
their rightful places. They’ve emerged from an old battered attaché case hidden under the kitchen
sink. It makes me smile now, that battered attaché case, as I think of that wretched burglar caught
red-handed by the super with it, holding razor blades as he stood dazed by his catch--- what a
treasure! He took too long over it, it looked so promising, a locked case hidden under the kitchen
sink. I didn’t see the funny side of it then but I’m beginning to now. I have a mad urge to write
and commiserate with him. Dear Mr. Burglar, I want to say, what you must think of me, hiding
knives, scissors, razor blades in a locked attaché case like a treasure! Mad for sure, you must
think, eccentric at best. And who can blame you?

I go to bed early and sleep right through the night because the lights don’t suddenly go
on, off, on again at 1 a.m., the taps don’t run and flood the bath at 3, and I have absolutely no
fear that the stove will turn itself on. So in the morning I wake up, rested and at peace, and yet in
pain as you might expect of someone who has had an arm amputated to save the rest.

NOTE:

Talat Abbasi is a Pakistani short story writer. Born in Lucknow India, she spent her childhood in
Karachi. She received her education in both Pakistan and England. Since 1978, she has been
living in New York and worked for the United Nations. To date, she has published only one
collection of short stories: Bitter Gourd and Other Stories (2001). This is a collection of
seventeen stories of hope, despair and class conflicts that provide rich insight into the social
structures of Pakistan and the Pakistani diaspora; it ends with the story “Mirage” which is set in
New York. The story revolves around the struggles of a diasporic mother whose child suffers
from mental disabilities. “Mirage” won the BBC World Service Short Story Competition in
2000. The story’s appeal lies in the vividness and immediacy of the writing. The story has the
quality of a miniature in painting and a minuet in dancing. Abbasi prefers to call herself a
 74

‘miniaturist’ who prefers writing in a disinterested manner distrusting melodrama of any kind.
“Mirage” can be studied within the framework of the disability literature genre which has gained
momentum in recent years. “Mirage” stands out as a poignant and haunting tale of a mother and
her handicapped child.

QUESTIONS:

1. Discuss the writer’s style.

2. How do you regard the mother’s decision to place her child in a home for disabled
children? Do you think she has abandoned him? Is she a callous mother?
 75

Never
H.E. Bates

It was afternoon: great clouds stumbled across the sky, In the drowsy, half-dark room the young
girl sat in a heap near the window, scarcely moving herself, as if she expected a certain timed
happening, such as a visit, sunset, a command… Slowly she would draw the fingers of one hand
across the back of the other, in the little hollows between the guides, and move her lips in the
same sad, vexed way in which her brows came together, and like this too, her eyes would shift
about, from the near, shadowed fields, to the west hills, where the sun had dropped a strip of
light, and to the woods between, looking like black scars one minute, and like friendly
sanctuaries the next, It was all confused… There was the room, too… The white keys of the
piano would now and then exercise a fascination over her which would keep her whole body
perfectly still for perhaps a minute. But when this passed, full of hesitation, her fingers would
recommence the slow exploration of her hands, and the restlessness took her again.

Yes: It was all confused. She was going away: already she had said a hundred times during the
afternoon- “I am going away… I am going away. I can’t stand it any longer.” But she had made
no attempt to go, In this same position, hour after hour had passed her and all she could think
was: “Today I’m going away, I’m tired here, I never do anything, It’s dead, rotten,”

She said, or thought it all without the slightest trace of exultation and was sometimes even
methodical when she began to consider: “What shall I take? The blue dress with the rosette? Yes.
What else? what else?” And then it would all begin again: “Today I’m going away. I never do
anything.”

It was true: she never did anything. In the mornings she got up late, was slow over her breakfast,
over everything-her reading, her mending, her eating, her playing the piano, cards in the evening,
going to bed. It was all slow-purposely done, to fill up the day. And it was true, day succeeded
day and she never did anything different.

