Transcript Detailed Analysis

A Dill Pickle
Katherine Mansfield
A Dill Pickle
Unit 3
W arming up
B ackground
T ext Analysis
R einforcement
A Dill Pickle
Unit 3
Questions/Activities
Check-on Preview
Objectives
Warming up
Warming up
Questions/Activities
1. Retelling
Reconstruct the story by chronological order—how they fell in
love and then broke up, what might have happened to each of
them during the time before they met again.
2. Role play
Dramatize the scene of their reencounter—pay attention to the
subtlety of tone, look, and action.
3. Love counseling
Imagine that you are a relationship counselor and give advice
to the two lovers on what goes wrong in their relationship and
how they can make up, if possible.
Warming up
Check-on Preview
Fill in the blanks.
1.
lit
He closed his eyes an instant, but opening them his face ___
up as though he had ______
struck a match in a dark room.
2.
lay
tapped on the table for the
He ______down
the orange and ______
waitress.
3.
lingered
His thoughts ________over
the last meeting between them.
unfolded as he listened to the familiar
And his memory ________
song.
Warming up
Objectives
1.
Understand the story: theme & character.
2.
Appreciate literature:
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3.
read between the lines;
read the story from a particular perspective: feminism;
interpret the symbols.
Learn to describe a scene or object with accuracy: verbs.
A Dill Pickle
Unit 3
Author
Background
History
Author
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)
• rebellious, dangerously witty, and
lonely
• creative years burdened with
loneliness, illness, jealousy and
alienation: bitter depiction of
marital and family relationships
• died of TB—the “romantic disease”
Her Life
Background
Background
Author
• In a German Pension (1911)
Her Works
• The Garden Party: and Other Stories (1922)
• The Doves’ Nest: and Other Stories (1923)
• Bliss: and Other Stories (1923)
 Stream of consciousness
 Characters’ psychological activities with detailed
descriptions and symbolism
Her Influence
Background
Author
• Revolutionized the English short story;
• Marked the maturity of English short story;
• Was often compared to Dickens and Chekhov.
Background
History
1. Women’s condition at the time:
Women were advocated to cultivate such qualities as
“tenderness of understanding, unworldliness and innocence,
domestic affection, and above all, submissiveness in various
degrees.”
2. “The Woman Question”:
rising wave of feminist movement (late Victorian age to the
early 20th century)
A Dill Pickle
Unit 3
Theme
Style
Text
Analysis
Character
Analysis
Structure
Detailed
Analysis
Text Analysis
Theme
Questions for thinking:
1.
Do you think the character of the two lovers plays an
important role in their relationship?
2.
What do you think results in the failure of their love and
communication?
3.
How would you describe the two characters’ relationship as
presented in the story? Do you think this is a typical love
story? If not, why does the writer choose to tell it this way? Or
what is her real purpose in writing such a story?
Text Analysis
Theme
1. Man-Woman relationship:
sexual politics (ideas and activities that are concerned with how
power is shared between men and women, and how this affects
their relationships)
2. Feminist concern: What does a woman want?
It was her “born duty to reckon everything subordinate to his
comfort and pleasure, and to let him neither see nor feel
anything coming from her, except what is agreeable to him.”
—J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women
Text Analysis
Theme
Sexual politics
1.
The man talks while the woman listens.
2.
The man controls the conversation, demanding attention.
3.
The man is tantalizing, offering hopes that he withdraws at
wish.
4.
The woman’s reaction:
contradiction  compromise  rebellion
5.
The woman’s desire to be heard and understood
Text Analysis
Style
1. Characteristics of modernist writing:
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symbolic images
fragmented plot
trivial subjects
psychological insight—internal monologues, “stream of
consciousness”
2.
Many of the images in the story are deliberately symbolic. For
example, the flowers. Can you find out the implication of the
flowers? Do they take on a second meaning in the story?
3.
Why is the story titled “A Dill Pickle”? How is it relevant to a
love story? What might it represent symbolically, if it does?
Text Analysis
Character Analysis
Vera
Questions for thinking:
1.
How did Vera feel when she saw her former lover? Was she
still attached to him?
2.
Why did Vera break up with the man six years earlier?
3.
Do you think Vera left the man again for the same reasons as
the first time?
4.
What indeed did Vera want? Why had she been so lonely?
Was it because, as the man said, she was an egoist?
Text Analysis
Character Analysis
Vera
5. What does the “strange beast” stand for? Why does the author
describe it as a “strange beast”? Is this image conventionally
associated with women?
6.
How do you understand that Vera was “born out of her time”?
Text Analysis
Character Analysis
The man
Questions for thinking:
1.
What is the man’s name? Why isn’t he given a name?
2.
