We have just read an excerpt from the 1911 novel The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. In this reading, you probably noticed that in the dialogue, the speech, Burnett uses apostrophes (') in much the same way that Steinbeck does in Of Mice and Men to help show the language of her character, specifically of Martha, the young maid.
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We spent some time discussing important details in the first chapter of Steinbeck's novel and also inferring what the lives of the people might be like, Bixby and Scanlon's critical thinking questions for this reading have similar purposes.
This process of making inferences continued in the essays on the characters introduced in chapter 2. Steinbeck, like most great novelists, does not usually tell us what his characters are like; rather, he shows them to us through the action and the dialogue. Weak writers like Dan Brown cannot to this: they are continually telling readers about their characters because they lack the skill to show them.
- What could be making the crying sound? Give reasons to support your guess(es).
- What can you infer about daily life from the story?
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- Bixby, J. & Scanlon, J. (2013). Skillful reading & writing: Student's book 3. Oxford: Macmillan Education
I guess that the sound comes from the garden, I am not quite sure how the garden looks like, but, something when there is the wind come into the backyard, or the place consisted of tree or plants, it sometimes can make a strange sound. That people might think it a human sound; the excerpt shows that it happened at night, so it makes atmosphere scarier.
ReplyDeleteI deduce that the life in that period might be peaceful: living in the big house. Around the house has a big garden that makes you feel comfortable in the evening, but it looks more mysterious at night. People spend time with maids in the house. And the maid is like they live here from generation to generation, they know the old maids in this house, and why they leave the house. So I think they quite know a lot about the house rather than new-coming who lives in the house.
The sound might come from the wind that blow into the house because when the wind blow , it will create a different tone of sound. For example, when it was heavy wind, we can hear a scary sound that make by the wind. The sound that Mary hear might be the same. It might be the sound that the wind blow pass something and make a sound like someone is crying.
ReplyDeleteFrom the reading, we can see that Mary's life is very comfortable. She live in a big house with a huge garden. She has a maid who serve her all time. However, I think that her daily life is very boring. There are nothing to do. She have to stay in the house all day. Only thing she can do is talking with her maid.
If you get a chance to see it, the TV series Downton Abbey is well worth watching. It is not only great entertainment, but the first two seasons especially give an excellent insight into daily life in an aristocratic English country house. The series charts the lives of the Crawley family, headed by his lordship the sixth Earl of Grantham, who is duly bossed by his mother, the dowager countess who was replaced by her son's wife when her own husband died. The large staff of servants to care for one family of five people is amazing. The earl, his countess, and their three daughters are very well cared for by the butler, under-butler, footmen, valets, ladies maids, maids, cooks, and all of their assistants devoted to the care of their family. As I mentioned in class, the story of Lord Grantham's family begins in 1912, and it continues through to around 1924, covering period of enormous social change in England, including the demise of those great houses in their traditional form as the industrial revolution and war lured workers into more fulfilling lives than serving those who thought themselves their superiors because of their birth.
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