But today something was about to happen: no more cards in the evening, every evening the
same, with her father declaring: “I never have a decent hand, I thought the ace of trumps had
 76

gone! It’s too bad!” and no more: “Nellie, it’s ten o’clock- Bed!” and the slow unimaginative
climb of the stairs. Today she was going away: no one knew, but it was so. She was catching the
evening train to London.

“I’m going away. What shall I take? The blue dress with the rosette? What else?”

She crept upstairs with difficulty, her body stiff after sitting. The years she must have sat,
figuratively speaking, and grown stiff! And as if in order to secure some violent reaction against
it all she threw herself into the packing of her things with a nervous vigor, throwing in the blue
dress first and after it a score of things she had just remembered. She fastened her bag: it was not
heavy. She counted her money a dozen times. It was all right! It was all right. She was going
away!

She descended into the now-dark room for the last time. In the dining room someone was rattling
teacups, an unbearable, horribly domestic sound! She wasn’t hungry: she would be in London by
eight-eating now meant making her sick. It was easy to wait. The train went at 6.18. She looked
it up again: “Elden 6.13, Olde 6.18,

London 7.53.”

She began to play a waltz. It was a slow, dreamy tune, ta-tum, turn, ta-tum, turn, ta-tum, turn, of
which the notes slipped out in mournful, sentimental succession. The room was quite dark, she
could scarcely see the keys, and into the tune itself kept insinuating: “Elden, 6.13, Olde 6.18,”
impossible to mistake or forget.

As she played on she thought: “I’ll never play this waltz again. It has the atmosphere of this
room. It’s the last time!” The waltz slid dreamily to an end: for a minute she sat in utter silence,
the room dark and mysterious, the air of the waltz quite dead, then the teacups rattled again and
the thought came back to her: “I’m going

away!”

She rose and went out quietly. The grass on the roadside moved under the evening wind,
sounding like many pairs of hands rubbed softly together. But there was no other sound, her feet
 77

were light, no one heard her, and as she went down the road she told herself: “It’s going to
happen! It’s come at last!”

“Elden 6.13. Olde 6.18.”

Should she go to Elden or Olde? At the crossroads she stood to consider, thinking that if she
went to Elden no one would know her. But at Olde someone would doubtless notice her and
prattle about it. To Elden, then, not that it mattered. Nothing mattered now. She was going, was
as good as gone!

Her breast, tremulously warm, began to rise and fall as her excitement increased. She tried to run
over the things in her bag and could remember only “the blue dress with the rosette,” which she
had thrown in first and had since covered over. But it didn’t matter. Her money was safe,
everything was safe, and with that thought she dropped into a strange quietness, deepening as she
went on, in which she had a hundred emotions and convictions. She was never going to strum
that waltz again, she had played cards for the last, horrible time, the loneliness, the slowness, the
oppression were ended, all ended.

“I’m going away!”

She felt warm, her body tingled with a light delicious thrill that was like the caress of a soft
night-wind. There were no fears now. A certain indignation, approaching fury even, sprang up
instead, as she thought: “No one will believe I’ve gone. But it’s true-I’m going at last.”

Her bag grew heavy. Setting it down in the grass she sat on it for a brief while, in something like
her attitude in the dark room during the afternoon, and indeed actually began to rub her gloved
fingers over the backs of her hands. A phrase or two of the waltz came back to her… That silly
piano! Its bottom G was flat, had always been flat! How ridiculous! She tried to conjure up some
sort of vision of London, but it was difficult and in the end she gave way again to the old cry:
“I’m going away.” And she was pleased more than ever deeply.

