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Speech, Stream-Of Consciousness and Account of Events

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Венера Ташбулатова
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34 views

Speech, Stream-Of Consciousness and Account of Events

analysis

Uploaded by

Венера Ташбулатова
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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THE ESCAPE

By Somerset Maugham

The text under analysis is “The Escape” written by a famous English writer
of the 20th century Somerset Maugham.
The text presents a piece of narration with clear cut story plot structure, and
skillfully comprises such types of narration as description, dialogue, represented
speech, stream-of consciousness and account of events.
From the very beginning the author introduces the main characters of the
whole story and the main character of this extract to us. So the main character of
the story is a young man rolling in money – Roger Charing – fell in love with Ruth
Barlow, an unfortunate woman who was twice a widow , even the title of the story
gives us this very information and we can judge about the main events by it.
Function of the title is the informative function.
We can refer all the minor characters to the static. There is no changing
in their manner of conversation and behavior during the whole narration. What
about Roger, we can consider him to be a round one; he behaves more realistic
during the story and has a slightly changing from the begging up to the end of the
story.
The conflict in the given text is that, the main characters want to achieve
different aims. Ruth wants to have long relationship; on the contrary, Roger wants
to escape it with no loss.
The composition of the text is direct; we see how their relationship becomes
at first a happy one and then goes down.
The author uses the direct speech in which such epithets as “callous”
(speaking about the narrator), “rotten” (speaking about Ruth) are used. We can
recognize now completely that all the narrator’s words were ironic, because his
epithets towards Ruth are like that, and also “stupid” and a simile “as hard as
nails”. Then there comes an explanation of why he has such an attitude towards the
poor widow.
The author uses mostly indirect method of characterization: The reader
can’t imagine how the characters look like but can judge about it by their actions
and behavior. But he also uses direct method of characterization when
introduces Ruth Barlow:
“She was quite good-looking and she had big, beautiful, dark eyes and she
had the gift of pathos. When a man saw those big, sad eyes, he wanted to help
Ruth. The epithet “defenseless” expose the power of her look.”
Going further, we come across an anticlimax. The tense is growing, but then
Roger “on a sudden, fell out of love”. This is a bit unexpected. Ruth’s “pathetic (a
repeated epithet) look ceased to wring Roger’s heart-strings” (a metaphor). But
Roger “swore a solemn oath” (a metaphor) not to jilt Ruth, moreover, she was able
to “assess her wounded feelings at an immoderately high figure” (an extended
metaphor). 
The epithets “helpless little thing”, “rotten time”, “unfortunate”, “poor
dear”, the metaphor “a little lamb”, parallel constructions “if she married… “ and
pure literary words such as “sufferings”, “hazards”, “sadness” display hopelessness
of Ruth’s life.
Roger took an interest in her destiny and was ready to relieve it: the
repetition of the pronouns “she” and “her” in Roger’s speech, the epithet
“dreadfully sorry” prove my assumption. The epithets “very happy” and “pleased”
make us believe that it wasn’t a nuisance for him.
So there begins the real climax with its growing tense. The author uses
repetitions: anaphoras (“they… they”, “sometimes… sometimes”), morphological
(“they looked, they inspected, they climbed”). After the main heroes’ reasoning in
direct speech, their proceeded searching for a house looks like a repetition:
“sometimes they were too large, sometimes they were too small, sometimes
they were too expensive and sometimes they were too stuffy”.
Yet, the author uses an antonomasia here, calling Roger an angel (though
we know he is not – an irony).
Their further reasoning in the direct speech appears to be the climax (“do
you want to marry me or do you not?”). Roger kept standing on his position
(epithets “assiduous and gallant”). Their letters are the denouement, happy for
Roger.
I really liked the story and it was interesting to watch how people’s
relationship develops and goes to an end. The author described this process very
likely so we understand that such situations can happen to everyone.

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