Was the man still in love with Vera? If not, why did he seem
so happy talking to her and ask her to stay?
3.
Why did he “let it go at that” when Vera told him she had
sold her piano?
4.
In what tone did he mention the break-up letter? Do you
think he really understood now what Vera had written about
him?
5.
Do you agree with what the man said about Vera? Did he
understand her to some extent?
Text Analysis
Structure
Questions for thinking:
1.
How does the story begin and end? How is it different from
a traditional story?
2.
Why isn’t the story told in the original time order? What
kind of effect does it create on the reader’s mind?
3.
We know little of what really happened between the
characters. Instead we are provided with only scattered
memories and feelings. Why does the writer withhold the
information? Do you find it more intriguing to work out the
puzzle than to have a direct and full picture?
Text Analysis
1
Structure
2
3
Paras. 1-12
Paras. 13-51
Paras. 52-66
A chance
reunion
His story and
her story
The second
breakup
Text Analysis
Detailed Analysis
Part I: Discussion
1.
How differently did Vera and the man react to their chance
reencounter? Why?
2.
Do you think the man meant it when he said that Vera
looked “so well”? Why did he say so?
3.
What details in this part have you noticed that might help us
understand better the characters and the problem in their
relationship?
Text Analysis
Detailed Analysis
Part II: Discussion
Episode 1 (13-15): first date
1.
How did Vera’s memory differ from the man’s recollection
of their first date?
2.
Why did she later admit that “His was the truer.”?
Episode 2 (16-21): on a lawn
1.
Why did Vera at the moment think of this particular incident
in their love affair? What might it tell of her feelings for the
man?
2.
How did the man’s words at that time contrast with his at the
present? Do you find this contrast ironic? Why?
Text Analysis
Detailed Analysis
Royal Botanical Gardens (Kew Gardens), London
24
Text Analysis
Detailed Analysis
Part II: Discussion
Episode 3 (22-43): the Russian trip
1.
In what way had the man changed in the six years? And the
woman? What influence would it have on their relationship?
2.
Why did the man “let it go” when he knew that the woman
had sold her piano? Was it strange for him to do so?
3.
How did the man describe his experience of the river life?
What picture did it provoke in Vera’s mind?
Text Analysis
Detailed Analysis
Russia: the Volga & the Black Sea
26
Text Analysis
Detailed Analysis
Boatmen on the Volga
27
Text Analysis
Detailed Analysis
Part II: Discussion
Episode 4 (44-51): the night of the Christmas tree
1. What did the man suggest when he praised the woman as a
“marvelous listener”? Why did Vera find “a hint of mockery” in
his voice?
2. What did it show that the man did not remember his dog’s name
whereas Vera did?
3. What did it imply when the man “snapped the cigarette case to”?
Text Analysis
Detailed Analysis
Part II: Exercise (1)
Fill in the blanks.
1.
Many Chinese people are burdened with prices
out
of all proportion to
______________________their
income.
2.
in proportion to its height.
This door is narrow ______________
3.
He drew/took
_________a deep breath and dived into the pool.
4.
It has been 10 years since I was at the house. What has
__________
become of the old garden?
Text Analysis
Detailed Analysis
Part II: Exercise (2)
Fill in the blanks.
5.
broke out
After that wonderful performance, the audience _________
into a storm of applause.
6.
A sudden gust of cold wind and the ensuing thunder made
me ________.
shiver
7.
My mother was not quite satisfied with the cow bought by
let it go at that
my father but________________.
Text Analysis
Detailed Analysis
Part III: Discussion
1.
Why did Vera want to leave when the man mentioned their
breakup six years ago? Why did she then change her mind
and stayed?
2.
Do you think Vera and the man were lonely for the same
reasons? Was she an egoist as he was?
3.
Why did she leave again, and so abruptly?
A Dill Pickle
Unit 3
Discussion
Reinforcement
Language
Reinforcement
Discussion
1.
We find Vera’s impression or memory very different from
the man’s. Why does the author present us with these
contradictory stories?
2.
Whose version is probably more reliable?
3.
For most of the time, it was the man that spoke while Vera
remained silent in her thought. Why is it so? Did she not
want to speak? Or was it for any other reason?
4.
What did the man want from Vera by asking her to stay?
What did Vera want from him?
Reinforcement
Discussion
5. What does this story tell of the women’s condition in the
beginning of the 20th century? In what way is Vera’s
decision to leave uneasy and thus admirable?
6.
Do you enjoy reading this story? If so, what makes it so
interesting or powerful?
7. What important elements of the modernist short story have
you learned about by studying this text?
Reinforcement
Language
Useful Words and Expressions
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decorate
light up
loathe
moan
manage (a word, smile)
• astounded
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linger
unfold
roll
beyond words
a hint of…
snap to