On the station a single lamp burned, radiating a fitful yellowness that only increased the gloom.
And worse, she saw no one and in the cold emptiness traced and retraced her footsteps without
the friendly assurance of another sound. In the black distance all the signals showed hard circles
of red, looking as if they could never change. But she nevertheless told herself over and over
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again: ” I’m going away-I’m going away.” And later: “I hate everyone. I’ve changed until I
hardly know myself.”Impatiently she looked for the train. It was strange. For the first time it
occurred to her to know the time and she pulled back the sleeve of her coat. Nearly six-thirty!
She felt cold. Up the line every signal displayed its red ring, mocking her. “Six-thirty, of course,
of course.” She tried to be careless. “Of course, it’s late, the train is late,” but the coldness, in
reality her fear, increased rapidly, until she could no longer believe those words.

Great clouds, lower and more than ever depressing, floated above her head as she walked back.
The wind had a deep note that was sad too. These things had not troubled her before, now they,
also, spoke failure and foretold misery and dejection. She had no spirit, it was cold, and she was
too tired even to shudder.

In the absolutely dark, drowsy room she sat down, telling herself: “This isn’t the only day. Some
day I shall go. Some day.”

She was silent. In the next room they were playing cards and her father suddenly moaned: “I
thought the ace had gone.” Somebody laughed. Her father’s voice came again: “I never have a
decent hand! I never have a decent hand! Never!”

It was too horrible! She couldn’t stand it! She must do something to stop it! It was too much. She
began to play the waltz again and the dreamy, sentimental arrangement made her cry.

“This isn’t the only day,” she reassured herself.” I shall go. Some day!”

And again and again as she played the waltz, bent her head and cried, she would tell herself that
same thing:

“Some day! Some day!”

NOTE:

Herbert Ernest Bates (1905-1974) was a British novelist and short story writer. He worked in the
Royal Air Force as a Squadron Leader during the Second World War. His pre-war stories have
‘local’ settings and their appeal is somewhat restricted, but as his experience widened and
matured, he discovered and expressed profound significance in human situations. His stories
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stand out for his use of realistic details and economic method of narration. In his stories, action
and dialogue are made self-explanatory and nothing is forced on the reader.

The desire to start life anew overpowers all human beings at some time in their life. Some are
brave enough to leave everything behind and face the unknown future, turn a new day; others go
on questioning whether they are ready for the step. “Never” is the story of one such soul, seeking
and wishing for a change in her monotonous and humdrum existence and desiring to infuse her
life with greater meaning.

The title “Never” is adequately suited to mirror the inner condition of the young girl whose
inability to face and manage the realities of life is reflected through her delay in ‘going away’.
Her ennui/ boredom has sapped her vitality and potentiality for action. Perhaps this is the
condition of any modern man/woman living in a commercialized society. The failure of the
young girl is an example of the universal tragedy of man/woman and his/her failure to translate
his/her thoughts into action.

QUESTIONS:

1. Bring out the significance of the title “Never”?

2. Why is the title of the story “Never”? Why is the story not called “Some Day”?
3. Which lines are repeated in the story? Why do you think these lines are repeated? What
affect do they have? What do they suggest about the protagonist’s state of mind?
4. What mood is created in the first paragraph?
5. What effect does Nellie’s environment have on the conflict she feels?
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The Wish
Roald Dahl

UNDER the palm of one hand the child became aware of the scab of an old cut on his
kneecap. He bent forward to examine it closely. A scab was always a fascinating thing; it
presented a special challenge he was never able to resist. Yes, he thought, I will pick it off, even
if it isn't ready, even if the middle of it sticks, even if it hurts like anything. With a fingernail he
began to explore cautiously around the edges of the scab. He got a nail underneath it, and when
he raised it, but ever so slightly, it suddenly came off, the whole hard brown scab came off
beautifully, leaving an interesting little circle of smooth red skin. Nice. Very nice indeed. He
rubbed the circle and it didn't hurt. He picked up the scab, put it on his thigh and flipped it with a
finger so that it flew away and landed on the edge of the carpet, the enormous red and black and
yellow carpet that stretched the whole length of the hall from the stairs on which he sat to the
front door in the distance. A tremendous carpet. Bigger than the tennis lawn. Much bigger than
that. He regarded it gravely, setting his eyes upon it with mild pleasure. He had never really
noticed it before, but now, all of a sudden the colours seemed to brighten mysteriously and
spring out at him in a most dazzling way. You see, he told himself, I know how it is.

