28 нояб. 2010 г.

Анализ "Wild Swans" by Alice Munro

The story for analysis is called "Wild Swans" by Alice Munro. The plot centres around a girl who travels to Toronto and loses her virginity. The main characters of the story are Rose, Flo and the Minister.

Flo is nearly middle-aged woman. We learn this fact owing to the phrase "Special stockings for Flo's varicose veins". She isn't well-educated, that's why there are colloquial words in her speech: "whores", "men egged them on" etc. But she is very experienced. "She worked as a waitress in a coffee-shop in Union Station. That was how she knew all she knew. She never saw sunlight... But she saw plenty else. She saw a man cut another man's stomach with a knife, as if it was a watermelon... She saw two bad women, running the two words together like badminton... She saw a child die of a fit, too. Its face was black as ink."

The parallel constructions "I saw..." are used to prove Flo was not young. She experienced the negative sides of our life and the similes emphasize cruelty of our world. Flo doesn't cherish an illusion that viruses exist. She says to Rose: "Watch up for people dressed up as ministers. They were worst." And "The police would be the first ones to didile you".

"Well, I'm not scared," said Rose provokingly. She didn't believe anything Flo said on the subject of sex". Owing to the sentences it becomes clear that Rose is rather naive, she is under an illusion the good will defeat the evil. That's why she says: "There's the police anyway". The epithet "provokingly" and her reluctance to believe Flo's words say about her age. The spirit of contradiction (defiance) is peculiar to the teenagers.

As for their relationships we can say they are close, Flo and Rose are relatives. The older woman takes care of the girl, that's why she "took ten dollars and put it in a little cloth bag which she sewed to the strap of Rose's slip". Moreover, Flo tried to warn her against the dangers in Toronto. But Rose was just a self-assured teenager who believed that her swallowed dictionaries had made her ready for reality. That's why she was "extraordinary happy" when "she felt Flo receding". As any teenager she was curious and she wanted to enjoy independent life.

As for the minister, he became an entrance to the world of adults. He was a person who started to frustrate the girl's illusions, her stereotypes.

Concerning the structure of the text, we deal with exposition, where we learn about Flo, Rose and the relationships between them. The complication begins with the sentence "The train was fitting up and ... a man asked..." so something new starts to fill up Rose; a man appears in her life.

The culmination point is: "Her legs were never going to open. But they were. They were". The repetition shows the incandescence of Rose's feelings. She has just experiences the internal conflict: "She had a considerable longing to be somebody's object. Pounded, pleasured, reduced, exhausted". The climax conveys her temptation to cognize the world of adults - on the one hand; on the other hand her fear is expressed in the phrase "Please don't". The curiosity wins and we go to the denouement: "She thought it would be an especially fine thing... to enter on preposterous adventures in your own, but newly named, skin".

So we can say the story is about the metamorphosis of the cygnet who has been under her relatives guardianship (domestic) and changed into an independent (wild) beautiful wild swan.

The idea is we shouldtn't be afraid of cruel reality. If we want to live a full life, we have to do everything to gain our aim, but not wish to live in a fool's paradise.

Яндекс.Метрика