H.E. Bates: The Ox

Ø  Best known works: Love for Lydia, The Darling Buds of May, My Uncle Silas.

Ø  Educated at Kettering Grammar School.

Ø  After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and a warehouse clerk.

Ø  Wrote volumes of essays entitled Through the Woods and Down the River

Ø  His first published novel The Two Sisters.

Ø  During WWII, he was commissioned into the RAF solely to write short stories under the pseudonym of ‘Flying Officer X”

Ø  Novels:

The Purple Plain (1947) about Burma

The Scarlet Sword (set in India)

Ø  Most popular creation was the Larkin Family in The Darling Buds of May.

Ø  In 1931 he married Madge Cox

Ø  Nominated for a Academy Award for his sound work on the 1982 film, Gandhi.

Ø  Modern short Story(1940)

Ø  Died on 29^th January 1974 aged 68.

ü  In terms of word count, there is no official demarcation between an anecdote, a short story, and a novel.

ü  A fictional narrative, the length of which varies, but which rarely exceeds 20000 words.

ü The short story organizes the action, thoughts, and dialogues of its characters into an artful pattern of a plot, directed toward particular effects on the audience.

ü  The story is presented to us from one of many available points of view.

“Stories of Characters”: Focus instead on the state of mind and motivation, or on the psychological and moral qualities of the protagonist. E.g., Earnest Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”.

ü  The short story differs from the novel in the dimension that Aristotle called “magnitudes”

ü  Edgar Allan Poe is sometimes called the originator of the short story as an established genre.

ü The author often begins the story close to, or even on the verge of the climax, minimizes both prior exposition and details of the setting, keeps the complications down, and clears up the denouncement quickly, sometimes in a few sentences.

ü  Emerging from earlier oral storytelling traditions in the 17th century

ü  A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe’s essay “Thomas Le Moineau (Le Moile)” (1846).

ü  Stories of fewer than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as “short short stories”or “flash fiction”.

ü  Elements of dramatic structure: exposition (the introduction of setting, situation and main characters), complication (the event that introduces the conflict), rising action, crisis (the decisive moment for the protagonist and his commitment to a course of action), climax (the point of highest interest in terms of the conflict and the point with the most action) and resolution (the point when the conflict is resolved).

ü  Usually a short story focuses on one incident; has a single plot, a single setting, and a small number of characters; and covers a short period of time

ü  The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland’s “remarkable narrative” “The Poisoner of Montremos” (1791).

2.     The Thurlows lived on a small hill.

3.     The house had a wooden flight of steps to the front door.

4.     At 7:30 in the morning, Mrs. Thurlow pushed her great rusty bicycle.

5.     At 6:00 in the evening she pushed it back

6. The bicycle was loaded with grey bundles of washing, oil cans, sacks, cabbages, bundles of old newspapers, boughs of wind-blown wood, and bags of chicken food.

7.     Mrs. Thurlow’s relationship to the bicycle was that of a beast to a cart.

8.     She was like a beast of burden.

9. She had a bulky and rather robust body, with her flat, heavy feet, that ‘pounded painfully’ along ‘under mud-stained skirts

10.   From six to nine, she cleans for the two retired sisters

11.    9 to 12 for the retired photographer.

12.   12:30 to 3:00 for the poultry farm.

13.   4 to 6 for the middle-aged bachelor

14.   Her boys were nine and thirteen years old

15.   She had saved money for 14 years in a bran bag under a mattress in the back bedroom.

16.   Mr. Thurlow had a silver plate in his head

17.   He was wounded in the Marne( A river in France)

18.   He was a hedge cutter.

19.   Once a week, on Saturdays or Sundays he came home

20. When there was no cleaning, she made up for it by picking potatoes, planting potatoes, dibbing cabbages, spudding roots, and doing more washing.

21.   At 10 she sat folding the clothes or cleaning boots.

22.  She had saved 54 pounds, sixteen and four pence.

23.  At 11 she went to bed

24.  On Sunday afternoon, she sat in the kitchen alone and read the newspaper of the previous week

25.  About 3 o’clock she sat reading

26.  Mr. Thurlow stole a billhook for murdering a person

27.  On Monday the police kept her 4 hours at the station.

28.  On Sunday Thurlow was in the Black Horse from 11 to 2

29.  The money had gone and the future had been destroyed.

30.  The distance from her house to her brother’s house is four miles.

31.   Her brother was a master carpenter.

32.  His mother was a small woman with small eyes and ironed-out mouth who could not hear well.

33.  She is known as Lil in her brother’s house.

34.  For 15 years his family has been disapproved of Thurlow

35.  “Money is money; death is death; the living are the living”

36.  Money appears more valuable than the life of Mr. Thurlow, who was arrested and died in prison and her lost could not be restored

a.     Mrs. Thurlow’s social isolation

b.     Mrs. Thurlow’s hard life exposed her to the natural elements

c.     Her strength

d.    Her suffering

a.      Carrying loads

b.    Attending to many houses on it

c.     Her drudgery

d.    Using it as a beast of burden

a.      6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

b.    7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

c.     6 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

d.    6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

a.     Four ways up to the hillock

b.     Four places of drudgery, forming an area of her movement and activity

c.     Four lines in a newspaper

d.    The four directions of her house

a.      7:30 am

b.    6 am

c.     6:30 am

d.    6 am

a.     Both are beasts of burden

b.     As a cart to the ox

c.     The bicycle symbolizes her struggle

d.    Her old companions

a.     As a soldier

b.     As a martyr [note the dramatic irony]

c.     As a patriot

d.    As a farmer

a.     Praying in the evening

b.    Attending her duties

c.      Saving money

d.    Taking care of her family

a.      divine power

b.    her family

c.     her own power

d.    the people she worked for

a.     Taking rest on Sundays

b.    Going to bed with stockings

c.      Reading old newspapers on Sundays

d.    Riding bicycle

a.      Her miserliness

b.    Her strict discipline

c.     Her indifference to them

d.    Her appearance

a.     By employing irony

b.     By bringing an analogy from nature

c.     By emphasizing harsh words

d.    By literary style

a.     The loss of something cared with her sweat and blood

b.     The act of crime and theft of her money earned with sweat and blood

c.     The murder of a man by her husband

d.    The start of tragedy in her life

a.      Fifty-four pounds

b.    Fifty pounds

c. Sixty-four pounds

d.    Sixty pounds and sixteen pence

a.      Her future

b.    Her dream

c.     Her hard work

d.    Her sweat and blood

a.      Lil

b.    Lily

c.     Emily

d.    Lisa

a.      Something wrong

b.    Sum it up

c.     Something is up

d.    Somewhat

a.      Dramatic irony as a luxury turns into agony later

b.    Symbol of hope

c.     Symbol of time in raped conditions

d.    Anticlimax

a.      The execution of Mr. Thurlow

b.    The complete loss of her money

c.     The destruction of her family

d.    The puncture of her bicycle

a.      Mrs. Thurlow’s sons

b.    That Mrs. Thurlow was alive

c.     Living will bring the money

d.    The future depends on actions.