The red parts of the carpet are red-hot lumps of coal. What I must do is this: I must walk
all the way along it to the front door without touching them. If I touch the red I will be burnt. As
a matter of fact, I will be burnt up completely. And the black parts of the carpet... yes, the black
parts are snakes, poisonous snakes, adders mostly, and cobras, thick like tree-trunks round the
middle, and if I touch one of them, I'll be bitten and I'll die before tea time. And if I get across
safely, without being burnt and without being bitten, I will be given a puppy for my birthday
tomorrow. He got to his feet and climbed higher up the stairs to obtain a better view of this vast
tapestry of colour and death. Was it possible? Was there enough yellow? Yellow was the only
colour he was allowed to walk on. Could it be done? This was not a journey to be undertaken
lightly; the risks were far too great for that. The child's face—a fringe of white-gold hair, two
large blue eyes, a small pointed chin peered down anxiously over the banisters. The yellow was a
bit thin in places and there were one or two widish gaps, but it did seem to go all the way along
to the other end. For someone who had only yesterday triumphantly travelled the whole length of
the brick path from the stables to the summer-house without touching the cracks, this carpet
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thing should not be too difficult. Except for the snakes. The mere thought of snakes sent a fine
electricity of fear running like pins down the backs of his legs and under the soles of his feet. He
came slowly down the stairs and advanced to the edge of the carpet. He extended one small
sandalled foot and placed it cautiously upon a patch of yellow. Then he brought the other foot
up, and there was just enough room for him to stand with the two feet together. There! He had
started! His bright oval face was curiously intent, a shade whiter perhaps than before, and he was
holding his arms out sideways to assist his balance. He took another step, lifting his foot high
over a patch of black, aiming carefully with his toe for a narrow channel of yellow on the other
side. When he had completed the second step he paused to rest, standing very stiff and still. The
narrow channel of yellow ran forward unbroken for at least five yards and he advanced gingerly
along it, bit by bit, as though walking a tightrope. Where it finally curled off sideways, he had to
take another long stride, this time over a vicious-looking mixture of black and red. Halfway
across he began to wobble. He waved his arms around wildly, windmill fashion, to keep his
balance, and he got across safely and rested again on the other side. He was quite breathless now,
and so tense he stood high on his toes all the time, arms out sideways, fists clenched. He was on
a big safe island of yellow. There was lots of room on it, he couldn't possibly fall off, and he
stood there resting, hesitating, waiting, wishing he could stay for ever on this big safe yellow
island. But the fear of not getting the puppy compelled him to go on. Step by step, he edged
further ahead, and between each one he paused to decide exactly where he should put his foot.

Once, he had a choice of ways, either to left or right, and he chose the left because
although it seemed the more difficult, there was not so much black in that direction. The black
was what had made him nervous. He glanced quickly over his shoulder to see how far he had
come. Nearly halfway. There could be no turning back now. He was in the middle and he
couldn't turn back and he couldn't jump off sideways either because it was too far, and when he
looked at all the red and all the black that lay ahead of him, he felt that old sudden sickening
surge of panic in his chest--like last Easter time, that afternoon when he got lost all alone in the
darkest part of Piper's Wood. He took another step, placing his foot carefully upon the only little
piece of yellow within reach, and this time the point of the foot came within a centimeter of
some black. It wasn't touching the black, he could see it wasn't touching, he could see the small
line of yellow separating the toe of his sandal from the black; but the snake stirred as though
sensing his nearness, and raised its head and gazed at the foot with bright beady eyes, watching
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to see if it was going to touch. "I'm not touching you! You mustn't bite me! You know I'm not
touching you!" Another snake slid up noiselessly beside the first, raised its head, two heads now,
two pairs of eyes staring at the foot, gazing at a little naked place just below the sandal strap
where the skin showed through. The child went high up on his toes and stayed there, frozen stiff
with terror. It was minutes before he dared to move again. The next step would have to be a
really long one. There was this deep curling river of black that ran clear across the width of the
carpet, and he was forced by his position to cross it at its widest part. He thought first of trying to
jump it, but decided he couldn't be sure of landing accurately on the narrow band of yellow on
the other side. He took a deep breath, lifted one foot, and inch by inch he pushed it out in front of
him, far far out, then down and down until at last the tip of his sandal was across and resting
safely on the edge of the yellow. He leaned forward, transferring his weight to his front foot.
Then he tried to bring the back foot up as well. He strained and pulled and jerked his body, but
the legs were too wide apart and he couldn't make it. He tried to get back again. He couldn't do
that either. He was doing the splits and he was properly stuck. He glanced down and saw this
deep curling river of black underneath him. Parts of it were stirring now, and uncoiling and
beginning to shine with a dreadfully oily glister. He wobbled, waved his arms frantically to keep
his balance, but that seemed to make it worse. He was starting to go over. He was going over to
the right, quite slowly he was going over, then faster and faster, and at the last moment,
instinctively he put out a hand to break the fall and the next thing he saw was this bare hand of
his going right into the middle of a great glistening mass of black and he gave one piercing cry as
it touched.

Outside in the sunshine, far away behind the house, the mother was looking for her son.

NOTE:

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a British writer; a popular author of ingenious children’s books. He
has been referred to as one of the greatest storyteller for children of twentieth century. Dahl’s
short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children’s books for their
unsentimental macabre, often darkly comic mood featuring villainous adult enemies of the child
characters.
 83

“The Wish” is a short yet incredibly vivid and suspenseful story about the mind and imagination
of a child. Short, sharp and chilling; it is a sinister story about how an imaginative boy plays a
game that quickly gets out of hand and fantasy turns into mortal fear of actual death. The story
tells of the challenges of growing up and how human beings respond to these challenges
throughout their lives. Through the use of imagery and extended metaphor, Dahl uses the
character of a curiously imaginative young boy to help reflect on the delicacy of childhood
innocence.

The fantastic opening lines with the image of the flicked away scab pointing the way to the red
black and yellow carpet emphasize the boy’s curiosity. As the scab comes off the fragility of the
boy’s childhood and how it too can be torn away very easily is evoked. The carpet, the subject
of the boy’s fantasies, is actually an extended metaphor that represents conflict in life. The ‘black
parts’ representing hardships, the ‘poisonous snakes’ a symbol for temptation alluding to the
serpent, and the yellow as ‘the only color he was allowed to walk on’ each connect with the
conflict, temptation and momentary reprieve in the boy’s life. Dahl uses the sympathetic image
of a puppy as a reward for success throughout this hardship that represents balance in a life of
chaos. Near the end of the story Dahl vividly relays an image of failure as the boy ‘puts out a
hand to break the fall and the next thing he saw was the bare hand of his going right into the
middle of a great glistening mass of black’. Dahl captures the moments as the boy falls from
innocence into the inevitable ‘blackness’ of life, thus leaving his childhood behind. The final line
is set in a small paragraph to emphasize how the mother has figuratively lost her son. If the final
paragraph is read as an indication that the child is literally dead any ambiguity would be around
whether he conjured up something supernatural or managed to scare himself to death.

QUESTIONS:

1. What motivated the child to start and continue on his journey?

2. Why is the story called “The Wish”?
3. The events of the story are shown through the eyes of the narrator and the child.
Comparing the two styles, who represents the more interesting and effective view for the
reader? Why?
4. List ten words in the story that are connected with fear?
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